Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Two
A veritable cornucopia of dodgy barbarian and barbarian-adjacent movies that I have never watched before, and will probably never watch again. Enjoy Part One here.
Gor (1987) – USA/Italy
Another nail in the Cannon coffin lid, this effort to start a franchise based on the uncomfortable series of novels by John Norman spawned one sequel, and then went belly up before things could get worse.
It follows the same basic plot of the books; dull physics prof Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barbarini — dull as a dish cloth) owns a family heirloom macguffin that transports him to the barbaric planet of Gor, where he must right some wrongs and show the locals that human is best — so far, so very Barsoomy.
Cabot falls in with a village being ransacked by tyrannical despot and maniacal giggler, Sarm (Oliver ‘I’ll get the beers in’ Reed, having a wonderful time). After a run in with some ne’er-do-wells, Cabot is nursed back to health by semi-clad princess Talena (Rebecca ‘more hairspray’ Ferratti) and soon they are off to reclaim another macguffin in order for Cabot to return home. It isn’t long before the landscape is strewn with bodies, slave girls, and partially covered bum cheeks, and it all culminates in a fiery showdown with Olly Reed.
John Norman’s series justifiably has its critics regarding his depiction of women — specifically the slavery and sexual abuse, which becomes a lot darker and pornographic as the books continued to be rolled out. Some (but not all) of the overt misogyny is glossed over however, and the film just serves as another one of the dime-a-dozen S&S videos to decorate your local Blockbuster in the mid-80s. I’m adding a point for Oliver Reed.
5/10
Outlaw of Gor (1988) – USA/Italy
Hot on the sandal heels of the previous plod-a-thon came this one, not based on Norman’s 1967 novel of the same name, but featuring most of the same characters and actors, and a misguided determination to get some more female slaves on screen.
This time the plank masquerading as a physics prof, Cabot, is tossed back onto Gor following a car crash, but this time he’s not alone. He is joined by an annoying co-worker (Russel Savadier) who has been sandal-horned into the plot in an attempt to distract us from Jack Palance’s hats. Yes, Jack Palance, who had one of the top billings in the last film (he was on screen for 3 mins), has taken over the Olly Reed role, but he is having far less fun with it, and in fact is usurped by evil queen Lara (Donna Denton), who frames Cabot for Talena’s dad’s murder and send him on the run.
Cabot, along with his diminutive, white-haired chum, Hup (Nigel Chipps), wander around in the desert for a bit, stumble into a slave trader camp, free a slave girl, and generally cause a kerfuffle. Unfortunately, Lara has sent a hunter after them and he soon catches them and brings them back to the palace to face the music. Cue fights, wrongs being righted, and another generous sprinkling of sand-blasted flesh.
They upped the humour in this one, to no great effect, and Palance really doesn’t get to do much at all. At least Cabot gets to stay on Gor this time, thus saving his class from another boring physics lecture.
4/10
The New Barbarians (1983) – USA/Italy
Barbarians of the future this time (AKA Warriors of the Wasteland), as humanity has descended into Road Warrior style chaos, stealing much of the other film’s plot too. The rest of the story concerns a lone warrior, Mad Ma… sorry, ‘Scorpion’ (Giancarlo Preti), a former soldier of a quasi-religious bunch of nutters called the Templars.
These Templars, led by a cookie-cutter villain called ‘One’ (George Eastman), are determined to judge and exterminate all other survivors in order to purify the world or something. When they set their sights on a group of peaceniks, it’s up to Scorpion to save the day, but not before he has forced himself on several women, and then been raped himself by One in a scene that springs out of nowhere and sours an already less-than-sweet film. Director Enzo G. Castellari and his production team found a lovely quarry just outside Rome, and chose to never leave it, hurtling their cybertruck-lite buggies around the rocks with wild abandon.
