1987 fantasy movie
Rating: 4/20 (Fred: 7/20; Libby: 14/20; Carrie: 5/20; Ozzy: fell asleep, though he was saying that he didn't think this was a bad movie)
Plot: After his girlfriend breaks up with him, a college professor uses a magic ring to transport to the titular planet where he teams up with some villagers who just had their ugly pink crystal stolen by an evil dictator.
Despite this being a rather titillating PG movie with more than its fair share of taint (Libby's observation) and haunch action, this is a pretty dull movie. I think it might have more walking-per-square-inch than a Hobbit movie, and that, friends, is a great deal of walking. It's really a movie about walking, interrupted with some of the most poorly choreographed swordfights you'll ever see and some scantily-clad women wrestling around. Those fight scenes make it seem like everybody's afraid of hurting each other. Oh, and there's some dancing, and although it's choreographed slightly better than the fight scenes, it really just takes up time. This barely has a plot at all, and the most important things that happen would probably take up about seven minutes of movie time. I didn't really like the main characters very much. I had trouble getting past the main character's name: Tarl. The gal traveling with him on Gor is shapely enough and has big 80's hair just like I like. Fitting right in with that decade is the hair of another member of the posse whom my friends and I just called Mullet. And there's an old guy. Oh, and a little fellow named Hup pokes into the thing about midway through. I figured I'd see his name in the credits playing little fellows in other 80's fantasy classics, but he's only in this movie and the sequel. Apparently, Hup didn't want to mess around with anything that wasn't Gor. Usually, when I don't like the good guys, I can root for the bad guy, but this one is awful. His dialogue is unintelligible (seriously, I watched with the subtitles, and it frequently said [unintelligible dialogue]) and he alternates between whispering and growling. The best thing about the bad guys is their hat variety. In fact, I'm fairly positive that 3/4 of the film's budget was spent on hats. The variety, I'm guessing, is because they wanted to sell more Gor action figures. It's the same reason, I suppose, that there were so many different Ewoks. My favorite thing about this is that Jack Palance is listed third in the credits but is barely in this at all. At first, it even seems like they're just using Jack Palance stock footage or stealing shots from anther movie. He's in this for about two minutes and really only to set up the sequel which was apparently filmed at the same time as this first movie. I can't wait to see the follow-up!
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