MST3K: Episode 519 - Outlaw

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Episode 519: Outlaw

First aired: Comedy Central on 11 December 1993
Availability: MST3KVideos.com Fan Copy

Outlaw of Gor.

What an awful film.

Actually, that's the nicest thing I can say about it.

Perhaps it's the fact that I never saw the first movie in the Gor Trilogy. Just how bad is the Gor Trilogy? There are only two movies. This one took forever to watch, making it seem like three.

I'm the kind of guy that will watch a movie just to watch a later movie in the series. For instance, I know a lot of people like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I had no interest in seeing it.

The hero gets him some.

A while back, I set upon a project that included watching all the films that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Took a while, but I did it. And one of those movies was on the list. The third one. So, I planned to watch it. I knew a little about J.R.R. Tolkien's books, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and had no interest in them. But, I knew that the third movie wouldn't make any sense without the first two as background. So, I rented them all. And watched them all. And didn't like any of them. It's just not what I'm interested in. Like glittery vampires or teen-age wizards. Not my cup of tea. You enjoy them all you want. I won't be getting in your way.

Well, when I saw that I needed to watch this episode, I discovered that it was the sequel to an earlier film that wasn't part of the MST3K universe. I thought about getting the first film to watch it, but quickly talked myself out of it. My project isn't to watch the bad movies from MST3K, it's to watch MST3K. On the show, they didn't show the unriffed first film of a series before they showed the riffed sequel. So, I wasn't going to watch the first movie without a compelling reason.

"Barnaby Jones had better fight scenes."

I didn't have one.

Now, I have a compelling reason to not watch it. The sequel sucked.

It sucked so bad that it made this episode of MST3K very hard to watch. This thing took me days to watch. I didn't fall asleep trying to watch it, mind you. It would have given me nightmares. And those nightmares would have consisted of me watching this episode.

So, I kept at it, watching it in the evenings until I was tired. And it took several days before I managed to finish it.

Now that I'm done, I'm glad I watched it. Not because I enjoyed it, or plan to watch it again. I'm glad that the damn thing's no longer on my to-do list! It's over and done with. It's past tense. I can now move on to other bad movies.

No playing in the satellite!

What made this movie so bad?

Really bad people.

Producers, directors, writers, actors, gaffers, studio executives. All are bad people for making this movie.

I hated the hero. I don't know if he was supposed to be some anti-hero, but I didn't like him. Which made him perfect for an awful film like this one. Let me tell you about it.

Out zero hero and his weasel-buddy travel to Gor by way of accident and some ring or something, wind up in the desert, but then make their way to town where they get laid by a bunch of chicks with 80s hair, only to have our hero framed for murder of the king, but he escapes and leads a rebellion against the queen and Jack Palance, who's the priest, believe it or not, but get captured and thrown into the arena, where the queen suddenly kills Jack Palance but is then speared by the number three villain, and everybody is free, the hero gets laid again, and weasel-buddy winds up walking the streets of Italy in a loincloth. The end.

The highlight of the episode.

I don't remember the hero's name. They had one scene that lasted an hour and a half where about 250 people came up to the hero and called him "Cabot." So that might have been his name. Either that or, "Hey, Jackass." I think "Hey Jackass" would have been a better name.

The fight scenes in this sci-fi sword-and-sandal flick were bad. But then, everything about this movie was bad.

Lots of times, the worse a movie is, the better the riffing. And, the riffing was good in this one, just not enough to overcome a really bad film.

I did enjoy one Host Segment immensely. Mike & the Bots sang "Tubular Boobular Joy" which is a joy to behold. The song was good, too. See? I made a boobie joke!

The also had a segment about all the Buffalo Shots in this movie. That wasn't a joy, not at all. You see, Cambot prepared a montage of all the Buffalo Shots. Why? Because Cambot hates me.

Didn't like the episode. Yes, it had its moments. Some really good moments. But the movie was so hard to watch.

This one's never been released on DVD. Mine's a fan copy I got from MST3KVideos.com, so the quality is good. If they released it on DVD, I'll get it, but only to keep my collection complete.

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