Then blow me down, just as I was starting to tire of the whole debacle, who should turn up but Fred Williamson, playing a bad-ass dude called Nadir. Suddenly I was all in, and the film must have realized what an ace it was holding, because it ramped up the violence (sooo many exploding heads) and the hilarity (Nadir uses a bow with explosive-tipped arrows, but he takes an unbelievably long time to attach the tips to the shafts, while the people he is trying to save are getting the snot kicked out of them).
Ultimately though it’s a bit of a silly slog, but I’m sticking a couple of extra points onto this for Fred Williamson and exploding body parts.
6/10
Iron Warrior (1987) – USA/Italy
For a fleeting moment I was intrigued by this one. The opening scene of a pair of young brothers playing with a ball among some ruins was rather nicely shot, with some interesting framing and editing decisions, and I thought I might have stumbled onto a decent one. I could even forgive the clearly stolen James Horner strains from various Star Treks.
Oh, how I laughed when I realised my mistake three minutes later when it all plummeted into nonsense. One of the boys is kidnapped by a witch, Phoedra (Elisabeth Kaza), who encases him in a formidable suit of iron and turns him into her enforcer.
Flash forward several years and the unsullied brother, Ator, lurches onto the scene, all muscles, tragic hair and cheekbones to cut diamonds on. Ator then proceeds to protect various kingdoms from Phoedra, all the while coming closer to the final showdown with (shock!) his brother. Ator is played by Miles O’Keeffe, whom I remembered from the awful Tarzan movie he made with Bo Derek, released in 1981. This bloke, pretty as he is, gives planks a bad name as he vogues his way from one lackluster sword fight to the next.
I had no idea that I was watching the third film in a series of Ator movies, but it didn’t really matter, and following this one I had no desire to seek out the others. Feel free to comment if this was a mistake and I’ve actually missed some classics (but I won’t hold my breath).
4/10
The Dungeonmaster (1984) – USA
AKA Rage War: The Challenges of Excalibrate AKA Digital Knights.
Jeffrey Byron plays a computer nerd called Paul, who has an unhealthy attachment to his A.I. assistant X-CaliBR8, predicting Richard Dawkins’ confusion 42 years ago. His long-suffering girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing), has finally had enough of her digital rival, but before she can do anything about it, they are both whisked away to a fantastical land by a demonic sorcerer called Mestema (Richard Moll), who has been searching for a worthy challenger for some reason, and has decided a nerd and his Siri are it.
Also, he fancies Gwen. Paul has a ‘pipboy’ style version of X-CaliBR8 (Cali for short, thank God), on his wrist, and this thing can do bloody anything, which is useful as Memesta is about to hurl a bunch of different challenges at Paul that have no real connection to anything, and seem extraordinarily easy to beat. Challenges are met, monsters are squashed, demonic sorcerers are defeated, and Paul and Gwen get to go back to their unholy love triangle in their apartment.
Now, I love me a good anthology movie, and this ain’t it. The challenges consist of seven story segments, made by seven directors to varying degrees of competence, ranging from almost interesting to crap. John Carl Buechler got to direct one, and I’ve always loved his films (Ghoulies, anyone?), but his effort was rubbish. Dave Allen, stop-motion maestro, also made one, but that was rubbish too. However, neither of these were as rubbish as the other five, and one of them featured heavy metal lads WASP — go figure.
Nothing made any sense, the wrist-mounted Cali developed super laser powers that I’m pretty sure Paul didn’t program, and the whole shebang is a ludicrous mess.
Recommended.
5/10
Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:
Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part One
Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Three
Probing Questions
My Top Thirty Films
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.
Urbano Barberini’s full name is Urbano Barberini Riario Sforza Colonna di Sciarra (which is why he goes with the shortened form) and he is a gosh-for-real prince, a member of the Italian royal family, such as it is these days. Among his other movies is Lamberto Bava’s well known Demoni (Demons).
I was disappointed to realise that the Dave Allen who directed a segment of The Dungeonmaster is not the Irish comedian from the 70s, although judging from your review, the Irishman might have done a better job.
