Schmollywood Babylon

The Man Who Saves the World (Çetin Inanç, 1982)

Some might say Turkish Star Wars is trash - for me it’s unadulterated anarchy, a lovingly fuck you in the face of mighty business empires, a healthy dose of kicking up and in order to survive and have a fun time at the same time. The producers of Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam probably didn’t have any deeper meanings with their little sci-fi rip-off, except earning a quick buck at the Turkish cinema. But like yesterdays text about Platoon the Warrior, it’s possible to create something bigger, something more important from something small and on the surface pure banality.

It’s impossible to actually write down a recap of the storyline, a little bit because I watched in a version without out subtitles, but also because the story seems so frail, so thin even without understanding the dialogue. It doesn't matter anyway, because I had a lot of fun and I think that’s what the intended audience wanted also when they bought a cheap ticket to Cüneyt Arkin’s latest asskicking adventure. Arkin, the dashing former acrobat who’s still a superstar in Turkey even if he seems to have retired, began his career in a Russian circus visiting Istanbul. He learned all the stunts involving horses and became a matinée idol. When martial arts became the fad all over the world he learned karate and history was made.

In Turkish Star Wars he and Aytekin Akkaya crashes at a mysterious planet ruled by an evil sorcerer. Arkin falls in love and manages to produce a son together with a blonde woman. I think. Or he just falls in love with a single mom on an alien planet. Alien yeah, this planet is packed with aliens. Often simple plastic party masks or very quickly made costumes - some look quite good on a distance. I kinda love the red alien creatures, like big twisted teddy bears. And then it ends quite happy.

No, it’s not meaning really to discuss the story. If you watch it you will be enjoyed by it, but you might have problem following the details. It’s wrong to say it’s a rip-off, because as you can see the story differs a lot from Star Wars. It’s not like the brilliant Seytan who copies The Exorcist so good it actually becomes good itself. This feels more like a spin-off, or a sequel, starting directly after a fight outside the Death Star (or Death Egg, considering they just squeezed in the widescreen Star Wars footage in a small 4:3 production). The Man Who Saves the World is it’s own twisted alien among exploitation movies from… yeah, all over the world.

What attracts me with it, and it goes with many Turkish films from the same time, is the unashamed love of filmmaking. I’m not kidding you, this is exactly like one of those backyard home video productions shot by boys who happens to own a toy gun or two. Even here the production just decides that a normal, earthly, location looks cool and uses it even if it breaks all the conventions of a proper science fiction or fantasy film. I was almost jumping with joy when the robot showing up at the end had its laser beams created by physically scratching them there direct on the negative. I remember a documentary about Peter Jackson where he shows the same thing, something he did with his friends in his parents garden. That, my friends, is movie magic.
The filmmakers and actors of Turkish Star Wars doesn’t give a fuck if the effects are realistic or if the story makes sense, as long as they have fun. That’s the impression you get after watching a movie like this, or maybe the best Cüneyt Arkin film I’ve seen so far: Vahsi Kan, the Turkish First Blood! It’s a daring thing to do that, to create something even if you can’t.

Movie making anarchy, that’s what it’s all about.

Tarkan vs. the Vikings (Mehmet Aslan, 1971)

If was stranded on a deserted island Tarkan vs. the Vikings is one of the films I would try to save from the sinking ship (or crashed airplane, or whatever…). Oh, and a DVD player, a TV or other kind of monitor and a generator to produce electricity of course. I could probably survive for a couple of months just looking at the DVD cover from Mondo Macabro, but in the end I would descend into a depression and kill myself by banging a coconut violently against my head from not being able to see it.

Tarkan vs. the Vikings is SO good. For realz.

I know, I know… it’s good in a special way, according some people out there. But if you know me you know that I never watch movies because they’re so bad they’re good, I watch ‘em because they entertain me - and those kinda movies are good movies to me. As long as they don’t bore me. What attracts me with this Tarkan film, the only one I’ve seen, is the insanity of it. It’s obviously written by someone who wasn’t in a clear state of mind, and directed by someone who just didn’t give a fuck about anything - as long as the movie was made.

