One of the more endearingly ridiculous entries in the early 1980s sword and sorcery movie craze was this Italian-Turkish co-production, which plays like an unholy mash-up of QUEST FOR FIRE, CONAN THE BARBARIAN and STAR WARS. Adapted by the legendary Italian slezemeister Antonio Margheriti (a.k.a. Anthony Dawson) from the 1974 Argentine graphic novel HENGA EL CAZADOR, the film began as a four-part Italian miniseries entitled IL MONDO DI YOR in 1983, which was then chopped up to form the 89 minute English dubbed feature YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (together with an Italian language director’s cut that ran 98 minutes). Released by Columbia in the US, the film was one of Margheriti’s biggest-ever successes, although I say the little-seen miniseries version is preferable, being, as Margheriti himself proclaimed, “even more hilarious” than the feature cut.
YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE/IL MONDO DI YOR features Yor, a blonde muscle-head residing in some future/past era in which dinosaurs roam the land. Having no memory of his early life, Yor wears a strange medallion around his neck that’s widely believed (as is Yor himself) to have “descended from the sky.” One day he saves the fetching Ka-Laa from an attack by a Dinosaur and is invited to join her tribe. But said tribe is quickly decimated by the Blue Men, a gang of less evolved blue-skinned hairy dudes led by the evil Ukan, who vastly outnumber Yor and force him, Ka-Laa and her father Pag to flee.
They decide to track down a fabled desert-dwelling woman who’s said to wear a medallion like Yor’s. Along the way they encounter a tentacled sea monster (in the miniseries version), flood a blue men-filled cavern and steal clothing from a dead man (another scene that exists only in the miniseries). Eventually they meet up with the mysterious woman, a blond hottie named Roa who does indeed possess an amulet similar to the one worn by Yor. He ends up rescuing her from a band of mummies, which inflames Ka-Laa’s jealousy; not that Roa is long for this world, as she’s promptly killed by invading Blue Men.
From there Yor and his pals meet up with a beach-dwelling tribe who claim to have been visited by gods from the sky, “gods” who turn up in the form of spaceships that decimate the tribe’s settlements. Yor and his companions elect to continue their journey by sea, only to get caught in a storm that washes Yor up alone on a rocky island. There he’s captured by Darth Vader outfitted androids, who take him into their spaceship and reveal the true facts of his existence: it seems Yor is an alien himself, and is set to be reunited with his ancestors. Yor, however, manages to escape his confines with the help of a band of alien rebels, and the whole thing turns into an extended laser shoot-out from which our heroes eventually escape, with one of the rebels seeing them out with the plea “May they establish a brave new world based on love and tolerance.”
The feature version of YOR is notable primarily for its pacing, which is fast and furious even by traditional Hollywood standards. This has the effect of severely compressing the narrative, with the characters and setting never properly developed (not that there’s all that much to develop) and the whole thing feeling like a series of disconnected episodes in search of a whole (in other words, like precisely what it is).
The miniseries version is more stately paced, not to mention much bloodier (Yor at one point drinks the blood of a just-killed dinosaur and proclaims “your enemy’s blood makes you stronger”), and contains a number of plot points and set-pieces that were excised from the feature version (such as the spectacle of Yor holding the corpse of Roa and shouting “Why God, why?”). It suffers, however, from an obnoxiously noisy and insistent score that never lets up, even in the quiet scenes (a score that was wisely toned down in the feature version).
One thing that registers quite strongly in both versions is the craggy Turkish scenery, which looks genuinely otherworldly. Also benefitting both versions is the theme song “Yor’s World,” which is surprisingly catchy.
Beyond that we have the special effects, pulled off by Margheriti and his son Edoardo, which aren’t bad considering the scrappy nature of the production. About the performances of Reb Brown (of the TV version of CAPTAIN AMERICA) as Yor, Corinne Clery as Ka-Laa and Luciano Pigozzi as Pag (to say nothing of the many supporting players, such as Aytekin Akkaya as Ukan, who Brown on his Blu-ray audio commentary dubs a “really fine actor”) there’s not much to say, although great acting really isn’t something one can reasonably expect from a film like this. YOR does at least deliver the type of bad movie fun we can reasonably expect, and for that reason gets a recommendation, the miniseries version in particular.
Vital Statistics
YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE (IL MONDO DI YOR)
Diamant Film/RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana/Columbia Pictures
Director: “Anthony Dawson” (Antonio Margheriti)
Producer: Michele Masala
Screenplay: Robert Bailey, Antonio Margheriti
(Based on a graphic novel by Juan Zanotto, Ray Collins)
Cinematography: Marcello Masiocchi
Editing: Alberto Moriani, “Jorge Serrallonga” (Giorgio Serrallonga)
Cast: Reb Brown, Corinne Clery, John Steiner, Carole Andre, Luciano Pigozzi, Ayshe Gul, Aytekin Akkaya, Claudia Rocchi, Sergio Nicolai, Ludovico Dello Jojo