Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam aka. Turkish Star Wars (1982)

 

Director: Çetin Inanç

Screenplay: Cüneyt Arkın

Cast: Cüneyt Arkın as Murat; Aytekin Akkaya as Ali; Necla Fide as the Queen; Hüseyin Peyda as Bilgin; Hikmet Taşdemir as Sihirbaz

 

I considered films through a black and white viewpoint when I was younger. They had to have clear narratives and be well made, something which made “Turkish Star Wars”, as I first learnt of it as, one of the worst films I had ever saw when I viewed it at sixteen or so in a bender of Google Video viewings. Now my views have changed, where films of immense quality become greater but I can appreciate something like this, which comes in the context where Turkey’s film board was not allowing Western films like Star Wars (1977) into the country¹, leading to one of the most infamous “Turkploitation” films to be produced by a director known as a “jet director” for getting films made within ten days¹. Let us not kid ourselves, even next to other Turksploitation films, this is one of the more erratic I have ever seen, its infamy deserved for its shamelessness and how, honestly, it is an utter mess even if its unpredictability is something to also admire.

After centuries of change where atomic wars have decimated most of it and pieces of the continents have drifted off into space, Earth (which suspiciously looks like squashed Death Star) is under attack by an immortal wizard. With the planet protected by a force field created from human brainwaves, the wizard needs human brains, or at least one, to destroy it and attack Earth, forcing two Turkish space pilots onto his own planet where they must face his bizarre hordes of monsters and stop his plans of galactic destruction. Turkish Star Wars is infamous, as a low budget Turksploitation film, for taking footage from Star Wars and using music from everything from that film to Flash Gordon (1980). The montage of attractions theory created by Sergei E. Eisenstein is decimated by the slapdash editing of this, where even the use of music and sound clips is as hastily put together as the visuals, and yet has a drastic effect on the viewer when viewed together in this narrative. The difference is that, while Eisenstein wanted to elicit certain emotions from the viewer, this film causes stupefied amazement instead.

Turkish Star Wars, revisiting it, is a glorious mess, the plot synopsis my attempt to comprehend a film which can suddenly lunge forward, even into the middle of a fight without warning, to the next plot point, where monsters suddenly appear out of nowhere and the theme from Indiana Jones, used behind the main hero, suddenly battles with the villain’s Flash Gordon synth within the same scene. Random zombies or the fact there are nunchaku in space are the less strange aspects to this film, which is frankly a disaster in terms of the material being put together if you were to judge it severely for its technical qualities.  Even with the English subtitles over the years not being perfect, this as well in terms of the script feels an over-elaborate take, where its lead actor Cüneyt Arkın, a well regarded and prolific figure in his homeland, got to write the script too but it feels like everything he wanted to go with too ambitious for its production craft. For what is a simple tale of heroes versus a human blood drinking space wizard who just wants a human brain, not plural, to destroy the Earth he was once a person on, this lost a lot of the point with everything else Arkın wanted to include for profoundness. The result in watching it, and trying to understand it, is like becoming a paper bag in the wind which drops you off by the end confused and alarmed.

The decision to use so much pre-existing work is as much part of the confusion, as using the Star Wars footage for production value makes less sense as the film goes, a detriment to sanity as none of the re-appropriated Star Wars footage makes sense, especially if suggested (by the Death Star in another role) the Earth is destroyed at one point only to not. It is as much a collage of pre-existing science fiction and fantasy works beyond that film, in its premise and pieces, including things that were not directly included in the film but evoked for me accidentally, as the creators of the film could cram into a single movie and made into a cabinet of baffling curiosities. With our main hero (played by Cüneyt Arkın), who bounces around like Taylor Kitsch in John Carter (of Mars) (2012), and his womanising friend whose famous whistle to attract women accidentally conjures up skeletal horsemen to his annoyance, we see them fight everything from TV headed robots and cybermen from a fifties b-movie, toilet paper mummies out of genre, and to paraphrase a description my younger self used when he viewed this the first time, the bastard feral children of Elmo from Sesame Street. There are even henchmen clearly wearing budget Fu Manchu and Devil masks among the goons. My struggles with the film still are softened because of this, where the film does drag but, if you can tolerate its tone, is starling and hilarious in a positive way. Between the lengthy narrative exposition, it is effective a series of long, continuous fight scenes where anti-war philosophy and appropriated Western iconography is matched with a beast having its head karate chopped off or a severed head thrown at another so hard they explode.

