The smelly hands of dilettantes can be found all over this amazingly inept Z-movie, starting from the moronic plot-twists, moronic characters, and moronic costumes all the way to action sequences so badly choreographed they might rank this turkey in the "Top 5 Most Awful MST3K Fight Scenes".The Evil-Bitch Queen - or "bitch in heat" as Jack Palance so hilariously calls her - is such a bad mastermind coup-maker that one has to wonder just how stupid her kingdom's subjects must be to let her get away with it all. I think they must be even thicker than the medieval dirt-faced mob in the "burn-the-witch" skit from "Monty Python & The Holy Grail". She kills two key political figures (old geezers) in her kingdom within an hour - the second one in front of a dozen witnesses - and then a few days later actually stabs Palance, out of the blue, in the gut in front of the ENTIRE populace. So dumb it really has to be seen to be believed. Just minutes later, her "cold-blooded" Bobba-Fett-like mercenary turns against her - for absolutely no reason at all - and kills her from a distance with a spear. He then looks on with the face of a man much bewildered, not unlike Leatherface after a successful bludgeoning. Not as bewildered as the viewers though.The MST3K team riffs the movie well; there are some big laughs, including a proper drubbing of Palance who looks positively stupid and highly embarrassed in his goofy "space" costume. We mustn't forget his elaborate clown-hat, either, which prevented him from doing spontaneous push-ups. Bored, too; his face reeks of desperation, and one can almost read the impatience on his face to finish a scene and just go back to his trailer – where I presume many bottles of hard liquor awaited to drown out the pain of doing low-budget stinkers such as this. His character has nothing at all to do with the plot in the first hour, aside from following his Evil Queen around like a piece of furniture on legs.

Outlaw's plot comes straight out of the Sword and Sorcerer Handbook – an evil queen kills her husband and blames it on the innocent hero, Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini), so she might take control of the thrown. Cabot spends the rest of the movie trying to clear his name, undo the queen's evils, and return to his true love.Overall, Outlaw is one of the poorer examples of the Conan "inspired" rip-off I've seen recently. While the movie has a number of weaknesses, the most glaring is Barberini in the lead role. He makes for one of the most nondescript, unexciting heroes I've seen. He's completely unconvincing. And what's the point in announcing quite proudly in the movie that our hero is a vegetarian? Was Outlaw funded by PETA? What's the point in adding that to the movie? It takes what is an otherwise namby-pamby hero and makes him even more so. Between the emasculated Tarl Cabot, scene after scene of a midget's hinder, an annoying side-kick named Watney, and an embarrassed looking Jack Palance wearing one of the goofiest looking hats imaginable, you've got the recipe for one bad movie.Yet I haven't rated Outlaw as low as I could have. Why? Well, I have a weakness for this kind of movie. I tend to enjoy most sword and sorcerer type movies, even the bad ones. That, plus some of the outfits worn by Donna Denton, seems to be enough to warrant a point or two.

No, not really. Possibly the most disturbing "buffalo shot" in cinematic history (the poor dwarf in the bearskin diaper bares all as he climbs down a building face.) Obviously I've only seen the MST version, but even that was hard going. It made for quite a funny episode, though. If it ever comes out on home video, check it out. Just avert your eyes when you see the dangling dwarf. ..

*shrug* I guess it's a sequel, and we see some sequences from the original, and some people have claimed to see it, so I guess it must exist. But why anyone would want to make a sequel is anyone's guess, much less _this_ sequel. Jack Palance is the big-name star, and he manages to embarrass himself fully as a priest in leftover Pharisee robes from Jesus Christ Superstar. he's given plenty of help by the amateur Italian movies who appear here, though. If you ever felt tempted to pick up the misogynistic Gor series of novels, watching this movie should convince you otherwise.