MST3K Episode #519 - Outlaw

What can I say about this movie? Well, let's first start with the movie's preconception. The movie's title is actually "Outlaw of Gor" and takes place in a fictional Counter-Earth called Gor. The Chronicles of Gor series is a series of science fiction/fantasy novels/philosophy books written by John Norman, a philosophy professor. The series is known for two things. The first is the Chronicle's science fiction stories interlaced with philosophical ideology and bondage-based erotica. The second is it's subculture that actually tries to live out these philosophical ideologies and bondage erotica rituals. In the series, the philosophies and the pornographic behavior are integrated into each other to form the lifestyle of the Goreans, the people who populate the planet of Gor. The internet based on-line subculture that follows the "Gorean" lifestyle listed in the books also call themselves Goreans.

The series is almost like 90210, The Republic, Marquis de Sade (not going to be linked, too pornographic), and Star Wars combined. Try to imagine the plotline of Star Wars as stories about Luke Skywalker, giving dialogues about slavery, freedom, the universe, Darwinian evolution, and communism all while having various perverted sexual relationships with free women and his sex slaves. Wow, doesn't that sound like pure garbage?

You can tell John Norman thinks he's a really clever guy, mixing romance novel/pornographic fantasy situations with big philosophical concepts and Conan the Barbarian-esque action. Really, all he's doing is appealing to the perverseness of geeks/nerds everywhere who read sword and sorcery science-fiction or fantasy.

I mean, one thing that's absolutely never even remotely spoken about is the fact that works like this really appeal to science fiction audiences because of how socially awkard they can be. Go to any Blizzcon, Comic-Con, or any other science fiction based gathering and you'll realize that some of these people are freaks! Couple their absolute lostness in their fantasy mental realm with any type of normal desires any human would have, twisted by social inability and absolute frailty, and what do you have? The perfect candidate for this type of crap.

Think about this in relation to the "Goreans". You're 30 years old. You're a couple hundred pounds overweight. Your mom and dad split up when you were six. You live alone and have been made fun of (often so cruelly, it's been absolutely unbearable) since you were about eight years old. You've been pretending you're Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja, Xena, or some other barbaric science-fiction weirdo since you were twelve and you've never quite come out of it. You have a job, which pays for you to live somewhere and your (usually fast) food, along with your toy collection (which you started at 8 years old), your comic book and science fiction movie collection, and your monthly subscription to EverQuest and WoW. When you see a book that provides you with the fantasy role you insert yourself in also with the sexual situations you wish you were in, you're going to be incredibly attracted to it. It's going to live out another part of your fantasy beside the running around, being handsome, manly, strong and important.

The funny part is that this has NOTHING to do with Joseph Campbell's pyschological undertones of the Hero With A Thousand Faces. These people are not relating to heroes by being psychologically connected with the symbolic representations of the emotions/experiences that all humankind relate to on a subconscious level. The people who engage in these Gorean subcultures are so far removed from reality that they try to make their fantasies manifest in reality by believing that they're something they're not. In a sense, these Gorean subcultures are filled with people who are completely in denial.

Having set this foundation, let's look at the actual movie, "Outlaw of Gor".

THIS MOVIE SUCKS. The main character's name is mentioned 55 times in the opening ten minutes. When I watched it, I was like, "Are you kidding me?" Considering all the MST3K movies tend to be really bad, it comes as no real surprise that this movie is awful. This movie is also a disgusting man-flesh feast. At the end of the movie, MST3K plays back all the male crotch shots of the entire movie all in a row. I'm telling you, absolute hilarity.

The movie is actually a sequel to the B movie super-flop, "Gor". It's main star, Jack Palance, isn't even in one of the lead roles, he plays a bad wizard, who's banished near the end of the movie anyway. So everything starts with probably one of the most annoying movie characters ever, college professor Watney Smith, played by legendary actor, Russel Savadier, who coincidentally was also in another big-time winner, Alien From LA. So Watney is seen in the beginning of the movie, chasing down girls in a pathetic 80s bar. The main character, Tarl Cabot, whose name says everything, is a lonely professor who's in the bar with some sort of big, ugly, magic 25 cent machine plastic ring. So Watney, being the pathetic, ugly guy he is, can't get a girl, so he sees his fellow professor, Tarl Cabot (what kind of stupid name is Tarl anyway? It's almost like John Norman took the name Carl Tabot and just switched the first letters and thought, "Wow, this is kind of Science Fition-ish.") also sitting in the bar alone.

After a bit of banter, they decide to go to some other awful 80s bar when they're mysteriously warped by Tarl's ring to the land of Gor. The funniest part is you never actually see anything at all, they're just sitting in the car with lights flashing outside the car and then it cuts to them being in the middle of the desert. Pathetic.

So here they are in Gor, and Cabot is extremely excited that he's back, as I guess he was there in the previous movie and apparently had to leave. This is where the movie gets stupid (boy, you thought it sounded stupid before!). They go into the city, where Cabot is known as a hero and they're welcomed into the castle. Apparently, the king, who loves Cabot, wants Cabot to rule as king after he dies and marry his daughter, who Cabot is in love with. But the king has an evil new wife who ends up sleeping with Watney (disgusting) and poisoning the king, then stabbing him to death, because apparently she wants to rule the kingdom? I don't know, her motives are never really explained. Anyway, Watney helps her frame Cabot and Cabot then escapes the city with a blonde midget (who they show more crotch shots of than anyone else in the entire movie).

This is where everything gets hazy. They free some slave girl and she ends up trying to be Cabot's love slave. Then they get captured by bounty hunters and are brought back to the castle. They end up fighting in some type of wanna-be colliseum-esque thing and Watney comes out and says that the queen killed the king, not Cabot. Some slave throws a spear in the queen and boom, done.

I mean, it's sad that you can pretty much summarize the entire movie in just four or five sentences, but that's it. But at least now you know there's another stupid internet community based on these terrible books (and even worse movies).

Hilarious random fact: "Gor art" is a top search on google image. ROFL.