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  • Touted as Part 1 of a trilogy, "Outland 1" is an incompetent Euro production palmed off as part of the new Steampunk phenomenon, which it patently is not. I loved the old European Westerns in the '60s and this is an insult to their achievement.

    You get more steampunk action from Kenneth Branagh in that awful Will Smith Hollywood junker "Wild, Wild West" than delivered here - there's no technology of a modernized sort and wearing just a bit of odd headgear or costuming doth not a steampunk make.

    The usually reliable porn actor Nacho Vidal tries for a z-grade Darth Vader imitation as stock villain, with his echo-chamber voice, stupid mask and other idiotic stuff. He's the scourge of the little town, and who will come and rescue our enslaved good folk?

    A violent opening in which a young woman is killed and the heroine played weakly by Alexis Crystal is kidnapped to become a sex slave holds promise, especially since mainstream porn has gone timid of late, in the quest to display "Non-violent" on the box covers and avoid threats of prosecution. Things get tame in a hurry thereafter, so even gore hounds will not get their entertainment fill here.

    Guest star Evan Stone is a bit restrained (for him) as the Good Guy, getting to hump the luscious leading lay Dahlia Sky. That imported talent leads the folks who made this junker to proclaim it was shot in the USA, when in fact it obviously was filmed in Spain, home of those wonderful Spaghetti Westerns of yore.

    My favorite Euro star Cathy Heaven guests as a prisoner (she doesn't even get a character name) who humps the sheriff (Max Cortes, a truly unsuitable hero - they really saved a buck by opting for local Spanish talent instead of hiring a real star) in exchange for getting out of the hoosegow.

    Film falls apart when Stone's sidekick is introduced, big muscleman Rob Diesel in Indian get-up and warpaint and speaking with a thick German accent. Precedent perhaps is Schwarzenegger in one of his all-time worst roles, opposite Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margret in the Western spoof "The Villain", but this takes the cake.

    Soon after our intrepid team of Stone & Diesel encounter not an Indian tribe but folks covered in whiteout as some sort of neutral Aboriginal tribe of cannibals. I don't know what scriptwriter/co-director "Archivald Widwicky Jr." was smoking, but it certainly isn't out of political correctness that he eliminates Native Americans from a "Western" and substitutes refugees from some racist Tarzan movie.

    Ultimately this overlong (146 minutes) loser goes nowhere, with no ending, and not even a token confrontation of Good (Evan) with Bad (Nacho), let alone ugly. All the action is saved for Part 2 or Part 3, a total cheat, with Ryan Ryder from Scotland listed in the cast but never showing up -man, I just can't wait to see him in Part 2/3! What a sucker I must be.