The philosophy and mythology in the film adds the cherry to the top of its cake, where knowing its lead actor is writing this provides a sympathy for the film even if, from the first few minutes in with the narration trying to explain the world it is setting up, his script did not translate onscreen in a way that would be coherent for everyone. The film is a stream of consciousness of unconventional ideas, quaint ideas of hope, and erratic science fiction ideas that adds to the incomprehensible but delightfully creative mass you see (and hear and read) onscreen. That it includes religion, with an Islamic subtext, adds to the sincerity of the film that is an unexpected turn as well, even if it goes towards putting context to a sacred sword and a brain. There is also the bromance between the leads which also is admirable, one so strong your brains are psychically linked and, regardless of the running gag of one of them believing himself to be a womanizer, becomes the real romance of the production.

The flaws even in terms of this type of cinema is that it does rush through so much of itself with far more concern, for all things, for its lore about the “13^th Tribe” of Earth’s ancestors blown off the planet, literally, rather than making sure the work is a little bit more cohesive to appreciate its simple premise. When it can stay for a minute and take a breath, even some of its goofier moments also become better for this, like the training montage of punching rocks, tying them to ones legs to run and jump, or just kicking then as projectile weapons. It is a film on a purely silly level something you are glad exists, because it has someone karate chop a monster’s arms off and then impale them claw first into their torsos, and it would be improved simply if this had been a little bit more cohesive then what we got. What you get nonetheless, as an artefact from filmmaking history is nonetheless compelling if you have the patience for this.

For those people, over eighty minutes, this is the kind of janky spluttering that would be a breath of fresh air for those willing to experience it. There is more pain to be experienced with something which is technically more cohesive but has no effect, whilst here the vividness of Turkish Star Wars and its own unpredictability is worth cherishing even if we all admit that would never win any technical awards for quality. It is a film you need to see once, even if you hate it, and now that my tastes have changed and I can see its virtues, I look back at my younger self who found it unbearable and ponder how much of a naive sourpuss he was.

 

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1) The strange case of Turkish Star Wars, written for Esquire Middle East.

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.

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.

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!

Those moustaches - a trite thing to start a review on, but for this return for me into Turkish genre cinema, among the many trademarks of them, it has also included a strong facial hair game on the male cast. When their rip-off of Spiderman, in 3 Dev Adam (1973), had eyebrows so strong his mask couldn't contain them, then the moustaches in this film, smash cutting to a battle between rival armies, will be just as magnificent.

To be more serious, The Sword and the Claw is one of the best made of these Turkish genre films I have seen, but that unfortunately means that, even if they were more technically shambolic, this film does lack the unpredictability of a film like 3 Dev Adam, a double edged sword for a film which imagines 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, but could have done with a lot more weirdness than we got.

It does evoke 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 is notably a more preserved and shining work, as this is a preserved released from the American Genre Film Archive, the first Turkish genre film I have seen as intended with its bright look and a very colourful production. Even the costumes and production design with comic book like bright colours (especially purple), adds a bit of distinction of note when I have usually seen films like this in muddy forms online. The voice acting is still peculiar; not to blame AGFA or the original Turkish film production, but one factor to overcome for this version of the film is that the English dub is "subdued" to say the least. As in monotone and bad, that was a clear influnecing factor on the film for me in its sluggish moments.