The cool thing is that they’ve really captured the comic book spirit of it. It’s based on a comic strip and it’s very visible. Not only because the vikings more or less are carbon copies of Asterix and his friends, but the colours, the action scenes, the deliciously silly violence, the faces of the actors. Everyone belongs there and seems to have a lot of fun doing what they’re doing. Even the lead actor, Kartal Tibet, who looks like a Bel Ami twink but with added fake mustache and a very not-so-convincing wig.

The whole storyline is actually quite bizarre. After hyping a female army of thirty (or something), but each one of the women have the strenght of 10 persons, they - and everyone around - gets slaughtered by the evil vikings, including Tarkan’s dog Kurt - and Tarkan swears to take revenge in the name of Kurt, and sets out to kill even more people. Only because of a dog. Sure, dogs are nice and cool, but still...what about those babies getting stabbed and thrown away in graphic detail during the battle? If you directly translate the title it would mean Tarkan vs. the Babystabbers...not really, but it would be very appropriate.To make everything scarier the vikings have their own giant octopus, which peacefully floats on the surface closer and closer to its intended victim until it slowly reaches two of it arms and not so brutally kill...Kill...KILL...the human sacrifice. It’s easy to laugh at it, but hey, have any of you done a Turkish Tarkan vs. Vikings movie? I didn’t think so.

No, the story isn’t much to talk about, but instead it delivers tons and tons of very unrealistic action, bloody stuff too, some cheesy gore and the above mentioned cephalopod mollusc popping up to create terror a couple of times. The music, stolen from everywhere, works great to this crazy mix of comic strip, family movie and bloody revenge flick. I bet Ennio Morricone still have no idea his music was used to enhance a Turkish adventure film!

If you can handle cheap sets and clothes (Fun fact: they didn't use animal skin for the clothes in Tarkan vs. the Vikings. Instead they used real Muppet skin!) you’re in for an amazing ride, a movie that WILL make you happy. Better than psilocybin mushrooms, almost at least.

There’s just one bad thing about it: if Tarkan didn't kill the Vikings this (see below!) could have been the flag of Sweden! Damn Tarkan!

The Stendhal Syndrome (Dario Argento, 1996)

While I’ve always enjoyed the later works of Dario Argento I can be safe to say that The Stendhal Syndrome is his last masterpiece. Uneven, as all his films, but with that original, twisted touch of graphic violence, art and twisted sexuality. I’ve always seen it as Dario Argento ripping off Brian De Palma ripping off Alfred Hitchcock (which of course is something the latter one always do), and I still stand behind that opinion. But this time around I’ve seen more Argento-esque movements and ideas jumping out at me, more than each time before.

As a film I think it’s mostly connected to Tenebrae and Dressed to Kill - the De Palma one because of the wordless and magical scene at the gallery and Tenebrae because of it’s cold, distant style and sudden burst of sadistic sexual violence and graphic, bloody murders. The sex is something I’ve always felt never belonged in Argento’s movies, something producers and distributors demanded when he got more and more popular. Even if his earlier films and up to Inferno have sexual tension it’s always beneath the surface, and almost asexual characters. The only one’s allowed to show their lust is his - often - very interesting LGBT characters, and with interesting I mean not only positive personalities - but that’s like life itself.

The Stendhal Syndrome is more focused on his daughters - Asia’s - adventures with Thomas Kretschmann rapist/serial killer and not so much on getting to know the characters. But Argento dives into his favorite subject, gender, with Asia transforming herself into a very manly version of herself, even simulating a rape against her boyfriend - and later meets a new man, French, with the unisex name Marie, something she’s surprised to learn. The film never reaches deep down into Asia’s psyche, even if Argento and his usual collaborator Franco Ferrini tries. I get the feeling he wants to do a Repulsion, a slow descent into madness, but they only manages to scratch a little bit on the surface. The connection with art never feels totally justified either, more of a gorgeous way to show the madness in Asia.

