Because let's face it, in the cinematic world of cavemen fighting dinosaurs--which paleontologists never tire of reminding us never happened--the prehistoric Hammer movies of the 60s, early 70s, like ONE MILLION BC and PREHISTORIC WOMEN can get stodgy and po-faced, filling the minutes with too much patriarchal grunting and head-butting and far too little stop-motion monsters and nowhere near enough lusciously tanned limbs. On the other side of the spectrum are the Wynorskis and Olen Rays, camp fests with ridiculous names and a camera that zooms up to (fake) cleavage like a snarky eighth grader. Dude, I get it. That's your demographic. Ugh.
What I mean is, there has to be an in-between. A movie that won't embarrass us when real live girls are in the room, but a movie that also won't bum us out with too much male pantomime over patriarchal stick-passing. This isn't 1984 anymore, and we are not newly-laid eleventh graders turning our house into an orgy den of hooky-playing couples while mom and dad are each at work. We grown but if we want male jostling for power we'll frickin' watch SUCCESSION.
F-that, bro. YOR? Forget about it. "Dawson" knows what we need, and how to present it in such a way as we're not too embarrassed to love it.
The moment the "De Angelis'" rock opera anthem theme song churns to life and begins its shriek into the theme song ether: "He is a man from the future / a man from yesterday / his game is destiny!" you start making room in your desert island disc stash.Proud and we desireThe English is weird but the intent is universal 80s rock star badass. Barely have the opening theme's last chords ended when Yor (Reb "the real Captain America" Brown) has already killed a life-size papier mache triceratops/stegosaurus combination monster in vivid, up-close battle. It's one of the best, most realistic struggles between man and dinosaur ever, as he's right in there, stabbing away in the eyes and head as the beast slowly dies, blood dripping down, its eyes wild with fear and fury. We feel complex emotions about since it's a stegosaurus and thus a plant eater, merely trying to protect its young cub, which has been trapped by two cave persons. But hey, it's a tough world, so we have to get used to it so you don't feel too surprised when you're eaten. At least Yor's kill of the big beast feeds the whole village and he's welcomed as an honored guest. They dance around licentiously and party in ways that grunting bunch of neanderthals in ONE MILLION BC never would. Wooo! Yor shouts. And you feel he's having a good time, genuinely. And it's terrific because hey, it's rare.
He's never seen the sun!
He's always on the run!
The list goes on and on.
It's clear though he doesn't quite fit, because, you see, he's blonde and what's that strange medallion on his neck? He doesn't remember. He's got some weird past thingee he has to find out about. But for moment - Woo! Some celebratory dancing, crazy drumming, and licentious bonding with the statuesque if slightly weatherbeaten Corinne Clery as Kalaa (!), and we're already feeling the love.
But that can't last. Two minutes later the tribe is attacked by giant hulking ape men, the leader of whom is lusting after Kalaa. Since Yor happens to be single and she's done the dance to woo him, it's clear they are meant for mating so it comes as a shock when he spirits her off before they even have a moment to copulate. He must rescue her, and does so in a very familiar looking cave structure via a long chase and battle that would be the climax in any other movie but here is just the first in a long line of wild rescues to come. Woo! He rides into their midst, hang gliding on a bat monster's stiffened corpse! If you're not down for this trip by now, stick your hand in the Aboria tree of manliness and see if the sting is as painful as they say. Cuz honey, you're nuts. WoO!
Kalaa's guardian is the trusty Pag (Luciano "Italian Peter Lorre" Pigozzi) who ambles along on the adventures, rounding out their new wandering threesome. Over desert hill and rolling cliff they wander, meeting new faces all the time, and if the goddess of fire worshipping lepers Roa (the comely and overly-made-up Aysha Gul) turns out to be a real hottie, if you'll forgive the expression and if, like Yor, she thought she was the only blonde with a round medallion in the world, then nature must take it's course. Paag reminds Kalaa that in this realm a man may take many wives (Woo!). This is Flash Gordon if Flash wasn't such a prude with Aura, Ming's sexy daughter, out of loyalty to Dale, a jealous Earth girl whom he literally just met only hours beforehand. Don't you hate when chick's do that? Not here. Yor's no prude, bro, and Kalaa may get mad but she's no uppity cockblocker. This is Italy, or Israel, or somewhere sex isn't for lewd snickering or indignant eye rolls. it's just a thing that happens and is ver-a sexy.
