It's Time to Reconsider... the Gor films

Editor’s note: In this edition of “It’s Time to Reconsider…,” longtime Ranting Russell contributor Nolk Landen reassesses the two movies made from John Norman’s Gor novels, 1987’s “Gor,” and 1989’s “Outlaw of Gor” (aka “Gor II”).

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Hello Renee –

I got your email assigning me to write about Gor and Outlaw of Gor for the blog’s “It’s Time to Reconsider…” column. I had to cancel a job interview in Lamesa today so I could meet your deadline for the piece. Thanks.

I think I mentioned offhand one night recently, after I’d had five or six margaritas, that none of Urbano Barberini’s dialog in the Gor movies could possibly have been dubbed because his voice was so unbelievably grating, and now somehow I’m an expert, tasked with reappraising the movie and its sequel? Great. I saw the first movie once, upon its release in 1987 when I lived in Dubuque. The boxcar hobo behind me offered up his flask when the lights dimmed and then threw up on himself during the scene where Oliver Reed says, “it will give you the chance of experiencing the delight of giving pain.” My date that night was not impressed. She never talked to me again. The next day my car threw a rod and I was out $1,000. Not that the movie was responsible, it just brings back terrible memories, you know?

At any rate, there’s no “reconsidering” here. You can’t “reconsider” that which warranted no consideration in the first place. There’s a reason Gor has no fans. There’s a reason too that fans of the original novel by John Norman were unhappy with this low budget calamity. In fact, now that I think about it, there’s a reason Gor and its sequel haven’t been released on DVD, much less Blu-ray. No one would buy them. There is no fan base. There is no one dying to play the commentary track and listen to anyone associated with these movies discuss their memories of making it.

Adding insult to injury, this is Rebecca Ferratti post-breast implants. As you’ll recall, Rebecca Ferratti was born in Helena, MT on November 27, 1964, and is of French, Hispanic, and German descent. She was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in June, 1986, and her turn-ons are positive people, busy days, fresh air, nature, and strong-minded men like her dad. If you can get past the ghastly 80s hairdo she had back then, Rebecca was quite an attractive young woman. But then came breast implants, her role as Talena in the Gor movies, and Mötley Crüe videos, and she was forever dead to me.

So there’s nothing to “reconsider.” In fact, if you want a scene that singlehandedly sums up the Gor cinematic experience, look no further than the opening minutes of Gor, when Tarl Cabot (played by Italian hunk Urbano Barberini) is driving through the rain at night, forlorn that his ladylove isn’t joining him for a weekend in the woods. He crashes into a tree, and the explosion (why would there be a small explosion in the first place?) seems to occur a little to the right of his car, almost on the other side of the tree, away from the car itself. Pathetic.

The rest of the movie is like a waking nightmare. Talena’s father, the King, has been kidnapped by the malevolent priest-king Sarn, played here by a how-the-fuck-did-they-get-him-to-appear-in-this-piece-of-garbage? Oliver Reed. Cabot joins forces with Ferratti and her cohorts, and they set out to rescue him. Along the way, their adventures in Gor are few and agonizingly far between. That whole bit where Cabot and co. sit down for some entertainment in the bar-in-a-cave goes on for over ten goddamn minutes. The music is total shit and it’s painful watching Paul Smith slumming here as the vicious Surbus, his role as Bluto in Robert Altman’s Popeye (1980) notwithstanding. So what exactly do you want me to “reconsider?” The Ranting Russell staff loves bar scenes. We discuss them frequently. Have you noticed Gor never comes up?

There’s that scene towards the end of the picture where Cabot is about to brand Talena with a hot iron and instead turns on Oliver Reed and shoves the iron into his gut, triggering the big fight scene, and Reed bellows “SEIZE HIM!” a few times and then finally thrusts both arms into the air and screams “AAAARRRHHHH!!!!!” I mean, that’s one of those things you’re watching that you can’t believe you’re watching. Barberini and Ferratti are totally surrounded by two-dozen men with big, cardboard swords but somehow no one is up to the challenge of stopping them. What is this, fucking amateur hour? Reed does nothing. He stands almost inert, screaming hysterically. It looks like if he moves too quickly his hemorrhoids will explode.

