4/10
Woah, Ator!
31 January 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Joe D'Amoto wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983's Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O'Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn't be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D'Amoto, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X - Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules - A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus Mozart) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O'Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor's army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he's a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that.

If you want to see this with riffing, it's called The Cave Dwellers in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 form. But man, a movie like this doesn't really even need people talking over it. It was shot with no script in order to compete with Conan the Destroyer. How awesome is that?
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