Mandrake vs. Killing (1967)

 

Director: Oksal Pekmezoglu

Screenplay: Oksal Pekmezoglu

Cast: Güven Erte as Mandrake; Mine Mutlu as Princess Neslihan; Sadettin Düzgün as Killing; Hilal Esen as Bircan; Mustafa Dik as Abdullah; Cemil Sayin as Mustapha

Ephemeral Waves

 

This is last change, slut!

There are some types of film where you need to go into them with a different context, or you will ask yourself many questions. In this case, this is pertinent when Turkish cinema has its auteurs, award winning filmmakers like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and has films preserved by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation like and films even preserved by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation like Metin Erksan's Dry Summer (1964), so I wish to provide this context out of respect for a country's cinema I have barely scratched the surface of. Likewise I respect what is known as "Turksploitation", a type of cinema which may be the only be the only Turkish films some have seen, a type of cinema which is notorious as an exploitation genre entirely codified around its country of origin, has been viewed entirely through irony, and with notorious titles like Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (1982), a.k.a. Turkish Star Wars, or 3 Dev Adam (1973), the film where Spider Man has gone evil and where, as with both films, copyright proved entirely non-existent within certain Turkish films. Especially as the examples quoted, and Mandrake vs. Killing to be honest, being very low budget films less coordinated by elaborate plots but spectacle and jarring tonal changes, these films could be contentious if viewed as the only films more commonly known from their nation, and even out of that context, they are curiosities you have to acclimatise to for how idiosyncratic they are.

Mandrake vs. Killing for example feels like an artefact from an alien dimension. Feeling older in tone than its late sixties creation, like a later fifties or early sixties genre film with its initial noir set up - a woman fleeing from men trying to kill her in the prologue, only to be disposed of - by way of spy rock guitar on the score. I have to address the title immediately; as mentioned, copyright was an urban legend, a fascinating touch to certain territories and their cinema as Turkey was not the only one who used other countries' work without permission. I have seen this from South Korea with animation to West Asian takes on the likes of Robocop to even the Salman Rushdie and Satanic Verses controversy, but Turkey managed to be so infamous for this with Western films they got an entire genre mostly born from these films. With the likes of E.T. to The Wizard of Oz remade in Turkish, it is also the escalation they could go with this, where 3 Dev Adam is not just the fact Spider Man has become so evil he tortures people with guinea pigs posing as giant rats, but that the Turkish government is forced to hire foreign figures to stop him, Captain America and the legendary Mexican luchador wrestler El Santo is played by Turkish actors. The two titular characters are obscurer figures, but comes from two territories of comic book history, making a fascinating cross pollination of heritages even if legally problematic and loose in the interpretation.

It does raise a question of how these characters became known in Turkish circles, as with all pop culture reinterpreted through these notorious exploitation films, and how comic books and comic strips like this came to Turkey and warranted director/screenwriter Oksal Pekmezoglu to improvise with them. Mandrake the Magician is an American newspaper strip from the earlier pulp heroes, apt as his creator Lee Falk a couple of years later, Mandrake starting in 1934, also created the Phantom. Mandrake went as far as joining the Phantom, and pulp hero Flash Gordon, in Defenders of the Earth (1986-7), a children's animated series. He could have nearly had a film based on him by Federico Fellini, the legendary Italian filmmaker, with legendary actor Marcello Mastroianni in the role, something that never came to be but was explicitly referred to in 1987’s Intervista, a Fellini film where Mastroianni did get to done the magician's suit briefly onscreen¹. Mastroianni also played the character in a special version of a "fumetti", a photo comic which is a sub-genre where photographs of actors/models act out the stories with dialogue bubbles used, in a 1972 French Vogue special issue which may have been edited with help by Fellini himself¹.

