SEQUEL OF GOR: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

In my last blog post I changed a bulb and watched the Gor film. At double speed. This was an improvement. In a stunning development, Jack Palance turned up at the end of that movie extravaganza and promised a sequel.
   Who in their right fucking mind was going to fund a sequel? Ah. Distributed by the Cannon people. Fired from a big gun, this movie missed. It’s certainly a skill, missing the planet you are on.
   But we are not on our planet. No. We’ve been transported to the world of Gor. This movie contains a montage of the previous film at the start. By fuck, if I’d known that I’d have skipped the first fucking film.
   Our hero, Carl. Whoops. Tarl Cabot. Damn it. I’d have saved time and effort by reading Almuric comic books instead. Ironhand Esau Cairn would wipe the floor with Carl. Whoops. Tarl Cabot. On with the story…
   The story is a two-word script. When characters aren’t shouting Cabot! they are yelling Guards! Our hero…he isn’t…our hero Cabot is summoned back to Gor by his flashing magic ring. It is most precious to him. That was a lie.
   Landing in the same dead stretch of desert as before, he arrives with a new sidekick: Sleazy. He and Sleazy retread the original movie. No, seriously. Practically fucking nothing happens across 90-odd minutes of sand.
   Insert STAR WARS quote about sand here. Thank me later.
   What’s new in town? Fucking nothing. There’s a warning flash. OZONE LAYER DEPLETED. This pops up every time we encounter the leading lady, here relegated to a supporting role, whose hairspray-drenched mane threatens to have a wholly separate career.
   Cabot has been summoned arbitrarily. There’s no real rush for him to be here, except as a sequel cash-in. Jack Palance looks as though he’s had teeth pulled to star in this movie. I’m sure he had better times before, and he’d have better times ahead.
   But in this film, he looks as though he’s as happy as a man having his teeth pulled one by one between takes. Maybe two by two. Who knows? The best thing to say about Palance’s performance is that he gets to wear a funny hat. No. Really. That’s all I’ve got here, and that’s pretty weak gravy as it stands.
   Gor is a free land. Except where people aren’t free. We see the same scenes again in this movie. No, I’m not talking about the flashback to original footage. After that, we pretty much retread the original God-awful production.
   Our hero meets people from the first film. Not Oliver Reed. He fell to his death. But a half-hearted script could have brought him back and no one would’ve cared. Certainly not Ollie. There’s a king. And his evil queen. Blah-de-blah. The end. Roll credits.
   The evil queen takes on the leading lady status here. She hams it up. That’s all you can do. Cabot’s buddy Sleazy makes moves on the queen and she uses Sleazy to prove she was elsewhere when the king was mysteriously stabbed.
   We have this side-action going on with Jack Palance doing chemistry lessons for pay. The drink he concocts is irrelevant. What’s important? The knife. This is what the queen stabs her husband with. Cue the rest of the script.
   Guards!
   The king is dead. Long live the queen, I guess. (It’s not that kind of movie. Spoiler for the end of the film. She’ll never play piano again.) Someone killed the king. Was it Sarge? Rosemary the telephone operator? Quick, get Scoob and the gang to investigate.
   Yes. Someone killed the king. We’re all very sad, here in movie land. But it wasn’t the queen. No. Sleazy stands up for her. She was with him. If you catch his drift.
   Right. So. The queen couldn’t be a murderer. She was too busy committing adultery. Got it. Checks out. Would stand up in court. Seems legit. I’d had enough of Sleazy when he and his atrocious dialogue entered the start of the film like a virus entering a bloodstream. Maybe even a human bloodstream.
   But. I’d really had enough of him by now. He’s the new thing in the story. And he shouldn’t be a thing. Have you seen the Lethal Weapon movies, with Leo Getz? Stop trying to make him a thing.
   What about MARVEL products featuring Martin Freeman and Julia Louise-Dreyfus? Stop trying to make them a thing. Joe Pesci and those two, in certain films. In other things, I have no problem with these people.
