Yor: The Hunter from the Future

• Directed by Antonio Margheriti (using Anthony M. Dawson)
• February 10, 1983
• Based on the Argentinian comic Yor the Hunter

A brave warrior must confront his origins on a strange and seemingly prehistoric world.

With the success of Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian, film studios both big and small, foreign and domestic began looking for properties they could use to create knock offs or just simply tap in some way into the popularity of those two films. Enter Yor: The Hunter from the Future which is as much fantasy as it is science fiction.

There is just something cheesy and cheap yet charming about this whole movie. The story makes one giant leap of logic after another as our hero Yor (Reb Brown) must learn his mysterious origins as well as do a very poor job of saving the tribe of his newly discovered friends from destruction at the hands of some vaguely defined evil cavepeople.

Our hero Yor ventures around with the love is life Kala (Corinne “I was in Moonraker” Cléry) who he only meets in the first few minutes of the film and her adoptive father Pag (Luciano Pigozzi as Alan Collins) who looks disturbingly like Jack Elam. For years I thought it really was Jack Elam. But then again for years I didn’t realize this was dubbed. 

Our villain Overlord (John Steiner) looks to be vaguely modeled off of the Emperor from Jedi with his android minions designed to look like some bastard version of Darth Vader as well as Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.

Overlord plans to re-populate the Earth with an android/human hybrid that requires Yor who suddenly becomes the perfect human specimen and Kala who also becomes the same to mate with/inseminate the androids. I’m not sure anyone thought this through, but sex dolls can’t have babies and that’s what an android would be in this instance.

Apparently this film despite having a triceratops in the opener is set in the future after what appears to be a nuclear war. That is one of the more poorly communicated aspects of this film. It only becomes known in any form in the closing of the movie via heavy exposition. Before that this could be some generic fantasy world.

What special effects there are, from the triceratops to the energy blast, are questionable at best. In one scene Yor swings across a great chasm like Luke Skywalker across the Death Star chasm and it looks like a doll on a string. The flying vehicle that is clearly framed at the end of the film looks like a glider of some type that was tossed and filmed. The most effective effect is the practical effect of the triceratops. It loses a little luster when they show the legs moving but beyond that it’s rather good looking. 

The costuming is rather generic. There is nothing too special about what they give us. The primitive barbarians that we encounter are incredibly well groomed. The costumes look like the kind you would find at your finer Halloween costume shops. And Yor’s city at the end. For a civilization filled with people it looks significantly underpopulated.

The dubbing in Yor: The Hunter from the Future is amazing. For the most part unless you’ve seen this film multiple times as I have you won’t realize just how many actors have their dialogue redone in English. It’s rather impressive. Normally it leaps out on a first viewing but not here.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future is one of many Italian knockoffs that were made cheaply and entered American entertainment. It’s campy and goofy and just fun. This is a Grade Z movie that those behind it put their best forward foot forward in making. While the story somehow gets from Point A to Point Z in a borderline nonsensical way it manages to be silly fun.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future is a guilty pleasure of mine. As I said it’s pure fun. It’s more reminiscent of a 50s science-fiction film then it is something post Star Wars. It’s more Teenage Caveman 1958 than it is Conan the Barbarian. It is yet another cinematic equivalent of the late-night frozen burrito. It goes down great and hits the spot, but you feel bad afterwards for doing it but do it again you will.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future is pure fun from start to finish. It is certainly no masterpiece and not for everybody. As cult films go it is weaker than most. For fans of schlock I say give it a look. The general viewer can just keep moving.