Outlaw of Gor (1988)

Filmed concurrently with Gor,Outlaw Of Gor is a half-baked sequel with a turgid plot and apathetic acting that makes the original look almost Oscar-worthy in comparison.

It's about 40 years since I read John Norman's Outlaw Of Gor but I'm pretty sure this limp movie bares very little resemblance to its supposed source material.

Set three years after the events of Gor (we learn this from the VHS cassette box, not the film itself) and Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) is summoned back to Counter-Earth, but this time his slimy colleague from the university, the lecherous Watney Smith (Russel Savadier), accidentally tags along... and has no problem adjusting to the fact that the pair of them have suddenly arrived on an alien planet.

Before that though, for anyone perverse enough to want to watch Outlaw Of Gor without first having seen Gor, Tarl has a very convenient flashback précising the events of the first movie - but without mentioning Oliver Reed's rather central character (obviously they didn't want to have to pay him again).

Our less-than-dynamic duo make their way to Ko-Ro-Ba (which is noticeably different to what we saw in the first film), where Tarl is reunited with his love Talena (Rebecca Ferrati), her father Marlenus (Larry Taylor), a village elder who treats Tarl like an old friend, but I'm pretty sure we've never met before (Alex Heyns), and the sinister Priest-King Xenos (a bewildered Jack Palance, who is still not an insectoid alien).

Cabot's arrival at Ko-Ro-Ba prompts a truly hilarious sequence where random people just shout "Cabot" (one of the many bizarre moments in Outlaw Of Gor ridiculed by MST3K). The strange thing about this is until they arrived on Gor, I was convinced Watney had been calling his friend "Kevin", not "Cabot".

However, things are not all hunky-dory in Ko-Ro-Ba. Turns out Marlenus has hooked up with duplicitous Queen Lara (Donna Denton), who is secretly in league with Xenos in a bid for ultimate power (over a single village - not exactly epic ambitions).

Lara promptly seduces Watney ("Tell me, how do they make love on your planet?"), kills Marlenus and frames Tarl.

However, as if one Jar Jar Binks in his life wasn't enough, Tarl is also reunited with the midget Hup (Nigel Chipps), who is even more pointless in this movie than he was in the original.

Tarl and Hup go on the run in the desert - little realising that Lara has sent Ost The Hunter (Tullio Moneta), a monosyllabic bounty hunter, after them with the express orders that Cabot be brought back alive.

Ultimately this fuels a rift between Xenos and Lara (Xenos accuses her of acting like a "bitch in heat") and eventually culminates in one of the most embarrassingly degrading death scenes for a Hollywood legend in the history of B-movie cinema.

Where the plot of Gor at least moved forward, in Outlaw Of Gor it just goes round and round.

If it wasn't for the awful lines and risible fight scenes, this film could almost be called tedious.

But thankfully, it has some wonderfully WTF moments that make bad cinema so great.

A particular highlight here is the character of a nameless slave girl that Tarl and Hup rescue from slavers in the desert (a sequence in itself so laughable as to be a classic - just watch the slavers reaction at the end when they are standing around as their camp burns down around them).

From the moment she first appears among a crowd of slaves the camera picks her out as "someone important". She is then rescued and, in true Gor style, offers to "pleasure" Tarl as a reward. He refuses, because of his love of Talena. Then they are all captured - rather easily - by Ost, who takes them back to Ko-Ra-Ba, where the slave girl gets chained up in the mines... and promptly forgotten about. Never to be mentioned, or seen, again!

All this sets up the climactic fight sequence, which is another masterclass in "what the frakkery" as Ost changes his allegiance for no readily explained reason and tips the scales in Tarl's favour.

As you may have guessed, Outlaw Of Gor isn't particularly well-written. Not only is it full of clunky dialogue (much of which clashes with the themes of John Norman's books), but many things happen without explanation.

The character of Xenos is totally wasted, as all his Machiavellian machinations are just echoes of the more successful Queen Lara's schemes, and the nameless slave girl - who you are led to believe is crucial to something or other - is simply filling a narrative role that Talena could have taken.

I'm also not sure why this merits an 18 certificate, while the original was only a 15. Once again there's no nudity or cussing and the fights are comparatively tame (Tarl has a knack for killing floored opponents by stabbing the ground beside them). I can only imagine it's possibly because of the reasonably protracted torture scene of Tarl being whipped for Lara's pleasure.