What the what?! I bloody love Demons – now I’ll have to watch that one again 🙂
Definitely the other Dave Allen because there were no nuns in that segment.
Tar Sardar Gor
45 odd years ago book 1 seemed ok, but after that even a teenager from northern Michigan could tell something was not right with the author of the Gor books
Indeed, he really leaned into the ghastly stuff after the criticism…
Iron Warrior is the best of the Ator films and has nothing to do with the other ones aside from starring Miles O’Keefe. The other films were all directed by Joe D’Amato, being unusually restrained with the sleaze and gore.
The original Ator is fun enough for being a zero budget ripoff of Conan. The first sequel, The Blade Master, is even cheaper and goofier and of course featured on Mystery Science Theater.
The fourth and final Ator, Quest For the Mighty Sword, is another weird dud. It reuses a Troll costume from Troll 2 and that’s the most interesting thing about it.
My morbid curiosity is compelling me to watch the others, but today is not that day.
I remember seeing “The Dungeon Master” in the theater in 1984, and I also remember finding it to be pretty ridiculous. That said, I don’t think it clicked to me that it was an anthology made by different directors. I just thought they couldn’t even keep the same tone throughout. I could add it to my ‘Deathstalker’ marathon.
I did watch the recent MST3K version of “Outlaw of Gore”, it looked so bad! Fun mst3k episode, though.
Oh, please watch The Dungeon Master.
It’s an education.
Wait– Richard Moll plays a demonic sorcerer in more than one movie?!?!
Talk about range.
I saw the first Ator movie when it came out.
It remains, to this day, the worst film I’ve ever seen at the theater.
And they only got worse from that one.
Ugh.
I honestly believe it would do you the power of good to watch the other three.
On reading about the making of the Gor movies years back I had Uber respect for Jon Norman. To set the stage, Jean Aul and Peter S. Beagle got into a rage and sued the producers for decades over the movie adaptation of their major novels. And these were 85% to the books. By contrast Norman gave “A kind 3% Gor” or something like that… To be fair if they made Gor 1:1 the books at the time like “N aked Lunch” by Croneburg it would have cost $100 million and been banned all over and possibly got the producers and director/actors jailed… For Gor aside from the subject most talk about the macho warriors ride “Tarns” aka giant birds and the cities while Roman like have mini skyscrapers so the Tarns can land and nest. Then imagine the 12 foot tall insectoid Priest-Kings and other critters… Modern SFX we could do it even without Ai for a sane budget with some practical effects for nearby – but they had to really juggle. But Norman just said he remembered wisdom of today in that “More people by FAR will watch a trashy movie or read filth than the best book.” so his “3% Gor” books languished in the VHS rental shelves and kept the name alive and got new fans until the internet let him jump over the blacklist and advertising block.
Norman was SO stoic about it. He’d been cancelled and blacklisted by DAW after that Feminist daughter took over. Oh, and she made Marion Zimmer Bradley the head of the fantasy department. Yep, protect us from Norman’s Thuggish knuckle draggers, give us MZB’s stuff, nothing wrong with that… (huge sarcasm, if you don’t know you probably do not want to) And the movies were …uh…? Serious, there’s a cool Anime called “Fencer of Minerva” which is more Gorean than Gor movies. Big discussion over that among fans. Myself I’ll “Think of Norman” if there’s ever any chance of a real movie of my works. Most likely it’d be like the movie cover of “My best fiend” (about Klaus Kinski) with me about to strangle the director over “Minor” changes aka “NoOOOO…! The Vengeance squad does NOT talk the industrialist PIG into moving the manufacturing plant back to the USA. They tie up his family and rip off their SKIN with hot PLIERS…! The brat playing his daughter, she sure screams loud enough when her gourmet meals aren’t made properly…Just use some spirit gum and liquid smoke and the bits would come right off her makeup without any chance of real damage… And my contract with you means you do NOT change my script further … I took out the scene where — was eaten alive by ANTS for you…” the Director gasping for breath says “Look – we got a call from one of the bankers. He was saying he was tricked into funding incitement for his own murder…!” I mean I could work out contracts, talk with scriptwriters and the producer/directors have a good idea what it is – THEN (so I’ve heard) they CHANGE things DURING the process that are “Whyyy….!?” for one small example, imagine if instead of that “Tree” scene in Last Unicorn they had more of Mabruk’s dialogue about Schmendrick’s background…? Not sure if Beagle approved it or if they’d tossed him after a “My best fiend” cover interaction…?
