“The blood of your enemy makes you stronger. Drink!”

Justin’s rating: My loincloth is nowhere as concealing, alas

Justin’s review: If you’re going to be a hunter from the future who’s stuck in caveman times, the least you can do is make the best of a bad situation. For Yor (Reb Brown), his outlet of positivity is a whole lot of jogging, dinosaur killing, and cheerleading. He’s easily the most upbeat swords-and-sorcery protagonist I’ve ever encountered, even with a giant blonde wig weighing him down.

Yor’s itinerant lifestyle finds purpose when he makes googly eyes at a villager named Kalaa (Corinne Cléry) and hears about someone out in the desert who has the same strange medallion that he has. There are also a whole lot of blue-skinned cavemen serving as our hairy Smurf cannon fodder as general questing progresses.

If the very title of this movie didn’t spoil it for you, I’m about to reveal the big twist here: Yor: The Hunter from the Future is, um, set in the future. We find out that Yor and people like him are primitive descendants of survivors of a nuclear holocaust (which, I guess, brought dinosaurs back somehow?). But there are also advanced survivors who have laser guns, androids, and spaceships, so Yor finds himself at a slight disadvantage with only a crusty loincloth and a fire sword (don’t call it a lightsaber!) at his disposal.

But don’t count out that infectious grin — or can-do attitude!

With brutal (for the early ’80s, I guess) savage melee on one hand and high-tech gizmos on the other, Yor is the best caveman-meets-the-future story since the Flintstones hung out with the Jetsons that one time.

Yor may not look quite like your swole gym rat, but he’s a likable enough doof with enough enthusiasm to carry him through to victory. He does get entangled in a love triangle for a while as he lugs around two women competing for his wig’s attention, but that’s soon over. And whenever he needs a boost of encouragement, the soundtrack comes on with a hair metal band shrieking,

“Yor’s world, he’s the man! Yor’s world, he’s the man! Yor’s world!”

So this Italian production ends up being “Conan the Barbarian meets Darth Vader,” and you know what? That automatically makes this more interesting than most swords-and-sorcery flicks I’ve subjected myself to. The genre blend packs enough interesting ideas and storybeats into 90 minutes to keep my attention from wavering. It’s surely full of bad acting, but I tend to be very forgiving when there’s a lot of ambition on display. Give me a grinning goon riding a dead bat as a hang glider over another bland Marvel superhero movie any day!

Intermission!

• Yor is based on a ’70s comic book from Argentinia and was initially made as a four-part TV series. Those four hours were edited down to make this flick.
• Oh dig that synthy ’80s pop theme song!
• Deserts are made to jog randomly through
• RANDOM DINOSAUR ATTACK!
• If you kill a dino, you have to drink its blood and then share it with others
• That snake moat is kind of pathetic
• Dead bats make for good impromptu hang gliders
• Torches are more effective when they’re on a Y branch
• Roa has seriously bushy eyebrows
• Who would’ve thought that Yor could beat up lepers with a fire sword?
• That raft trip looks a lot of fun
• “Dreams are only dreams.”
• Always a smart idea to found your village on the beach in defiance of high tide
• How many women is this movie going to throw at Yor? It’s up to three already!
• About time this movie had some random laser fire!
• Yor on radios: “DAMN TALKING BOX!”
• Android heads come off real easy with the smack of a rock
• Overlord sure loves giving speeches to his minions
• All evil bases have a mirror maze
• And for you Star Wars fans, now a swing across a deep techno-pit
• Overlord has an Iron Man repulsor hand
• When you started this movie, did you think it would end with a spaceship flying through a giant fireball?