The Sword and the Claw (1975)

 

a.k.a. Lionman

Director: Natuk Baytan

Screenplay: Natuk Baytan and Duygu Sagiroglu             

Cast: Cüneyt Arkin as Süleyman Sah / Kiliçaslan; Bahar Erdeniz as Ayla; Yildirim Gencer as Kumandan Antuan; Cemil Sahbaz as Altar; Reha Yurdakul as Rüstem Bey; Anuska as Sabbah; Tarik Simsek as Komutan; Ekrem Gökkaya as Papaz Basaryos; Necdet Kökes as Zipzip; Aynur Aydan as Prenses Maria; Yusuf Sezer as Demirpençe  

Ephemeral Waves

 

You can't even open a door for me - idiots!

The medieval Byzantine empire: forced to unite after a war, one man with his group rebel against the Emperor Soloman in a coup d'état, but not without the Emperor’s lineage surviving after the assassination. Both a princess married to the rebel leader Anton, but who loved the Emperor instead, and the Emperor’s wife, bore sons. The empress lets her son be saved, as she passes during child birth fleeing, said son Süleyman Sah (our lead Cüneyt Arkin) being raised by lions, whilst the other is raised by the evil Anton as his own whilst his mother is thrown in the dungeon.

From Turkey, there is its own distinct style to these films.  Lacking the unpredictability of 3 Dev Adam (1973) - the infamous film where Spiderman is the villain, so villainous the Turkish government needs to hire Mexican wrestler Santo and Captain American to take him down - what you get here, with its very quiet and matter-of-fact English dub, is one of the more elaborate productions next to those infamous “Turksploitation” films with its bright colourful interiors and costumes. When I first saw The Sword and the Claw, I was disappointed with how more subdued it was next to a film like 3 Dev Adam, a double edged sword for a work which still has its own energy you can appreciate, but was unfairly being propped against some of the most infamous films to come from Turkey’s cinematic output, the kind of one-offs you do not watch but let soak into your eyes. What this instead evokes us old Asian kung fu films from the seventies onwards, not just the Hong Kong films but Korean and Taiwanese films I have seen on old second hand DVDs,  with less than stellar prints, and English dubs with a tendency to add egregious cussing and a lot of odd flections in the voicing. This comparison is apt because the narrative to The Sword and the Claw is one you have seen before, and the entertainment regardless of cultural differences between them in meat-and-potatoes pulpy action with an emphasis on its quirks radiating the more you can appreciate the film.

This film images a Jungle Book scenario (a young boy raised by lions after his king father and mother are slain by a warring leader) with a Medieval sword epic and pulp action, which mixed with the tone of a lesser known martial arts film does present a curious concoction, more so as, whilst Cüneyt Arkin was a trained martial artist, when it comes with the other participants in the cast there is a greater emphasis on punches in the fight scenes, alongside the excessive use of trampolines in having the characters bound around, clearly a troupe of this country’s cinema or something Arkin really liked doing.

There is still some unpredictability here but it is things you could miss or not reflect on fully, such as the fact that Cüneyt Arkin is filmed with real lions, as Soloman’s son develops claw attacks like his lion siblings, the right strength to take on Anton’s evil, tax raising sadists. Certainly in context to another of lead Arkin’s films, the infamous Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (1982), or Turkish Star Wars as most know it as, this is a more subdued production. It really becomes his film, and there is praise to be had that he became a star even known in the West, bouncing on off-screen trampolines for jumps to tiger clawing extras to death here, even if by way of infamy. Cüneyt Arkin before his 2022 became a beloved figure in his homeland, but he can be appreciated for the fact that even Turkish Star Wars, for all its notoriety, managed to get a fanbase in the West for the madness of it, with The Sword and the Claw allowing one to appreciate him as an action actor clearly having a blast as a fighting lead. Certainly, Cüneyt Arkin is a striking lead who does not even have to talk for the most part, whose main trademark is mostly jumping on his opponents and pawing at them, leading to a lot of red paint gore being smeared on extras' faces, which anyone can appreciate.

This one as one of the few Turkish genre films from this era that have been more preserved, from the American Genre Film Archive, and you can see the colourful spectacle of the film, which I appreciate now more because the higher expectation was lost and its idiosyncrasies were found in their place. You see, able to appreciate the film in contrast to those in muddy forms online like other “Turksploitation” movies, its tone more cohesive than Turkish Star Wars and yet still feeling like an old film compared to others from decades later which I came to appreciate. Certainly, I can get behind this type of obvious pulpy genre cinema, and it does have a sequel called Lionman II: The Witchqueen (1979), which could have elaborated on this world but is sadly a film lost in time or would need a lot of searching for. By itself, now able to appreciate the production for what it actually was, this tale of men with steel lion claws scaling whole castle walls in real time and throwing soldiers around like ragdolls has won me over. Even if it does not have the manic energy of the films impossible to release legally without the copyright being a nightmare, without the whiplash editing and abrupt use of Star Wars music, this was a fun lark to see.