Yor: The Hunter From the Future

Yor: The Hunter from the Future

Italy, 1983

Director – Antonio Margheriti

RCA/Columbia Home Entertainment, VHS, 1983

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes 

We first posted Yor's nifty tab/flap RCA box way back HERE, but it seemed time to give it a more thorough treatment and by chance, our friends over at Ed's Pop Culture Shack did the same thing....

Not content merely to skim the profits off the still cooling carcass of the sword and sandal cum caveman cycle, Italian director Anthony M. Dawson or Antonio Margheriti as he was sometimes known, decided to weave his ridiculous half-baked story arc into another popular genre, this one culled from the tattered edges of an epic space opera franchise that would later be consumed by a giant evil mouse.



Utilizing the last-minute-generic change of heart for which the Italians held a peculiar affection, Dawson does his countryman and contemporary Bruno Mattei one better by filming a kind of what-if version of Planet of the Apes in which Taylor hits his head during the crash and wanders the planet searching for his identity. (The opening scenes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes suggest that this is precisely what happened since the first film.) Of course, its nearly twenty years and four sequels late, but so were Yor’s special effects, resembling more the homemade, rubber-bat stylings of another late sixties sci-fi television franchise than anything out of the relatively more technological 80’s.


But that’s par for the course with Yor. Even the man behind the mullet-wig, Reb Brown himself was a couple of decades out of step, detouring through European cinema just like Bronson, Eastwood and others did when jobs were scarce in the States. Again though, that was in the late sixties, and those guys had comebacks in the 70's and 80’s when tough-guys were in style along with the president. So those jobs weren’t scarce in the 80’s, Reb just never had what it took to be a tough guy. He’s hard not to love as the scenery-chewing whatever he’s playing, but in spite of his paucity of emotion, he’s simply too cuddly to cut it. His jaunt across the screen as Captain America in the 70’s being perhaps his most memorable domestic role, was nevertheless laughable because the guy lacked the steely ex-paratrooper chutzpa that the character demanded. That’s probably why they deliberately wrote him as the son of the original Captain; plausible deniability.

Yep, its Luciano Pigozzi, the old guy from ExY3K

So too is Reb as Yor, way, and I mean waaaaaaayyyyyyy behind the times. Ostensibly a caveman in the Fiction-olithic era, the film opens with a bang, but quickly devolves into a monotonous whine. By the end we discover that indeed, like its better known simian predecessor, Yor’s planet shared the same fate, and a present that looks like the past is actually a dystopian, post-nuke future. By now, precisely thirty years after Yor’s release in the States it would be superfluous to describe or validate the film, nor do I feel masochistic enough to try. Others have already done so, and better. People familiar with the type of product Margheriti produces, Last Hunter, Cannibal Apocalypse, will not be surprised by Yor’s rambling, sleep-inducing middle act. For the blissfully ignorant in search of something so-bad-it’s-good (as I was, many years ago when I found Yor,) it should be noted that euphemism is highly subjective. Legendary among fans of bad and Italian and particularly bad-Italian, which is a distinct flavor, Yor represents a particular depth of ridiculously inept filmmaking. I can think of other shitty movies that I enjoy more, but few that try so hard.

This French poster art comes courtesy of www.golobthehumanoid.com. I could be wrong, but it looks very much as if it was painted by master comics artist Philippe Druillet.

Other image credits from top:

That's my VHS box

She Blogged by Night

University of Alaska Southeast

Naturalistic, Uncanny Marvelous

 

Yorythmics: Sweet Hunter From the Video Future

What do Yor The Hunter From the Future and the Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams the Video Album have in common?

Why, those crazy tab-boxes from RCA/Columbia Home Video of course!
Allow me to wax nerdy for a second; these boxes are super cool, even more so than those crazy double-flap boxes that VCII was putting out in the early 80's. What can I say, I like technical packaging. I also like that the brand was identified by the similar package design. This was typical of the period when home video was still a new concept and studios wanted people to associate a certain level of quality with their brand. Branding and trademarking took place in packaged food products in the late 1800's in exactly the same way. Of course, when home video took off they realized it was a big waste of money to have to make thousands of fancy die-cut boxes like this and everybody switched to the standard single flap-top/open bottom. And who said the future would be better?

Yor The Hunter From The Future

Italy - 1983

Director - Antonio Margheritti

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

Eurithmics: Sweet Dreams The Video Album

United Kingdom - 1983

Director - Derek Burbidge

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 2 minutes

Cannibal Apocalypse

A nice VHS cover from It's Only A Movie(.co.uk).

