Yor, The Hunter From The Future

Look, I’m not going to argue that YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, which Columbia astonishingly released on over 1400 screens in the summer of 1983 (number one film that weekend: Rodney Dangerfield’s EASY MONEY!), fits any textbook definition of “good movie.” I will argue, however, that if you don’t enjoy every warped frame of YOR, you may have not a drop of joy running through your veins.

Filmed in Turkey (exteriors) and Rome (interiors) by director Antonio Margheriti, whose forays into science fiction run the gamut from ASSIGNMENT: OUTER SPACE to WILD, WILD PLANET (part of his Gamma One series for MGM) and TREASURE ISLAND IN OUTER SPACE (!), YOR was originally a four-part miniseries made for Italian television. Columbia trimmed it to 88 minutes and put it in theaters the same week Universal premiered METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN! (YOR finished seventh at the box office opening weekend, METALSTORM eighth.)

Blond beefcake Reb Brown, then known best for playing Marvel Comics’ Captain America in two television movies, stars as the rugged Yor, a stone axe his only possession. While roaming the desert, he encounters middle-aged Pag (Luciano Pigozzi) and his scrumptious ward Kala (MOONRAKER’s Corinne Clery) as they are being attacked by a dinosaur. Yor fights the creature, kills it, chugs its blood, and becomes Pag and Kala’s protector, as they continue their journey together.

As a cut-down version of an (approximate) four-hour piece, YOR moves quickly like a Republic serial, putting its characters in one dangerous mess after another. Barbarians with blue skin whose leader sits on a skull-like throne, a giant bat that Yor uses as a hang glider (!), a snake pit, mummies and their lovely non-mummy queen (Ayshe Gul)...and robots with lasers.

Yes, I mean, the title gives it away, so why hide it? YOR is not set in the prehistoric past, but in a post-apocalyptic future. Yor is not Yor, but Galahad, who survived a spaceship crash and grew up alone in the wilderness. Obviously inspired as much by STAR WARS as by CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Margheriti eventually goes full sci-fi, introducing John Steiner (TENEBRAE) as the Overload, a Darth Vader imitator who plans to use his robot army to conquer the burned-out ball that is now Earth. Where there is an evil space overlord, there will be rebels, so Yor joins up and adapts quickly to laser guns, matter transporters, and spaceships.

Of course, the story doesn’t make a lot of sense (how could dinosaurs exist in the future?), even if the big twist comes as a pleasant surprise (the title notwithstanding). Bad movies are often just as entertaining — even more so — than good ones, and YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE is as entertaining as they come. It moves quickly and is never boring. From the five-and-dime wigs to the loopy dialogue (“Stupid talking box!”) to Steiner’s creepy hamming as the black-armored space heavy to the delirious theme song (“Yor’s world!/He’s the man!”) composed by brothers Guido and Maurizio de Angelis, nothing in YOR is competent, yet everything somehow comes together.