Podcast: Gor (1987)

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Your Stupid Minds once again takes on a Cannon Picture (and separately, a movie somewhat focused on submission/domination) with 1987’s Gor, based on the fetishist fantasy science fiction books by John Norman.

Cabot (Urbano Barberini) is a college professor whose lectures focus on magic rings that transport people to Counter-Earth, a planet that lies on the opposite side of Earth’s orbit and perpetually masked by the sun.

After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Cabot gets into a car accident and is transported to Counter-Earth, also known as Gor. It is a savage land of prehistoric people with primitive weapons, dirty/sexy loin cloths, and slave women. Cabot must find the Home Stone (that looks like a giant Pop Rock) in order to get back to earth. Also a dwarf is there.

Some notes:

• I could only find the trailer in German, so here's the full movie on YouTube.
• Here's John Norman's 34th Gor book, released in 2016, Plunder of Gor.
• For the record, Sean Connery in Zardoz does have double straps along with his tiny red Speedo.

Podcast: Hercules (1983)

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Your Stupid Minds returns to two of its most favorite loves: buff dudes and Golan-Globus films. It’s 1983’s Hercules starring The Incredible Hulk’s Lou Ferrigno! Director Luigi Cozzi (hiding his intense Italianness behind the pseudonym Lewis Coates) brings Hercules to the big screen for the 80th and definitely not last time.

When the gods are hanging out on the moon and incredibly bored, Zeus (Claudio Cassinelli) decides to give a random baby super buff powers. Hera (Rossana Podestà) takes exception but Zeus never listens to her so who cares? Hercules’s parents are killed in a successful coup, but baby Herc escapes and is raised by a nice infertile farming couple.

Tragedy causes him to travel to Thebes to fight against other buff dudes, and he must team up with Circe (Mirella D’Angelo) in order to rescue his true love Cassiopeia (Ingrid Anderson) and battle against the evil King Minos (William Berger) and Adriana (Sybil Danning). That’s a lot of names so let’s just leave it at that.

Some Notes:

• Who's buffer? Lou Ferrigno or Dolph Lundgren?
• Sybil Danning also appears in Caged Heat.
• Yes, Lou Ferrigno does throw a guy in a cheap bear suit into space.
• Available to rent on Amazon Prime, but with the Steve Reeves poster and inexplicably labeled as released in 2009.

Podcast: Bolero (1984)

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Fans of truly execrable cinema are in for a treat as we review 1984's Bolero. Can the film that gave MGM an excuse to end its shameful partnership with the Cannon Group/Golan-Globus be that bad? What if I told you it also won the Razzie award for Worst Picture, Worst Actress (beating out Faye Dunaway in Supergirl!), Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst New Star? For once, everything you've heard turns out to be true! This film is indefensibly, inexplicably bad!

Algunas Notas:

• Auteur Theory at Work? Noted statutory rape-avoider John Derek met Bo while she was a high school dropout. In the film, a 14 year old proudly asserts that she is already a woman and will soon have sex with a famous bullfighter.
• The film was not given a rating by the MPAA, unofficially making it NC-17/X, but was still given a wide release.
• While Bo Derek's hair and Superbowl shuffle place the film in the late 70s/early 80s, Bo's infatuation with Rudolph Valentino film The Sheik (1921) places the movie in the 20s, while the use of the song "As Time Goes By" during a visit to Morocco seems to place the film in the 30s. Either way, this is clearly pre-Franco's Spain.
• You might remember John Derek from his unforgettable performance as "Joshua" opposite Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and "Where's Your Messiah Now?!" Edward G. Robinson in The Ten Commandments, a film that came out the year Bo Derek was born.
• Golan-Globus were so unhappy with the film that they wanted to be given ownership of the Derek ranch somehow.

Bonus: Here's a Joan Rivers Interview with Bo Derek from 1984: