Saturday 18 October 2014

#58 Ator 2 - L’invincible Orion (Wes)



Ator 2 - L’invincible Orion
Like so many other movies on this list we had real trouble tracking down a copy of this film. It didn’t help that we discovered it has at least three different names. The original Italian one, Ator 2: The Blade Master and then a different cut for a VHS release that was titled Cave Dwellers. Eventually we managed to find a copy that wasn’t in Italian and I was soon wishing that we hadn’t and had just taken the forfeit of two movies from our reserves list…
The movie starts with a bunch of cavemen sitting around eating the nits from each others hair (and if you’ve read my Eegah review you’ll know my feelings about cavemen in movies, if not read it here), but soon the *cough* action *cough* moves on to Akronas (Charles Borromel), a scholar who shows his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster) a discovery he’s made, some shiny crystal thing (according to my notes) that could act as a powerful weapon. To prevent this getting into the hands of the evil Zor (David Cain Haughton), who is approaching his castle, Akronas asks Mila to find his old student Ator (Miles O’Keefe) (and if you haven’t seen the first movie, there’s a recap on his history, which seems to be pretty much most of the movies action if this movie is anything to go by). She escapes the castle before Zor invades and eventually finds Ator and his assistant, Thong (Chen Wong), who was immortalised when Sisqo wrote a song about him in 1999. The trio must then get back to the castle whilst fighting off cave-men and a giant snake to rescue Akronas and defeat Zor. I in the meantime must fight off the dreaded Snoozor and try to stay awake!

As you can see for the brief summary of the plot, this really is a by the numbers barbarian story. Important quest? Check. Ridiculously named characters? Check. Giant, deadly animals? Check. Porn star moustaches? Check. A muscular topless man who likes to wave his sword about? Sort-of check (Miles O’Keeffe does have muscles and is tall and imposing, he looks like an average gym-goer (if average gym-goers have the hair of a bad 80s soft rock star), but is hardly Lou Ferringo or Charles Atlas sized). An exciting story full of fighting and adventure? Che…. No wait. That’s what this film was missing.
As far as sword and sorcery films go, when I watch them I expect only one thing of them, and that’s to be entertained. This film failed on that front in a spectacular way. Where the obvious inspiration for this movie, Conan The Barbarian, was adapted into an epic adventure, involving thievery, snake gods, sword fighting, ridiculous names, lavish sets and costumes, porn star moustaches and the Arnold Schwarzeneggar before he was a household name, this movie missed everything that made Conan a classic.

Instead of a barbarian, Ator seems to be more of a scholar with a set of weights. Whilst this could be interesting if done with skill, it’s just boring in this movie. Even when he decides the best way to storm a castle is to take a leaf from the Ewoks book and go via a hang glider, it just seems to reek of a desperate attempt to inject some life into the movie. Also it’s more than a little confusing as to where he either got the time and materials to build a hang glider or where in his very skimpy outfit he was storing one.
Zor is also a terrible bad guy. Instead of being an evil despot who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, he spends the movie trying to show what a nice guy he is. There are many long scenes where he tries to reason with Akronas, trying to prove that even though he just invaded his castle, he really is reasonable. I’m not sure if it was the dubbing, or Haughton’s poor acting, but these scenes really do come across as though he’s just trying to flirt with Akroanas. I guess it doesn’t help that the person dubbing him sounds like Eddie Izzard playing the person serving behind the Death Star canteen.

He comes across more of a very camp politician than an evil despot. I know this was the idea, but it just doesn’t work. I can believe the high priest of an evil cult could become a powerful leader in these sort of worlds, and of course the most powerful of warriors, but someone who basically the David Brent of the savage lands? A man who’s more “do the hokey cokey” than Dothraki. It’s just totally unbelieveable.
But the disbelief in how bad this film can get really doesn’t stop there. One of bits that made me laugh at how bad it was, is when Zor’s wizard is tasked to kill Ator from afar. He says the immortal line “and now you will witness the might of my power” and throws some magic dust into a bowl. The might of this wizards power seems to be that he can create a bit of light fog in the woods where Ator, Thong and Mila are running. I’m not entirely sure how this is witnessed by Akronas, and neither myself or Colin were convinced that this really counted as might. Mildly inconveniencing the hero doesn’t seem all that powerful to me. 

The giant snake that Ator has to fight in this film comes at the point where you just expect things to keep getting worse, and you’re not disappointed by that. It’s less convincing than a snake from The Muppet Show. It’s so obviously a terrible puppet, you half expect Rod Hull to walk around the corner with his arm inside of it. I say half expect, because watching Emu attack Michael Parkinson was more believable than watching O’Keefe wrap himself in a rubber snake as he flails around.
This movie has so much padding, it’s like the training bra of Barbarian movies. Although this movie is only an hour and a half long, it’s so boring that it feels like it goes on for twice as long. The movie so bad that they named it thrice. Well I’d like to suggest another name if they ever decide to rerelease it under a different name in a cynical bid to fool people it’s not the same crappy movie. Conan the Bore-barian!

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