Wonderful character development!

Excellent, smart action film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

My theory: The producers of this film first made the movie "Gor". It only took them four days. Then someone noticed that they still had three days left on their equipment rentals, so they decided to film a second movie. Someone put together a script while on a potty break. They used the same sets, the same props, and much the same cast. The end result was "Outlaw of Gor".Jack Palance must have been hard-up for money to do this. It ranks up there with the biggest wastes of talent in movie history, right next to Max von Sydow in "Strange Brew" and Sir Lawrence Olivier in "Clash of the Titans".

OK, so someone took the basic outlines of the infamous "Gor" novels and used them as an excuse for this amazingly threadbare, slipshod excuse for a feature film. I want to blame John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger for this mess, since it came out in 1989, but in actuality it was probably just another piece of product grunted out by the "Sword and Sandals" division of the Italian film industry/sausage factory, and it (or something very similar to it) would probably have been made even if "Conan" had never existed. So let's see what we've got here. Acting? Well, somehow they got hold of Jack Palance and dressed him up in choir robes and a series of goofy hats. Even sleep walking through his ridiculous part, he's got more talent than the rest of the cast put together. This Urbano guy...well, he's handsome, and he's buff, and he knows how to pose, and that's about it. Everyone else can barely get their lines out without stammering or chewing the scenery, and the guy who plays "Watney" will probably never live down his role in this turkey if he lives to be 210 years old. Writing and screenplay...sorry, you must be thinking of some other movie. There is no such thing as "writing" on display anywhere here. I am trying to make allowances for factors such as dubbing and translation but...no, even allowing for that, this thing obviously wasn't "written", it was assembled from the random output of 1000 monkeys sitting at typewriters, and then carefully edited to remove all trace of human feeling or dramatic veracity from the results.Costumes, scenery, etc.??? Nope, no such thing here. Oh, the actors don't wear their own clothes to the shoot, and they aren't standing out in a vacant lot, but the things used here were thrown together in an afternoon on a budget of about $29.98, so they doesn't really qualify. This is just some stuff they used to avoid having nude actors pantomiming sword fights in an empty field. Hell, they're ANTI-costumes...you've never seen so much un-sexy skin in your life. (My favorite example: the 60 year old balding, flabby guy in the leather bustier). I don't want to hate on this film too much, such it doesn't really deserve venom or hatred....just contempt and dismissal. Compared to a lot of things put out by the Italian film industry (say, "Machiste Vs Hercules In the Vale of Woe", a film so bad that it actually drives strong men to tears), this isn't all that bad...it's just dull, lifeless, uninspired and goofy without being funny. The Urbano-whosis guy, you know, the romantic lead, survived this movie...he even went on to do dozens of other film roles in Europe. That puts him one up on people like Kurt Thomas after "Gymkata" or Ben Affleck after "Gigli".Watch this once, preferably with the MST3K coverage to get you through the roughest spots, on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you are too hungover or sleepy to watch anything more ambitious. And if this sequel is any indication, don't seek out the first "Gor" movie, not if you value your brain cells.

Ok, the movie on it's own is pretty horrible, but when you had mike, servo and crow to the mix, it becomes the funniest movie ever made. The whole Jack Palance bit just got me going. However, if you're just watching the movie, you can surely appreciate the cheese that this movie presents. As it is commonly said, there are bad movies, and there are movies so bad they're good. This falls into the latter category. Much like Battlefield Earth.

I found the story concept to have some potential but the film was poorly made. Tarl's sidekicks could have been different and better (and less irritating). The props could have been improved at lot more. As for the lead actor, Urbano Barberini looks right for the role but his acting skills were rather bad.