   We revisit the first Gor film, in spirit. (Must we?) There’s a dance number. And the leading lady from the first movie must get into a bitchy fight with a warrior woman, all over again. And then another fight, after that.
   Cabot, meanwhile, must go on the run. Into the beige wastelands. Our queen, evil as ever, wants Cabot brought back alive. She’s sent Sleazy off to the dungeon. Well, he is in leather. And the queen decides to send a minion to hunt Cabot down.
   All of this goes fucking nowhere. Cabot gets into the usual low-rent fights you’ve grown accustomed to in this vague update of a sword-and-sandal movie. The difference is the soundtrack. Needs more cowbell.
   Cabot almost dies of thirst and then almost dies of quenching his thirst. The assassin appears out of nowhere after zero dramatic build-up whatsoever, and Cabot is captured. I’ve no intention of relaying events in chronological order. If I did that, one of my kidneys would rebel, force itself up through my torso into my throat, and throttle my tongue.
   Jack Palance seems to have the same contract Oliver Reed had. Spread a few minutes of performing across the whole movie. The evil queen is having the most fun out of an entire cast not having terribly much fun.
   Cabot is captured. Oh no. He’s going to be taken before the queen and shouted at, I suppose, if she wants him alive for breeding purposes or as a contract bridge partner. What is the point of this film?
   Jack Palance – it doesn’t matter what his character’s name is – Jack, he offers Tarl Cabot a deal. Just go home. But that’s fucking rubbish. So is the end of this movie. It looks like Jack Palance is planning to poison the evil queen. But she stabs him first.
   And then. The queen dies. Slain by her own assassin, who throws his big spear at her. Carl Tabot does fuck-all except shout excitedly from the sidelines. Wait, that isn’t his fucking name. Fuck it. His pal Sleazy ends up back in the real world, and is taken away by the police for having the audacity to appear in this sewer of a sequel.
   I’m not judging you if you like the film – I simply don’t have the energy for that. Did I not mention the title of the movie? Outlaw of Gor. It’s the script that’s the real outlaw here. Film in sand. Check. Use costumes from the earlier production? Bring back the same faces. Can you cut the budget?
   That’s twice, now. I’ve watched two films in the same so-called setting. At double speed. Nothing happens. The same dance numbers and gladiator girl combat. Everyone in bikinis. Not Jack Palance. Wander, lost, in the landscape. You could have driven a bus behind the characters, and no one would have noticed the mistake. Audience would just go with the idea that the bus driver discovered another magic ring.
   Shame there wasn’t a third movie. No, I lied. What would a third movie be about? Let me take a wild guess. Going by production timelines, I’m guessing Gor III would have gone straight to video in 1991.
   So we’d have Liam Neeson as the villain for five minutes. Carl. Damn it to fuck. Tarl. This fucking guy. Tarl Cabot is hanging around Downtown Sand Dune Number Six and he encounters a mysterious sorcerer.
   It’s Wade Webley. A stockbroker who…yes, evil stockbroker. Is there any other kind? A stockbroker who has a glowing ring. You’re making your own jokes up, now. He has found his way to Gor, and likes what he sees.
   Lots of women in bikinis.
   He reveals that he’s not a sorcerer. Just a guy armed with the technology of another world. His evil plan is to sell shares in the planet Gor and then foreclose on the widow’s mortgage, taking control of the beige land.
   Carl Tabot™ stops him with a swift sword to the kidneys. This takes up the last ten minutes of the film. In the first half hour, there’ll be a dance-off, two bikini battles, and Jack Palance hiding behind the palace curtains.
   Palance gets the same amount of time as Oliver Reed had, but it’s a minute more than the span allotted to Liam Neeson – barely recognisable in a state-of-the-art prosthetic mask…made from a Hallowe’en mask. It’s Captain Kirk’s face, spray-painted gold.
   We witness oodles of hairspray. Characters are lost in the desert. They reach the sea, and find Charlton Heston laughing as he walks back along the beach. Liam remarks that the production reminds him of Krull, without the budget. Or Excalibur without the knights.
   My work here is, just like the franchise, mercifully done.