EVEN DeepER Blurting!: DBNS: This Land is "Yor" Land

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DBNS: This Land is "Yor" Land

Posted by Kenneth Morgan on 6/30/2008, 11:57 pm

Today, pity Kenneth Morgan as he roams the wilderness with Big McLargeHuge.
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As I’ve noted in the past, Turner Classic movies has provided me with several subjects for these reviews. Now, they’ve made it easy since, not too long ago, TCM has started showing cult movie double features early Saturday mornings at about 2:00. The movies they’ve shown have stretched the definition of “cult movie” from “odd but good movie” to “awful but has some following, I guess”. This past Friday, they had an interesting pair. The first one was “Death Race 2000”, which I reviewed here a few years ago and has its points of interest. But, I’m not here to just re-post that review. Rather, I’m here to write up the second half of the double-bill, and it certainly falls into the latter explanation posted above.

Our subject for today: “Yor, the Hunter from the Future” (original title: “Il Mondo di Yor”), an Italian/French/Turkish co-production released in the U.S. by Columbia in the summer of 1983 (while some flick with Mark Hamill and something called Jabba was doing respectable business elsewhere).

The movie opens with a shot of our hero, Yor (Reb “SHE’S GONNA BLOW!!!” Brown), a blond, loinclothed hunk who dashes around a rocky wilderness while his “Flash Gordon”-like theme song plays. Post-credits, we see a group of prehistoric types as they engage in a half-hearted ceremony to mark their arrival in a fertile valley. Afterwards, two members of the tribe go hunting. They are pretty Ka-Laa (Corinne Cleary) and her aging protector Pag (Luciano Pigozzi, billed as “Alan Collins”). They get into trouble with a big triceratops, but Yor leaps in, kills it and (yuck!) sips some of its blood. (SUGGESTED RIFF: This is the oddest Dracula movie I’ve ever seen.)

Anyway, Yor and Ka-Laa are attracted to each other (we’re not sure why) and Pag seems to approve of this buff wanderer (we’re really not sure why). Suddenly, a bunch of Cro-Magnons attack the village and wreak havoc. Yor, Pag and Ka-Laa escape while the attackers kill the men (on-screen) and children (off-screen) and take away the women (who are never heard from again). In any case, Yor gets briefly overpowered later and Ka-Laa is taken away to the Cro-Mags cave. Fortunately, Yor shows up, saves Ka-Laa and wipes out most of the Cro-Mags. (Still no word on what happened to those women, though.)

During a couple of relatively quiet moments, Yor reveals that he has no memory of who he truly is or where he comes from. He wears a silver medallion that seems to have some significance, though he’s not sure what. However, he learns that there may be someone in another village who has a similar medallion and might even know the truth about him. So, he decides to set off in pursuit of this goal, with Pag and Ka-Laa following. He begins his quest by wandering through a dry, rocky, cave-filled area. (S.R.: So, you think he’ll run into Taylor or Brent pretty soon?) And…

Look, let me cut to the chase here. He gets into trouble, goes someplace else, gets into more trouble, goes to another place and gets into more trouble. Women fawn over him, much to Ka-Laaa’s annoyance. Men are astounded by his strength and sterling character. And, about an hour into the movie, there’s a massive plot twist that I’m going to give away since you’ve already guessed it from the title: this isn’t the distant past. Actually, it’s a distant, post-apocalyptic future, where humanity has reverted back to a primitive society. Yor, however, is actually the child of people from a highly-advanced civilization. So, Yor decides to go to the island fortress of his original people, who turn out to be dominated by a villain called Overlord (John Steiner). But, there are also rebels who look to Yor as their leader and…I’m sure you can figure out the rest.

It’s kind of a shame that “Yor, the Hunter from the Future” didn’t end up on MST3K. I think it would’ve been a perfect addition, as it’s pretty much the middle ground between the earlier “Cave Dwellers” and the later ‘Space Mutiny”. That’s not to say the movie is good, though. Actually, it’s quite bad. Almost admirably bad, in fact.

As noted, the story pretty much breaks down into four parts which follow the same structure: Yor arrives, does something heroic, meets local girl, village destroyed, Yor moves on. I had a feeling about the episodic structure of the movie, so I checked on IMDB and found that, indeed, this is only technically a “movie”. Actually, like “Riding with Death” and “Master Ninja”, it’s a group of cut-together episodes from a TV series (although it stitches together four shows, rather than two, and it’s from Italian TV). Maybe the story makes more sense in the original form, but I rather doubt it. I also understand it’s based on a graphic novel series, but I’m not inclined to track that one down, either.

In addition, the movie is poorly acted, the production values are fairly cheap and there are moments of true goofiness in the story that I’ll let you discover for yourselves. (One hint: think of Ator’s glider, and then make it much stupider.) Fans of “Space Mutiny” will be pleased by a final gun battle in a water-treatment plant/warehouse that looks familiar (complete with railing kills!) And when you see Overlord’s robotic soldiers, with faces like gas masks and enclosing helmets, it won’t take an act of genius to guess the inspiration. One odd note is the way the movie seems to be OK with polygamy, given how Ka-Laa’s jealousy is responded to more than once with a reminder that, in the primitive society, Yor can have as many wives as he wishes. (S.R.: This must be some branch of the Mormons that they don’t like to talk about.)

The movie does, though, provide a great deal of riffing material. Like when, after a tragic moment, Pag tells Yor, “We’ve all lost loved ones, but life goes on.” (S.R.: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.) Or when Yor and Ka-Laa end up in a hall of mirrors. (S.R.: Any chance Bruce Lee can suddenly appear and beat up Yor?) I will admit, though, that it’d be a real challenge to come up with more manly-man-style names for Yor’s character. (I guess you could start with Rock ToughAbs and go from there.) On the other hand, the “surprise” twist inspires, “So, I guess M. Night Whatshisname was a script doctor on this.”And, of course, there are the shouts of frustration at the open-ended, begging-for-a-sequel finish to the movie.

All in all, “Yor, the Hunter from the Future” is a pretty bad movie. But it’s bad in a way that can be fun, if you’re willing to try it. And at least they remembered to clear away the tire tracks from post-WWIII Earth, unlike “Cave Dwellers”.

I’ll let you know if TCM gives me another one. They’ve got to run something between “Casablanca” and “Adventures of Robin Hood”.

CONNECTIONS NOTE: Reb Brown (Yor) was, of course, Slab Bulkhead in “Space Mutiny”. Paul Costello (uncredited as a blind rebel leader) also appeared in “Escape from the Bronx”. Nello Pazzafini (uncredited as a tribal leader) appeared in five MSTed movies: “Cave Dwellers”, “Pumaman”, “Danger!! Death Ray”, “Secret Agent Super Dragon” and “Colossus and the Headhunters”. Director Antonio Margheriti (alias Anthony M. Dawson) has DBNS credits including “Planet on the Prowl” (a.k.a. “War Between the Planets”), “Wild, Wild Planet” and “Assignment: Outer Space”. Cinematographer Marcello Masciocchi also worked on “Assignment: Outer Space”. While composers Guido & Maurizio DeAngelis worked (under pseudonyms) on “Devil Fish”, and additional composer John Scott worked on the KTMA experiment “The Million Eyes of Su-Maru”.

TRIVIA NOTE: Remember how “Space Mutiny” used SPFX from the old “Battlestar Galactica” series? Well, in “Yor”, they don’t do that, but they do re-use some of the blaster sound effects. Small universe, eh?