The cassette box claims that "Tarl embarks on a series of wild adventures battling the strange and magical creatures who live in this forbidding universe". Doesn't happen. There are no "strange and magical creatures" to be seen anywhere in Outlaw Of Gor... and even "wild adventures" is stretching things a bit!

New Superhero Zine Launches for Dungeon Crawl Classics

My good pal Justin ' Pun' Isaac has just launched the first issue (The Origin Issue) of his new superhero-themed Dungeon Crawl Classics series, Crisis In Infinite Zines.

Pun describes it as:

"...a new supers toolkit designed for Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics and their superpowered offshoots like Evolved: Super Heroic Time Travel Roleplaying Game and Comic Crawl Classics. You'll find new classes, foes to fight, adventures, and other rules/tropes conversations."

Written with Dave Coppoletti, and illustrated by Dave, David Vance and Joseph Beckelhimer, the 30-page, comic book-sized zine is available in both PDF or POD formats from DriveThru.

The debut issue includes two new classes (The Super Pal and The Butler), two freakish monsters, one fearsome nemesis (The Refrigerator), one giant-sized ape, 30 secret origins, 0-level accessories, comics, letters to the editor, adverts and more.

"He's Not The Messiah, He's A Very Naughty Boy!"

Experience the epic conclusion. Dune: Part Three only in cinemas and IMAX December 18.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Villeneuve and Brian K. Vaughan, Dune: Part Three is based on the novel Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert and delivers the epic conclusion to Villeneuve’s trilogy.

The film stars Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Florence Pugh, Rebecca Ferguson, Isaach De Bankolé, with Charlotte Rampling, with Anya Taylor-Joy, and Robert Pattinson, and Javier Bardem, and features newcomers Nakoa-Wolf Momoa and Ida Brooke.

Rachel's Making A Big Investment In Little Things

Rachel's current dolls house project is home to a family of craftspeople

My good lady wife spent the weekend - with her mum - at the biggest miniatures show in the country (if not the world), stocking up on tiny things to populate her latest dolls house project with.

You can read all about Rachel's expedition to Miniatura, and what she found there, in the latest post on her occasional blog, Miniatures Make Me Happy. 

Crime Lords & Laser Swords: The Welcome Return of Maul

Gor (1987)

Generally I'm not one to complain if a movie based on a novel doesn't stick one hundred per cent to its source material, but this 1987 adaptation of John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor is simply taking the piss.

Branded as John Norman's Gor, the opening credits proudly proclaim that this film is based on Tarnsman of Gor - but the first thing you notice is the marked absence of any actual tarns: the roc-like warbirds the warriors of Gor ride into battle.

Instead they have horses.

This is pretty much on a par with Peter Jackson replacing the eagles with Irish Wolfhounds in The Hobbit or Lord of The Rings trilogies.

But this isn't the only peculiar choice scriptwriters Rick Marx and Harry Alan Tower and director Fritz Kiersch make in this un-faithful of adaptation of Norman's 1966 pulpy sword-and-planet story.

It almost feels as if they scanned through the book, picked out key names and phrases and then scattered them at random throughout the script.

We first meet our protagonist, wimpy physics professor Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) lecturing bored students about the magical ring he inherited from his father and its connection to an alien world known as Counter-Earth or Gor (which is odd because when he actually arrives on this alien world and is told the planet's name he doesn't register that this is the place he was talking about 10 minutes earlier).

Having lost his girl to a campus bully (an early appearance from The Mummy's Arnold Vosloo), Cabot is involved in a car accident and wakes up to find himself on Counter-Earth.

However, it's not the alien world readers of the Gor books would be familiar with - the towering spires of the Gorean cities have been replaced by mud huts and caves, while the verdant nature of Gor is replaced with never-ending deserts (more Barsoom than Gor).

Clumsy Tarl accidentally stumbles into the role of hero when the village of Ko-Ro-Ba is raided by the soldiers of Priest-King Sarm (Oliver Reed) - in the books the Priest-Kings are large insectoid creatures, but not here - who are stealing the village's mystical Home Stone (a big point in the book is how bland and ordinary the Home Stones are) and kidnapping the village's ruler, Marlenus (Larry Taylor).

In the book, Marlenus is, in fact, the villain of the piece and it is his megalomaniacal schemes to take over Gor that Tarl is opposed to. Here, he's just some old duffer that Tarl has to rescue - aided by Marlenus' daughter Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and other random one-dimensional characters - including an annoying midget called Hup (Nigel Chipps). No, I don't know why, either!