There will be other women in Yor's life before it's all over. Carol André shows up in the third act, on the mysterious island where lasers and complex machinery rule the day. And my favorite, the beguiling Marina Rocchi, whom Yor saves from a (again admirably life-size) dimetrodon.One thing that stands out, that really makes this a latent beloved film of mine: the monsters here are very much in their natural element. In a lot of the stop motion dinosaur action we get via Harryhausen, for example, can err on the side of the science fair diorama: we see dinosaurs fight and hang out in the midst of barren desert, i.e. how their habitat looks now, all these millions of years later, making us wonder how they can possibly survive with no vegetation or cover (but making it easy to appreciate Harryhausen's animation.) In YOR, the beasts emerge from caves and jungle and it's hard to tell where they end and their surroundings begin. Their natural camouflage means they strike from wthin deep thickets, which seems much more realistic to the setting, with Yor and Kala climbing all over these giant (life-size) heads, hacking away, the beasts dying but slowly, from loss of blood, savagely stabbed again and agin in soft tissue areas. We're allowed to feel mixed emotions once the look in their big saurian eyes changes from rage to fear and then then the flesh of the dead beasts are eaten at big celebratory feasts, so it's OK. That's just how it is.
Man, what a film. Where has it been all these years? I remember the commercial for YOR! One Saturday morning or late Friday night in the 80s, watching local TV, while I was 16 (?), and thinking damn - this is Conan with lasers, dinosaurs and Reb Brown hang gliding off a dead bat creature into action against a bunch of ape things, looking kind of like the Marvel character Ka-Zar. I mean, I could tell it was pretty low budget, but its imagination and gonzo gumption was clear. We who loved bad sci-fi and dinosaur movies could hardly believe our luck at what was to come! Yet we never heard from YOR again until it showed up on Amazon streaming 30 years later.
I promptly bought it--sight unseen--for $10 or whatever. It was worth the wait and the money just to have it on my iPad, ready to bring to Hell or jury duty.
Hell, 30 or so years isn't too long and ten bucks ain't too high (the Blu-ray is out now. I bought it for my brother last X-mas and he fell asleep within five minutes!)
Itn short, YOR - it's time has come. If you love Conan, Flash Gordon, and even--despite its dour tone--the 1966 remake of One Million BC, as much as I do... if you sit around wishing there were Blu-rays of 1982's Sword and the Sorcerer (only avail. with a Rifftrax on a shitty dupe) and 1983's Hearts and Armor, well, maybe you're a nostalgic completist who may be waiting awhile. In the meantime, if someone tries to fob some hyper-banal mainstream imitations like Ladyhawke or Legend off on you instead... you know what to do.
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| Competition of Kalaa (from top); Marina Rocchi, Aysha Gul, Carol Andre |
A special shout to Reb Brown as Yor! He would have been perfect as Flash Gordon, as he lacks the kind of self-conscious aww-shucksitude apparent in Sam Jones' twinkly eyes. Not that that film isn't the best or that we don't all love Sam Jones, but Reb Brown would have crushed it. Naive as he is, Brown is acing clearly from the heart. There's not a gram of self-consciousness in him. I dig that he also encourages those he meets to drink the blood of the slain triceratops in a dim nod to Siegfried. "Drinking the blood of your enemy gives you their power." Though that's the first and last time he does so, it's just one of the fantastic little details Marghareti peppers the film with. Not all his films hit the mark but over the years he sure has given us a still under-appreciated canon of energetic termite art. Woo! Proud and we desire! Now more than ever, the man from the future is the man from yesterday.