This should be game set and match. After more than an hour of this, you’re thinking, lovely, the climactic battle scene is finally over, so maybe the credits will roll now, and I can go smoke some heroin, but no: endless scenes of escaping through the underground caves, and they’re caught again, so sadistic Oliver Reed – sans any wound to his belly, where Urbano Barberini just shoved a molten-hot poker a few minutes before – can throw them all into a pit of fire. This farcical scene warrants the only complement I can think of for this movie: its requisite throwing-the-good-guys-into-a-pit-of-death-in-a-low-budget-swords-and-sorcery scene is much better than a similar scene in Joe D’Amato’s Ator II: The Blade Master. D’Amato gave us sparse sets and pit of lethargic snakes. Gor director Fritz Kiersch (whom I grudgingly love for Tuff Turf) gives us FIRE in a pleasant, outdoor setting. Kind of gives it a hint of gritty realism.

Outlaw of Gor is currently only available as an episode of Mystery Science Theater, which is very, very appropriate. A standalone release of this movie would be an enormous waste of the studio’s – and the public’s – time. C’mon, this thing was filmed concurrently with Gor, and yet producer/vice-king Harry Alan Towers had the temerity to sack Kiersch, replacing him with John “Bud” Cardos, (Kingdom of the Spiders, The Day Time Ended), for the sequel, thereby throwing a wrench in the works (“The two leads,” Cardos told Daniel Griffith, “they kinda got married to the first director… We had a little differences there for quite a while”). Who’s to say it wouldn’t have been a better picture had Kiersch stayed on?

Pay close attention to Urbano Barberini at the beginning of the movie when he and Russel Savadier first arrive on Gor. Barberini seems oddly out of sorts for someone who made the role of Tarl Cabot his own a few weeks earlier when the first movie filmed. Chalk it up to the directorial switch?

Much ink has been spilled over Savadier’s bizarre behavior during this scene, but it bears repeating: he says “Cabot” 27 times within 2 minutes and 3 seconds. Transcript:

“Cabot. Cabot. Cabot – Cabot, are you ok? Cabot, speak to me. Cabot. Cabot, are you alright? Cabot, what the hell’s going on? Where the hell’s the car? Cabot?” After Cabot explains they’re on the planet Gor: “Listen Cabot, what are you talking about? Where the hell are we? What’s going on here, Cabot? Cabot, will you explain this to me? … Cabot, listen. Listen to me. Cabot, what’s going on here. What happened last night? Did I do something? What’s going on here, Cabot? Cabot, listen, would you speak to me? I wanna go home right now, alright Cabot? What – where are you going? No no, wait there Cabot. Tell me what the hell’s going on here… Cabot… Cabot, would you wait up? … Cabot, wait – hold on. Cabot, can we take a break? Cabot, I – it, it’s getting hot. Have you noticed? It’s getting warm. Cabot. Cabot. Cabot, can – can we just hold it a minute?"

Elsewhere, an extra playing one of the queen’s guards is clearly asleep in one scene, a car rides through the background in another scene, the cast walks around a 7-foot tall statue of an erect penis at one point, and you can see an extra hiding behind the queen’s outdoor throne near the end. Two arch-villain über-clichés are deployed, one by Jack Palance (“That old fool, the elder – he would dare to meddle in my affairs?”), and one by Donna Denton, as the Queen Lara (“Guards! Seize him!”). Remember that Oliver Reed already screamed “Seize him!” in the first Gor movie. But hey, kudos to Ms. Denton for delivering the most memorable line of either movie with considerable gusto: “Get out of here, you – disgusting – WORM.”

Also, both movies boast the worst fight scenes of all time. Truly. We've moved beyond amateur here – I’ve seen better and more realistic choreography on an elementary school playground.

Carl Panzram once wrote, “the only thanks you or your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it…”

This sums up my feelings towards everyone involved with the Gor films perfectly.