Gor

 What better stuff to view during a long painting session then a classic sci-fi / fantasy movie!

And the choice fell on Gor, starring Jack Palance and Oliver Reed, in another jewel of campness and poor production value.  Just the stuff we all secretly love, is it not.

Loosely based on the 1966 novel Tarnsman of Gor, this movie even managed to get his theatrical release cancelled, so picking my intrest even more.  

Tarl Cabot is a socially awkward professor, who gets dumped for a weekend out right before they would leave.  Driving off in the rain, he accidentally activates a ring he was researching, which teleports him to the planet Gor.  He goes to a village, which is just being attacked by the High-Priest Sarm who wants to collect all the Home Stones of the villages.  In the fight, he kills Sarm's son, resulting in the rebels seeing him as a sort of promised warrior and take him on amongst them.

He is nursed back to health by Talena (the ravenous Rebecca Ferrati, because back in those days, you just needed to have bikini clad playmates in your movies), a barbarian princess of Ko-ro-ba.  He learns Sarm has captured her father and joins the rescue mission.

Going through a tavern town to gather supplies and a guide, they enter the lands of Sarm, but are soon captured.  Sarm rules a land of enforced hedonism and debauchery, and tries to tempt Tarl in joining him.  Yet he resists, and manages to free Talena and her father, and slays Sarm.  They return to Ko-ro-ba, where they are approached by Xenos, the high priest taking care of the Home Stones.  But just as he and Talena admit their love to each other, the Home Stone activates sending him back to Earth.

So yeah, well, errrm, what can I say.  A not to spectacular, so bad you just need to see it movie.  The fighting scenes are hilarious, Talena even holds her sword one hand on the hilt, one on the cutting side when stabbing a guard during the prison break (and to add to it, they are clearly styrofoam swords), yet still keeps all her fingers... to name just one of the above mentioned production value issues.

So, just watch this for it's campiness, but don't expect anything more then a laugh at "how it could have been better is they did this or that" moments!