Before the time of background checks, any old riffraff could walk into a teaching job and be engulfed in a swarm of lithe, youthful bodies like Captain Kirk in a pile of amorous tribbles. You could, for instance, devote an entire series of lectures to a bit of old tat buried in your cross-dressing father’s ‘weekend’ jewellery box whilst wearing a pair of granny’s old reading glasses so that students and faculty alike know just how intellectual you are. That is, if you were a complete mental case or one Tarl Cabot, but with a name like that, who’d blame him?

GOR (1987)
Genre: Action/ Adventure/ Fantasy
Director: Fritz Kiersch 
Rated: PG
Buy the DVD

Tarl has set himself up with a nice cushy number lecturing a group of poor, luckless bastards on the mysterious powers of the ugliest piece of costume jewellery he could find. Like all wearers of non-prescription glasses in films, he continually takes his glasses on and off so that we all know how serious he is, spouting drivel all the while about the possible existence of a counter-earth called Gor that the gemstone in his ring is a supposed portkey to. But he has no evidence or experience of any of this and says as much at the end of his lecture, which is probably why everyone looks like they’re about to commit mass suicide.

Everyone with the exception of a bitchy blonde who spends the entire lecture openly sniggering at him and turns out to be Tarl’s teaching assistant and girlfriend. As he wasn’t quite getting the hint when she was laughing right in his face, Barbie swings by with her new jock teacher boyfriend to break the news that she won’t be spending vacation with him in a creepy cabin devoid of basic plumbing and will instead be getting banged by an emotionally stunted adult who can just about string a sentence together to mock Cabot’s lack of fashion sense. This coming from a guy who’s driving around in a big pink vagina jeep.

And so our hero drives off alone into the night as a thunderstorm descends to envelop the shitty tin can of a car in torrents of rain and sheet lightning. As the visibility reduces, Cabot takes off his fucking glasses again in favour of squinting and proves just what a brilliant idea that was by driving straight into a tree. But lo and behold! By the power of greyskull, his gummy ring whisked him away to Gor, where he wakes up a few feet away from a village being pillaged by a half- naked Oliver Reed.

After being spotted by Reed’s mounted soldiers, he’s chased down and defying all logic, attempts to explain that there’s ‘been a mistake’, because being a Professor of Bullshit automatically grants immunity from the murderous regimes of tyrannical dictatorships…right? After waving his driver’s license around for a cringe inducing 5 minutes, his brain decides this is all too much to bear and tells his legs to make a break for it. What follows is a series of comical murders of the most inept soldiers in the counter-cosmos at the hands of Cabot as they start dropping like flies from such fatalities as falling gently off a horse into a soft pile of sand and simply riding past Tarl and finding themselves being stabbed to death by the sword he happened to be holding.

The surviving rabble from the village chooses this moment to intervene and save his pasty ass now that he’s taken out the majority of the threat. Cabot passes out from the sheer amount of arse on show and comes to in cave having his brow diligently dabbed at with a moist cloth by Playboy model Rebecca Ferratti before getting swiftly cock blocked by her mullet sporting, sword hefting comrade.

 

Remember how Tarl had that sweet job talking shit about his daddy’s ring all day and getting paid for it? Well he doesn’t. Despite getting an impassioned plea for help from the hackneyed village old guy and being told he’s not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy insists on playing the thicko card and suddenly has no memory of a place called Gor or the power of his ring and thinks this is all a gag courtesy of Norman and his pink jeep.

Sensing that he’s a complete and utter nitwit, the trio of self-elected village leaders nevertheless decide that it’s too late to cut and run now that the rest of the horde have seen Cabot and his magic ring and to keep their hope alive, they decide the best course of action is a training montage. A few hours later, it’s decided that he’s now ready to go and face the despotic Oliver Reed and save the world, and Cabot is totally ok with that.

Tarl makes the most of his newfound status as saviour when they stop to procure weapons, by insisting on going into a dangerous bar for no other reason than to ogle yet more scantily clad women. As predicted this little excursion soon goes tits up, quite literally, when Miss Playboy – who’s been posing as a slave to fit in with the rest of the degenerates – is forced into a fight to the death with Jabba the Hutt’s woman in a 3 minute scene that is about 2 and a half minutes too long.

The rest of the journey is fraught with perils, like quicksand and Village People, but a good spanking is all that’s needed to send them on their way.

Will Carl Tabot rise to the challenge and save the world? More importantly, will he ever get laid? Find out in Gor.

 

 

We dare you to buy Gor on DVD!

Author Gamer Girl is a podcast co-host on FrontTowardsGamer Radio.  It is highly recommended you follow her on Twitter.
Previously in Poison Popcorn: The Ice Pirates. See previous Poison Popcorns right fucking here!