Welcome to The Daily Cup a movie blog/writing project by Kyle B. Dekker, presented by Hot Chocolate Media. You can read series concept here. The basic rules, Kyle must watch 365 movies in 2018 and write about all of them. 292 of them have to be movies he's never seen before. Thanks for reading.
There is no such thing as a guilty pleasure in my book. You either enjoy a movie or you don’t. Yor, Hunter from the Future (1983) is a film pleasure for me. It’s pure stupid, low budget Italian film fun. It’s bad wigs, loincloths, dinosaurs, and robots. The best part is, Yor isn’t even from the future, he’s just a member of a more advanced civilization hanging out with cavepeople. While the film does suffer the 80s fantasy film curse of the poster being way cooler than the movie, it’s still pretty damn fun.
Please appreciate these amazing posters from different releases.
Reb Brown, most famous for playing Captain America in the late 70s TV show and made for TV movies plays the titular character in this film. Wearing nothing but a loincloth, boots, a disarming smile, and a wig (more on that later) he fights dinosaurs, saves sexy cave ladies, and defeats robots. It’s the monomyth without a touch of class, but a ton of well oiled chest muscles. Yor travels a wasteland along with Kalaa (played by Bond girl Corinne Clery) and Pag (Luciano Pigozzi). Yor is pretty dumb, but very noble, and all of his decisions in the film are made by doing what he thinks is the right thing to do. Ultimately we learn Yor is the member of a secluded advanced society that is the remains of an apocalypse. Meaning this film very well could be a post-apocalyptic film, in a roundabout way. This advanced society is ruled by the evil Overlord (Jon Steiner) and the chosen one Yor must defeat him and his army of evil robots. Yor succeeds and wins the day, the monomyth is fulfilled.
The most amazing part of this film is the blond wig on Reb Brown. It’s a character of its own, unmoving, durable, and shiny. Like the dome of a He-Man action figure it has an almost uncanny valley property, you find yourself drawn into is magnificence. You wonder if they used one wig throughout production, or if they had a large selection of them to keep them looking fresh. Part of me is also excited that there is an army of super dapper, blond barbarian wigs out there. The wig served a key purpose in this monomyth. Often in these types of stories protagonists wear white and the antagonists wear black. In a movie where only a handful of characters wear shirts how do you pull this off? With big ass wigs! Yor’s stark blond wig stands in contrast to the jet black coifs of the bad cavemen and the black totally not Darth Vader heads of the evil robots. It’s visual storytelling at a very synthetic level (literally).
If you like dinosaurs, cavepeople wearing loincloths and little else, killer robots, lasers, and flaming swords this movie is for you. If you like basic monomyths where the male protagonist is the most naked character in the movie, this is the film for you. Also he fights and kills a carnivorous triceratops, so that’s pretty fucking sweet. I liked this movie, it’s totally for me.
Tally
Movies new to me watched: 27/292
Other movies: 9/73
Total movies watched: 36/365
Have your own thoughts or opinions on this movie? Comment below or contact Kyle at kyle@hotchocolatemedia.net or on Twitter at @kbdekker.