OLIVER REED & REBECCA FERRATTI IN THE CANNON FANTASY 'GOR'

Oliver Reed in GOR Year: 1987 Rating: ***1/2

Beginning with an uptight, otherwise average-looking, spectacle-wearing professor lecturing a university classroom before being thrust into an otherworld adventure, Cannon Films' infamous GOR seems equally inspired by RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK as the more obvious CONAN similarities including scantily-clad chicks and muscular men in a barbarian world... where the professor goes from wimp to warrior, taking enough time to provide Urbano Barberini a realistically transitional performance...

Although known for having British veteran actor Oliver Reed as the spider-mask-wearing overlord, stealing what's called a home-stone for his own greed before seeking revenge on our hero for accidentally killing his son... it's brunette model/actress Rebecca Ferratti who really steals the show...

Rebecca Ferratti in GOR

Derived from John Norman's GOR fantasy novels detested by intellectuals for promoting sexism, this adaptation, while having its fair share of enslaved babes, has Ferratti's Talena not only the most tough and sword-resilient, but she alone teaches our stranger-in-a-strange-land male lead how to fight...

Shot in the vast deserts of South Africa, GOR shows its low-budget camp not in the settings since the university frame-story looks great (with its very own beginning, middle and end) while the sweeping camera makes ample LAWRENCE OF ARABIA-style vastness of the wastelands harboring mountainous villages cutting into torch-lit caverns...

Urbano Barberini in GOR

But it's the rudimentary wide-shots, showing hordes of tribal warriors fighting, that seems noticeably slower... and more unprofessionally contrived... than the usual sword-and-sandal flick (a classic genre reignited in the 80's from CONAN to THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER to KRULL and even THE ROAD WARRIOR), turning GOR into the kind of subpar fare that Cannon Films' was (and is still) detested for...

Which is the same crap the likes of Roger Corman would get away with, and that's mostly because the Cannon producers would attempt just-high-enough budgets to pretend to compete with the major studios... and they would sporadically hire some pretty great (sometimes legendary) actors...

Paul L. Smith in GOR

Like Oliver Reed doing his usual whispering menace routine, killing anyone while taking anything he pleases (clashing with dependable giant Paul L. Smith and an enigmatic Jack Palance cameo)... formidably mixed within the younger, more picturesque talent who could only go so far and yet, for the abysmally low-rating and maligned reputation, GOR actually flows along decently enough when it needs to...

From scene after scene, there's not only another fight (faster and more intense when one-on-one) and a reason to either intrude or escape various perils just-in-time, the characters actually seem to mean business despite their (and their surrounding production's) obvious limitations.

Urbano Barberini in GOR

Urbano Barberini in GOR

Anne Power in GOR

Urbano Barberini in GOR

Oliver Reed in GOR with Graham Clarke

Oliver Reed in GOR

Urbano Barberini and Rebecca Ferratti in GOR

Rufus Swart in GOR

Rebecca Ferratti in GOR

Oliver Reed in GOR

Janine Denison in GOR

Urbano Barberini and Rebecca Ferratti in GOR

Urbano Barberini and Rebecca Ferratti in GOR with Nigel Chipps

Oliver Reed in GOR

Oliver Reed in GOR

Jack Palance in GOR