With a two-minute training montage, idiot Tarl is transformed into hero Tarl and the plot devolves rapidly into a run-of-the-mill "lifting the yoke of slavery" storyline - which, again, anyone familiar with Norman's Gor series will appreciate the irony of.

Given the general level of sauciness in the novels, it's bizarre that when Tarl is taken to Sarm's decadent palace of delights, it's more Flash Gordon than Flesh Gordon.

This is possibly the only '80s babes-and-barbarians movie where the women keep all their clothes on!

Then just as you think everything is coming to an end, and you're wondering where Jack Palance - mentioned high in the opening credits - has got to, Jack Palance appears, as another Priest-King, and introduces a whole other storyline which goes nowhere and doesn't appear to amount to anything.

Who could have realised they were actually, rather clumsily, setting up a sequel - Outlaw Of Gor - that was filmed alongside Gor?

While Palance is barely in this movie, mention must be made of the other big name though: Oliver Reed. Clearly the worse for wear from drink in many of his scenes, I hope Oli's towering genius was well-rewarded with alcohol for allowing his name - and talent - to be attached to such a trashy flick as this.

Gor is one of those incredible pieces of cinema that is so changed from its source material you have to wonder why the film-makers didn't go the whole hog and simply make it its own thing. It's not as the Gor books have ever had the same cultural cachet of, say, Lord Of The Rings.

There are only really a couple of minor details that they actually get right, subtle little background details (such as the Gorean drink 'paga'), that it would have far simpler to have changed the character and place names (most of which are already used incorrectly anyway) to something else and dropped the Gor connection entirely.

On the plus side, Gor is full of unintentionally funny moments, crappy fight sequences, no-budget special effects, a plot that meanders all over the place, and a drunk Oliver Reed. And Oliver Reed - drunk or sober - can make anything watchable.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Gemini (Ginny Di)

A new four-track EP from Ginny Di celebrating the anniversary of playing her bard character, Gemini.

HEALTH UPDATE: Germ Ping-Pong

Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay

About a month and a half ago, Rachel returned from a trip to London bearing the nascent germs of a heavy cold, which - in the following week or so - she then passed on to me.

This wiped me out for a couple of weeks, even though I still made it to Biscuit Club (I had to keep up my one hundred percent attendance record, after all).

Then the other day I appeared to have returned the germs to Rachel as she fell victim to a horrendous cough that, earlier this week, she kindly handed back to me.

And this was a nasty cough. I was pretty much bedridden for a couple of days, having lost almost an entire night's sleep, and - while it has been easing this weekend - has still been playing merry havoc with my fragile body.

Constant wracking of my chest and throat has caused extreme aches and pains in weakened muscles still suffering from my sundry other infirmities. This has not been fun. 

Hence, the paucity of posts on the blog in the last few days - and possibly into next week - as I'm not really in the right frame of mind for constructing critiques or framing my thoughts into coherent mini-essays. The simple act of focussing on anything for any period of time is hard when you're constantly being interrupted by coughing fits that shake you to your core.

Hopefully, this will pass soon and 'normal' service can resume. 

It's Swords Versus Sorcery As Conan Faces Dark Gods

Currently scheduled for release on Life Day, Conan: Gold for Dark Gods has just been announced as a new, original, hardback adventure for Robert E Howard's legendary barbarian.

Published by Titan Books, in partnership with Heroic Signatures, the 400-page novel by sword-and-sorcery author Jonathan French, will be part of - although self-contained - Tides of the Tyrant-King, Titan's next big event storyline in its wildly successful Conan The Barbarian comic book line.

The official blurb for the book, now available for pre-order ahead of its November 17 publication, is as follows:

Conan returns to Shadizar the Wicked, the world’s cruellest city, after an old ally is executed for daring to defy the cabal of nobles who rule. He’s come to ensure the tutelage of his dead comrade’s son, and Conan’s first lesson to the boy — take revenge!

The rich masters of Shadizar rule through masks. Finding them is nigh impossible, killing them pointless, for more moneyed men would only step forward. There is only one way to make them pay: rob them blind. To succeed, Conan assembles a crew to infiltrate the Gilded Garden, the fortress-palace where the city’s elite hoard their wealth. If they can find it…

As the crew search for the Gilded Garden, they uncover it contains not only the rulers’ wealth but the sorcerous secrets of their power — ancient pacts with dark gods.

Conan must choose: is he merely a thief chasing coin and vengeance—or something far more dangerous? A rebel willing to topple a regime.

In the meantime, don't forget there's a horror-themed Conan novel, The Brides of Crom, hitting stores next month (earlier than original announced).