But the film as a whole, if you’re not staring yourself blind at details, holds up very well. It’s a stunning-looking movie, using the sets and locations to the fullest. Some of the effects doesn’t hold up today, but I can’t be bothered by that! There’s show-stoppers - and I think most people remember the gunshot to the head-scene, still very impressive today, or at least the idea and maybe not always the execution. Asia has always been a very uneven actress (she’s terrible in Dracula 3D for example), but she gives us a fine vulnerability as police inspector Anna Manni here and Thomas Kretschmann delivers a brutal force of sexual malevolence. The rest of the cast is pretty anonymous, pretty boring Italian male faces mixed with some over-acting female actors. Nothing to tell mom about.

The ending borders to stupidity, but so does many Argento-endings (I’m looking at you, Terror at the Opera!), but survives because of the outrageousness - and there, once again, we have the spirit of De Palma coming in, a director who more than Argento loves to step over the line of realism and create pure cinema.

I take back what I wrote in the beginning of the review, The Stendhal Syndrome is not a masterpiece, but it’s sooooooooooooooo close being one. It’s an excellent film which only lacks that final emotional punch to be the best DePalmaRippingOffHitchcock-movie Argento ever made.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future (Antonio Margheriti, 1983)

Yes, if Naomi Watts had chosen YOR instead of that cursed tape in 2002's fine The Ring, she would have been much happier. True story.

This might be the most contrived review ever written. I took the lyrics to Oliver Onion's fantastic song Yor's World and wrote a review from it. That's me. Bored out of his mind and wanna try something new. I admit the quality sinks during the last half, but do you really think it's SO fun writing "funny" reviews, eh? Anyway, here it is: The Yor Review Based On The Lyrics Of Yor's World!

Yor's world, he's the man, as you can se of the gorgeous poster above, is one of those movies who's survived even it's aura of naivety could be regarded at retarded compared to today's polished cinema. But that clean-cut style makes so much more fun. No grittiness, no messages about human nature. Just fun.

Yor's world, he's the man to some of us, who appreciate Reb Brown's catchy performance and cheap rubber-dinosaurs (or  they look more like papier maché!). The question is of course if he's the man to you out there? Let's see...

Yor's world tells the magical story about (you guessed it!) Yor, an expert survivor, hunter and hair-dresser (I'm sure of it!). In a landscape only consisting of phallic symbols of the past, he one day run into a cave woman with perfect teeth, the cool Corinne Cléry, and her father figure, played by Luciano Pigozzi (known as Alan Collin's to many out there) and saves them from getting eaten of a giant toy dinosaur. Together they head out on an adventure to solve Yor's mysterious past!

Lost the world of past, some people say that this is - but I'm not sure about that. I think it's more of another dimension, disguised as earth a couple of millions years ago when blonde perfect men lived side by side by giant creatures and spaceships. And John Steiner with a fake James Earl Jones-voice.

With the echo of ancient blessed I'm also consider Yor a masterpiece of cheese, and I'm hardly unique in that opinion.

Yor's world might be one of the best of it's kind out there, it's sure something you could show to your poor, sensitive mother AND your children without problem - and still enjoy it yourself. It's like Godzilla, it have something for everyone.

There is a man of future and his name is Antonio Margheriti, the director of this adventure. Why he never broke out from his Italian heritage and went for Hollywood is a mystery, because he's obviously the Michael Bay of Italy, and I mean that in a good way.

A man of mystery, but what do we care, he still lives one on our TV-sets!
Yor's world also leads me to it's leading man, Reb Brown. Who was he?

No track to lead the way to what he's become today, a reliable supporting actor very far from the muscular hunks he played in his youth. I'm not so sure he's that perfect as an ancient warrior from the future, with his quirky smile and dorky face. Not to forget that wig...

In his search for a yesterday, a yesterday as a top leading man, he found instead a good career that will keep him busy for the rest of his life.

Yor's world is, in all fairness, a quite shallow, with a harsher word "empty", movie. It's there to entertain for the moment.

Misty illusions hiding the conclusion, as you know, can make a film less important. The joyful filmmaking by Margheriti helps it be one of a kind - imagine the same with out his talent?

His famous destiny was to be a creative filmmaker, but in honesty Yor is not his best. Sometimes, when it's not action or just passages of time, he films the scene with one camera angle, a wide lens to capture it all. It's when it's action, special effects and big melodrama Margheriti wakes up and deliver some top-notch entertainment.