Cannibal Apocalypse

Italy - 1980

Director - Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M Dawson)

Various distributors, various dates, various formats, but pretty much gone.

Run Time approx. 1 hour, 36 min. (according to IMDB)

Don't fault me for posting on this movie just because it had a DVD release (which is now out of print I gather). I'm bringing it up so that I can gather a bunch of VHS and poster images in one place and because I'm going to reference this film in an upcoming write-up. One of the reasons I've never done full writeups for movies like this is because they are well known and popular, cult-classics if you will. Plenty of people have written/spoken about these high-profile exploitation films. I still love 'em, but it doesn't give you any new information to hear me ramble. In any case...

Though he's had a long string of exploitation successes, for my tastes, Antonio Margheriti really hit home with this Cannibal Apocalypse. A bunch of soldiers in Vietnam (check) are held in tiger cages and starved. Finally they are fed human flesh (check) which they consume eagerly, infecting themselves with some kind of spreadable zombie/cannibalism disease, whether physical or psychological, it doesn't matter, they just do. Rescued by John Saxon (check) and some haphazard gunfire and explosions (check) they return to the States and start killing and eating people (check) while John Saxon ogles his underage neighbor (check). Whew.
Talk about exploitation, I can think of few instances in which genre cliche's are combined with such recklessly brilliant abandon, and spearheaded by John 'effing Saxon. This is one of the reasons why Margheriti is a genius, he doesn't care if it makes logical sense or it fits in (even in a hypothetical "film" world).
Every November I celebrate American Thanksgiving (the Canadians have one too) by giving thanks for the worlds largest as-yet untapped food-source; people. Writing this has convinced me which film to start off this year's celebration.

Thanks to the various sites from whom I borrowed the following images.

Another VHS cover, this time from Antionio Margheriti.com

This is the version I have on DVD, but I got the cover scan from It's Only A Movie(.co.uk).

Poster image from Honors Zombie.

Alternate titled poster from Friki Tu Puta Madre.

A third poster I got from Wrong Side of the Art.

And hey, why not, a one sheet from Grindhouse Database

The Last Hunter

The Last Hunter

Italy - 1980

Director – Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony M. Dawson)

Vestron Video, 1985, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 37 min.

Sometime near the end of the American Vietnam War, in a Saigon strip club a bunch of burnout ‘Nam rats lounge about while local girls wearing next to nothing gyrate lazily. David Warbeck, crustiest of those present, swings in his hammock, smoking and staring into space. When a drunk tries to intimidate him into a confrontation, Warbecks ethereal bitterness and detatchment prove unable to target, and the drunk moves on to the other stereotype, Steve. High strung and high as a kite Steve is more than willing to fulfill the batshit crazy role, and blasts the drunk guy in the face with a pistol before giving himself the same treatment.


During the credits, Warbeck boards a Huey and heads to a hot drop zone where he leaps solo from the chopper armed only with a rifle and a rucksack.Landing in a river he is soon picked up by a small liason team of boonie-rats including Tisa Farrow (fresh from Zombi 2), as a foreign correspondent. Trekking toward Warbecks first rendezvous point the tiny team stumbles repeatedly into multiple ‘Nam movie cliché’s from booby traps to the ubiquitous child-with-grenade trick in a village which the team subsequently reduces to splinters with small arms fire along with said inhabitants. Later that night, much to Warbeck’s disintrest Tisa squeezes out some back-story. He on the other hand can merely fever-dream flashback his motivations –both military and moral (i.e. the plot we've been waiting for) - in a cold sweat, ensuring that the bleeding-heart mothering Tisa will “ironically” fall for the distant wounded warrior.


Arriving at their destination the team discovers another bitter recalcitrant commander and a bunch of stoned demoralized and disheveled loony-tunes GI’s. Warbeck justifies their near-raping of Tisa with the old it’s OK, the war made ‘em do it, it’s not their fault excuse. Just then, the cave is infiltrated by VC and Warbeck easily flips the off the cuff mass-killing switch back on again. He and his surviving team members escape and leap onto a passing boat loaded with other stoned GI’s and shoot them all. Only Warbeck escapes unwounded and returns to the jungle where he is captured and complains bitterly when he ends up being the recipient of strangely familiar mistreatment.

Since director Margheriti made Cannibal Apocalypse the same year, it’s a bit disappointing that Last Hunter is merely typical Italian knockoff trash. Warbeck and Farrow give it some credibility but the plot itself is a lifted and degraded mix of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The addition of some effective gore and the subtraction of some logical continuity and all moral message from its influences merely reinforces its base, reactionary, um… ‘Namsploitation.