Ator 2: L'invincibile Orion

Even MST3K couldn't make this painful, long, and ultimately mind-bending drek funny or entertaining. While most bad movies in and of themselves are hilariously bad, this one is one of those few videos that uses the word bad in its literal sense.

The element that makes this so PAINFUL to watch is not the lack of story, but the fact that SOOOO much background is crammed into the first half-hour that it is utterly ridiculous and harder to follow than a highway while driving with no headlights.

The hero of the film, Ator, is no more than eye-candy for this literal energy-sucker of a film. Dressed in a loin-cloth and sporting "pecs like melons," as Joel put it, he belongs more in a fitness magazine than here.

I would recommend this ONLY to die-hard, and I mean die-hard followers of cheese. If you have an enemy, recommend them this film. If you make it through this, I commend you. You should be able to make it through anything.

The credits come from the Sandy Frank stitching job that was made to turn this movie into Cave Dwellers for re-release. Now that that's cleared up...oh! Excruciating, eye-gouging pain. Blade Master leaps shamelessly on the sword & sorcery bandwagon started by the Conan flicks...except the bandwagon never left the garage anyway. As such, this Italian flick is a dud trying to rip-off a box office dud, with predictable results. However, this would give too little credit to the director and writers, who make no effort whatsoever to maintain a coherent plot, continuity, any semblance of era-accurate continuity. Miles O'Keefe is no leading man, now or forever (Tarzan The Ape Man proved that, if Ator didn't). Just an unlikeable picture and a chore to watch.

Ator 2: L'invincibile Orion (1984)

1/2 (out of 4)

Really bad sequel has Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) having to travel to try and save his mentor who has been kidnapped by the evil Zor (David Brandon).

ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE was a pretty bad movie but thankfully it had enough campy moments to make it entertaining. It also had a pretty good battle at the end, which also helped keep it rather entertaining. That film obviously had a low-budget but it seems this sequel has even less of one and the end result is just a downright awful movie.

It's amazing what campy or laughs can bring to a bad movie. This one here really doesn't have either of them, although there's one sequence where a woman falls into a pit of rattlesnakes and it seems the rattle sound effect is coming from a baby's toy. Outside of that this here is a pretty dire film from start to finish. There's really not a good thing that can be said about it and sadly nothing is bad enough to where you can laugh.

The performances this time around are just as bad as the first film with O'Keeffe returning but acting even less. Brandon has to be the most nonthreatening bad guy in movie history. He's meant to be some sort of great God yet he probably wouldn't scare a group of five- year- old girls. The supporting players are all bland and boring as well.

ATOR 2: L'INVINCIBILE ORION was released under countless titles and probably got it greatest bit of fame thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. I haven't seen that version so I can't compare but this one here is certainly without any laughs or entertainment value. Sadly, this here wasn't the worst Joe D'Amato directed picture.

This was the segment that ran at the end of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode which pointed out various careless errors people failed to see when checking this movie before its release, if it was checked at all. I have never seen either of the other Ator movies, but if this one was any indication of the overall quality of the series, I'm glad I haven't. This turkey jumped back and forth through time unintentionally, even coming into modern times with the view of the skyline of a modern city in an aerial shot. And that's not even mentioning the sunglasses-wearing caveman or the tire tracks in the field. In short, this was one of the movies most deserving of the MST3K mark because...THEY JUST DIDN'T CARE!!!!

There are plenty of reviews that describe this movie as the worst ever made. For sure there are plenty of mistakes: lackluster acting, rather boring and cliched and at times paradoxical script, and the stock B-movie sound and "special" effects. As noted, there are plenty of glosses of plot, making _Cave Dwellers_ a tissue of fantasy film, especially in comparison with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, this movie is not the worst movie ever. Most, if not all, (including this review) of these reviews are written by fans of MSTK3. Therefore, many of these reviews are pretty much summaries of the MSTK3 episode of _Cave Dwellers_.

In the episode, Joel, Tom Servo, and Crow remark to the Mad Scientists that this is the worst movie ever sent to them. Of course, loyal fans have taken this quote and ran with it. I have found this movie endearing-not in a way that one finds _Forrest Gump_ endearing-but in the effort put into this movie by some the cast. Also, this movie is laughable without its MSTK3 treatment. That is because _Cave Dwellers_ does not take itself seriously, and it is not trying to import into its viewers some sort of righteous theme. For all of the monster puppets, medieval hang gliding, and continuity lapses-this movie does not advertise to be any more that what it is, a shallow depiction of a rather shallow genre.

Likewise, I can't bring myself to hate Miles O'Keeffe or Lisa Foster. Instead this hatred is for Coleman Francis, Tony Cardoza, Jennifer Lopez, Arch Hall, Jr., and so on.