This is apt, as Killing is a character from Italian comic book history, and comes from fumetti. Italy's legacy of comic books is rich - Mario Bava fans, late nineties animated series viewers and even Beastie Boys fans may know of Diabolik, one of the country's most famous anti-heroes. Killing had his work published in Turkey, also known as KiLiNK there², and alongside Mandrake have not had the most drastic alterations to them you can have, considering some of the more infamous Turksploitation films in existence, as Killing in his source material was a sadistic villain with a penchant for many of the things he gets up to here. The villain here too, he is a heavily scarred man decked in a skeleton costume when he works who, in a nod of respect to Turkey's infamous exploitation films, is distinct even out of his source material's villains costume. Even a true bastardisation like Spider Man in 3 Dev Adam make their takes interest, with the actor having eyebrows so large they came through the mask's eyeholes, and standing out for having his goons in his introduction mangle a woman's head with a boat propeller; here, much closer to the source material in behaviour, Killing nonetheless stands out even among said goons, his female beau marked with a "K" on her breast, others on the face, and his main henchman Mustapha with a "K" between cheek and mouth with the additional distinction of his almost short blonde/skin head appearance.

Killing is truly reprehensible, happy to kill women, even to torture them, though this begins the strange paradox, despite the source character playing to his trade, that much of this film in tone would be a more family friendly pulp narrative, only contrasted by the likes of its strange prurient touch of no explicit sex, and a group of characters you would presume would be for kids or a playful superhero tone, but will include explicit torture and explicit undressing of women to expose actresses' backs. This is especially the case when Mandrake is a pulp hero for the kids here, with broken God-like abilities to bend reality alongside a playful sense of humour, going from the early trick of switching a photographer's camera to a plaster hand, and eventually showing he can even reverse time itself briefly by way of reversed footage. Mandrake is also helped by a young woman, but also a hulking man servant Abdullah. Abdullah for the most part, really, is a lovable goof with the strength of an elephant, but you cannot escape the fact he is a Turkish actor beyond blackface to full blacken body paint on what is unclothed on his body. Again, this is something more common in other regions' cinema, not just something to rightly damn North America or us the British with The Black and White Minstrel Show about.

Mandrake vs. Killing is only fifty plus minutes long, a potpourri that is beamed from another existence. In spite of a simple plot - a stolen crown of a visiting princess, which Mandrake first borrowed into his bedroom as a joke - escalates into moments happening just because. This does feel like a dream. It is not just the English subtitles on the version I saw, a heavily scratched and scanned print, having a blunt lack of full sentence retranslation, but the tone of the material itself. This does have a messy nature to events which in a longer film, like Turkish Star Wars, turns into full delirium which is an acquired taste. Everything is simplistic, which would make this tone a shock for those unused to this. More so this is due to the contrast of very playful tonal aspects, like slaphappy fight scenes, contrasted by its misanthropic turns, that for two pulp characters this still has Killing, even as an anti-hero in his source, having his men whipping women, and even enjoys being whipped himself for pleasure.

This is continually contrasted by the more friendlier aspects, that alongside the leads including a lovable goof in Abdullah, Mandrake's powers include a code of honour to not kill and being badass enough to ride a motorbike helmetless wearing a cape. He will also, unless the scene's editing was off, capable of turning Killing into a German Sheppard dog whilst sleeping, which is bizarre especially when it contrasts the extremity of the violence, something I have found in other Turkish exploitation films as a curious mix. This mix of the whimsical and the extreme does stand out among many of the moments of Mandrake vs. Killing, which can go from this to cutting to a romantic beach frolic between Mandrake and the Princess set to a song clearly borrowed from a Bollywood film. This is a minor film from the vein of strangeness in cinema, compelling to have watched but very curious for reasons like this, a baffling production even if a distinct one for me.

 

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1) As documented in Lee Falk’s Phantom of Happy Memory — And Fellini and Falk’s Mandrake!, posted on April 25th 2016 by Mike Glyer.

2) Taken from Comic Vine's short section on Killing.