Thank goodness for expanding Ai tech to avoid that issue…already experimenting with it. Oh, yeah I’m ashamed I didn’t win the tax on stupidity (lottery) and planned to flush it all on spoiled adult babies who make lady bikini fillers from Corman movies and guys who do “Man killed by Jason with a spear on the boat” look like Elizabeth Taylor and Humphrey Bogart to what… release it for FREE on YouTube due to the monopolies in place today… Anyways, I’ve seen and LOVE and HAVE all these – except Iron Warrior though I might have rented it once. Another “Ator” movie, eh? Time to go to Amazon/Ebay! BTW – you might check out “The Bad Movie Bible” on YouTube – I’ve found LOTS of movies even I haven’t seen, especially the Bond-spoitation ones…
The Bad Move Bible sounds like a solid recommendation – thank you!
Anyone who knows me IRL is amazed at my bad taste in movies. However… The Bad Movie Bible has tons of movies I haven’t seen but want to watch now…! Worth looking up for the Star Wars knockoffs alone. In any debate on whether or not the Disney sequels SUCK and are there to destroy the franchise for a tax break well I tell ’em that I’d rather watch “Star Crash” 10x in a row vs even “Force Awakens” I walked out of 30 minutes into it. Save the huge amount of money and modern SFX the wide range of Star Wars knock-offs in the wake of SW 1 aka “A new hope” have almost every move more entertaining to watch. Also they have a good list of “Barbarian” movies made in the wake of Conan with Arnie and Post-Nuke and Creature Attack ones.
There’s also a documentary “Machete Maidens Unleashed” put together obviously during the 00s Grindhouse revival and showed a tiny slice of Roger Corman’s fantastic career – the early part when he went from Drive-In shockers to the 60s where he did (IMO) the BEST Poe adaptations and then helped make the original “Grindhouse” what it is known as. Watching older actresses he’d hired as bikini (and ripped prison uniform) fillers talk it’s like when my Mom head locked me to watch Turner Classic Movies with old celebrities from the ‘golden age’ compared to the ‘actors’ of today…
I’ll give a big warning NSFW – “W” as in “Wallet”. You’ll want to watch lots of pure crazy nutzoid movies and many won’t be on YouTube or Tubi…
To the best of my recollection, the only two of these I’ve seen are Iron Warrior and The Dungeonmaster. The latter I mostly remember for WASP and the absurdity of some guy starting to drive forward when a light turns green, but then _backing up_ when it suddenly turns back to red. That would require sorcery.
I think of Iron Warrior as an artsy-fartsy sword-n-sorcery movie, by which I mean it had swords, sorcery, and lots of scarves blowing in the wind. As I recall, the princess was decked out in a collection of scarves all of the same color. As they traveled, she’d steadily lose scarves, but just as she’d running low, something would happen! Next scene she’d be decked out in scarves of a new color and off they’d go again. I’m guessing she went through four color changes?
I never notice the changing scarf colours – oh lord, don’t make me watch it agin!
You’d be rewatching it for science! But before you do, please sign this form releasing me from any responsibility for your mental anguish and/or trauma.
Oh you’d better believe I’m holding you responsible.
Come to think of it, I did watch the trailer yesterday because of you, and that alone was pretty traumatizing.
My work here is done.