Yor's world is a movie you must see.
Yor's touch of fire will make your film-nerdy hearts burn.
You're the crowd that we desire, Reb Brown and his friends says!
He never seems to sleep, neither the director or crew.
He's always on the run from scene to scene, set-up to set-up.
Even his days are gone Margheriti lives with us everyday, through his movies.
They say he will go on... but no, he can't. Dead people can't go on in my humble opinion.
His search goes on and on, Reb Brown, to find yet a new movie like this to awake his career.

Yor's world is a masterpiece of cheese.

He's the saviour of babes, we're sad he's not gay.

Yor's world has a lot of bloody violence against dinosaurs.

And the world will set fire to every blu-ray player if this movie comes out on that format, but that's because the world is ignorant.

He's going to make all the wild beasts look like boring, bald film critics from Skåne.

Look tame tonight in his tribe, yeah, we all feel like Yor in front of the TV. All alone. So few understands.

Yor's world, he's the man. True.

Yor's world, he's the man. True dat.

Yor's world is something you must see.

He's the saviour of flames, and this review sucks donkey ass.

Yor's world rhymes with Tor's crime.

And the world will set fire to all the blu-ray players, I wrote that above.

Yor's world, yeah I'm bored.

On the slow deathless walk to finish this long text. 

And the world will set fire... I know. Fuck you.

Yor's world, I love you.

Death Warrior (Çetin Inanç, 1984)

Many years ago I held a course in stop-motion animation (yes, I've done literary everything a man can do, except kissing a girl... oh, I've done that to, in the movie Camp Slaughter!) for a bunch of kids up in the north of Sweden. I mostly remember that trip because we ate dinner together with some local politican who was very homophobic and his stupidity created some a brutal awkward silence at the table. But I also remember one of the kids who wanted to learn animation. He obviously suffered from attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, more common as ADHD. The movies he made was, to say the least, "fast". 

The fact is that he probably lived in another dimension and in that dimension he directed Death Warrior. How the f**k can I even describe this film? No, it's not possible. But one thing is for sure: it has an evil Ninja and his Ninja army and they're doing evil Ninja-stuff. Probably kidnapping someone, creating mayhem and being rude. Thank heaves for a cool Turkish cop to save us all, Inspector Kemal (Cüneyt Arkin - who else?). He fights back... and yeah, kinda something like that.

I've seen thousands of movies but Death Warrior is by far the wildest movie I ever seen. Words are easy to write down, so I need to encourage you to actually watch this (for example through the help of Turkish Cult who have a subtitled version in good quality) and then you can return to me and try to have conversation about it. Yeah, it's impossible. You WILL fail. It's like they understood that the movie was so cheap that if they made everything very, very, very, very, very fast no one would notice that they stole the whole Evil Dead soundtrack, footage from Goldfinger and shot the worst car crash in movie history (I'm not sure you can see the short Vine-video below, but I shot six seconds of the crash and added it to the site), made up the script along the way and inserted a lot of fight scenes to make the movie move forward.

The story is almost impossible to make out, but the weird editing and the frantic pace mixed with some interesting horror-style details (I wouldn't call it a horror movie anyway), like a hypnotic montage towards the end that's impossible to describe, makes Death Warrior a fantastic film to enjoy. Hopefully with friends, because being alone watching something like this would be a sad waste of entertainment. 

Now, this is a crappy, trashy film. Cheap and sloppily made. But it's difficult NOT to see that Cüneyt Arkin IS a very cool man. He's not a bad actor and he handles the action very well. He also looks extremely cool (and makes the pointless worship of professional homophobe and conspiracy theorist Chuck Norris even more strange, why not worship Arkin? He's cooler, better and a much nicer guy - and still offers a lot of campy action) with that rugged, manly look that attracts both men and women. The fight scenes are very aggressive and violent - so much that I wish they didn't have to speed them up so much. They would have worked good anyway.

I'm not sure to who I would recommend Death Warrior, it's one of those movies that just the chosen ones will appreciate. The rest might stick to something more mainstream, like the 1974 Turkish classic Karate Girl. A bit more coherent and yeah, a real movie.