Jack’s Bad Movies – Yor, the Hunter from the Future

I watched this movie as a kid and thought it comically bad. So now I’ve re-watched it so I can share its awfulness.

IMDB’s description

A warrior seeks his true origins in a seemingly prehistoric wasteland.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future opens in a prehistoric setting where an old man and his adopted daughter are hunting a small creature. Suddenly they are attacked by a triceratops (or close enough). Who should come to their rescue, but Yor, the title character, a nomad warrior. Yor dispatches this massive dinosaur with a stone axe. After all the hard work is done then some other people arrive to help. For saving the old man and the woman (Ka-Laa) Yor is treated to a celebration dinner back at the village.

Ka-Laa is clearly smitten by Yor, and proceeds to dance for him and bring him drink. Throughout this movie Ka-Laa is constantly asking her adopted father why Yor seems so different from other men. Which is pretty stupid of her, because the differences are obvious. Yor is the only man anyone has ever seen with blonde hair, he doesn’t wear a shirt, and he has a mysterious medallion hanging around his neck. The village wise-man asks about Yor’s medallion, to which Yor has no answer. He then informs Yor that there is story about an ‘angel’ in the desert who has a similar medallion.

The party is only just started when a rival clan of black fur wearing men attack the village. They kill most of the men and kidnap the women. After killing a half a dozen or so of the raiders, Yor manages to escape with Ka-Laa and her father. They decide it is important to rescue the captured women. While tracking the Black Fur Clan, Yor and company is captured. The leader of the clan takes Yor’s medallion, believing it to the be the source of his fighting prowess (I personally believe it is on account of his toned muscles and the blonde hair). Yor somehow escapes, uses a large bat as a hang-glider, rescues Ka-Laa and her father, and then promptly destroys this cave settlement with a massive flood. What about the captured women they came to save? We don’t know their fate, but I assume they drown.

Yor and company now head into the desert to find the ‘angel’ woman. Yor enters the village of the Sand-People, who would be better described as Mud-People, and is promptly captured. For all Yor’s fighting ability, he sure gets captured a lot. Yor is brought to Ayshe, which is a blonde woman who wears a medallion which matches Yor’s. Ayshe lives in a slowly melting ice cave, which has other people also wearing medallions frozen in ice. She is a prisoner, as the Sand-People worship her, but also won’t allow her to leave. Ayshe says that all strangers who come to the village are sacrificed, and Yor is no exception. This means there is no way the wise-man from the village could have heard about Ayshe and her medallion, but whatever. Yor manages to escape, grabs a large flaming sword, and reaps destruction on the village.

Yor and Ayshe meet up with Ka-Laa and the old man. Ka-Laa is extremely jealous of Ayshe, since Yor is obviously very taken with her. Her adopted father says “the men in our village have multiple wives, why can’t Yor have two?” Ka-Laa is far too feminist and progressive to have to share her man with someone else, and promptly goes off to have a fight to the death with Ayshe. As they are rolling around in the sand attempting to kill each other, the Black Fur Clan shows up. Somehow they survived the flood which ruined their settlement. Yor and the old man, who is an accomplished archer, end up killing them. But not before Ayshe falls and hits her head on a rock and dies. Prehistoric medicine is the worst, but at least this clears the way for Ka-Laa to possess Yor only for herself, just like the selfish woman that she is. Yor gives Ka-Laa Ayshe’s medallion, probably as a prize, for helping to get her killed.

Yor and company are then traveling and come upon a group of teenage girls being attacked by a Stegosaurus. Yor and the old man manage to kill it. Small wonder dinosaurs became extinct, given the ease in which they are killed. The girls are so grateful they take them to their seaside village. Upon arriving the chief tells Yor that his daughter (the oldest of the ones saved, but still probably only 15 or 16 years old) belongs to him now. Yor says he already has a woman, and won’t take her. This is probably because Yor now knows Ka-Laa would kill the girl otherwise.

The chief of village says a strange creature came and terrorized their village with heat and lightning, and with great difficulty they killed it. When Yor goes to examine the remains, he finds a large spotlight which has a radio broadcast. The chief tells Yor the strange creature originated from an island in the ocean which is surrounded by storms.

Later that evening the village is attacked by planes firing laserbeam weapons. It destroys the village and kills a bunch of people. Yor’s backup wife is spared, but her father, the chief dies. By now we are starting to see a pattern to Yor’s life and we now realize why he is a nomad. It is because every village he comes in contact with gets destroyed in some way or another (current tally, four).

Yor, Ka-Laa, and the old man (who might be named Tag, I didn’t bother to remember) then take what seems like the only remaining fishing boat from the surviving villagers and head out into the ocean. They are caught in a huge storm, and Yor is lost overboard, Ka-Laa and her father crash into rocks. Roll credits! Oh wait, they survived.

Yor awakens on a beach and begins wandering around. In a futuristic room, a man in a dark cloak watches via a crystal ball and orders Yor’s capture. Yor is promptly attacked and captured (like always). He did manage to decapitate one of the men first with a rock, only to discover it was a robot. Yes, Yor decapitated a robot with a rock. Yor awakens in a futuristic room with a woman monitoring his condition. She tells him is the son of a resistance leader who fought against the Overlord and was banished to the mainland. This woman (and seemingly everyone on the island except the Overlord) is also a member of the resistance. The Overlord apparently wants to get rid of the human condition known as “being alive and free of will” in his subjects and turn everyone into loyal robots.

Meanwhile Ka-Laa and Tag are on the beach and get rescued by a resistance fighter from the robots. They hatch a plan to detonate the nuclear reactor on the island and escape to the mainland via a shuttle they have prepared. Yor is allowed to wander around the facility looking for Ka-Laa, in the hopes that he’ll lead the robots to the resistance. After a bunch of aimless wandering, Yor finally meets up with Ka-Laa and the race is on to plant the bomb before the robots get them. Yor kills a robot with his bare hands, and then picks up its laser weapon and begins firing it with perfect precision. I guess he really is the Hunter from the Future, considering he grew up alone on the prehistoric mainland.

Yor stabs the Overload with large pole (instead of just shooting him). This is to create the illusion of suspense, as after Yor plants the bomb on the reactor, the Overlord has like five minutes or something to turn it off before the place goes up in smoke. The resistance manages to override his robots, so eventually the fighting stops and the few island survivors, Yor, Ka-Laa, and Tag head to the mainland to begin a new life. Yor’s curse of finding a new settlement and seeing it destroyed is once again realized as the island explodes.

See the trailer it all its glory (which I would embed if I could).
Yor, The Hunter from the Future