Personally, as a fan of AGFA even if I have to import their releases, I can still appreciate this film even as an okay piece of pulp than one of their more idiosyncratic titles. You can still see a style of filmmaking different from today emphasised by the fact it is more technically solid in its production - from the excessive use of trampolines in having the characters bound around, to the fact that to show the lead being raised by lions, in-between the archive footage, you do have a young boy onscreen with a real lion cub, which is insane to image being done on a set decades later. 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 is films were churned out. 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. It is surprising to think that Turkey, both as a country known in terms of cinema in the modern day for the likes of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and being mainly a Muslin country, had genre films like this which skirted with gore and even a little bit of eroticism. Certainly the amount of the hand trauma here in the film, including being lopped off, is excessive if part of the tone.

The problem is ironically why a film like Turkish Star Wars (a.k.a. Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam) (1982) is difficult for many to enjoy, and also why it would be impossible to release legally without the copyright being a nightmare. Turksploitation is a world of the unpredictable, a drastic left turn from acclaimed art house films like Ceylan's. Even if I adore the arthouse films, and many of genre films from any country disappoint, there is something tantalising about the few Turkish films I have seen being as wild as they can be, wilder than The Sword and the Claw despite AGFA'S promotion of it. In fact, beyond the gore, this is a far more subdued production in the world of whiplash editing and abrupt use of Star Wars music. In the perfect world, with men with steel lion claws scaling whole castle walls in real time and throwing soldiers around like ragdolls, this movie would have had a greater manic energy and absurdity to match its admirable attempt at being more cohesive.

Halloween 31 For 31: Dracula in İstanbul (1953)

From http://horrorpediadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/
03/drakula-istanbulda.jpg?w=696&h=1024

(aka. Drakula Istanbul'da)

Dir. Mehmet Muhtar

Noticing a gap in the decades covered, all there was left were two. The 1910s and early cinema since its existence, which is a vast area that does need to be uncovered for myself, knowing well how much of it has unfortunately vanished never to be seen again, and how much is not available from what has survived. The other is the 1950s. Giant creatures, aliens, the Kaiju growing as a genre or commie scare stories. Not a lot of it looks like its unconventional, but at least be quirky. A potentially rich era are for me more for gazing at the flying saucers on screen then discuss unconventional editing techniques. So let's cover a Turkish Dracula film instead. One story, three reviews for this season - Dario Argento's, a camp and now fascinating misfire; Francis Ford Coppola's, how you adapt it as a film; now for Mehmet Muhtar's. The Jonathan Harker figure, as in the previous two covered, goes to the castle of the Count for the purpose of negotiating a deal on estate, Dracula taking inclination for the female population where Hawker has come from and their blood, especially his fiancée Guzin, the Mina character.

From http://www.spookyisles.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/drakula-istanbul-da-main.jpg

It's the same Dracula plot but set in Turkey. Technically, it's an adaptation of a novel by Ali Riza Seyfi from 1928, though what exactly is different from Dracula the story is up to debate. Mina, as Guzin, is now a dancer and performer, there is no Van Helsing but an old male doctor instead, no Renfield, and only one female vampire briefly in Dracula's castle like with Argento's adaptation. From here Dracula prays off the Lucy stand-in and eventually takes interest in Guzin. I unfortunately have to cut to the chase, hoping for an entertaining Turkploitation film when I started watching it, and say that this was a tedious viewing experience. Some of the film has amusement. Admittedly the subtitles were a part of this, but considering how battered the film looked in the version I viewed, maybe too obscure to have a DVD release, I can appreciate any type of subtitle that at least let's me understand what's going on. I can appreciate Dracula's male servant at the castle, with a giant, bushy moustache and going against his master's wishes by purposely helping Hawker to protect his neck. The few moments of supernatural powers of Dracula are depicted including crawling down a wall are watchable. And anyone can appreciate a fake bat transformation. But a lot of the film is tedious for one very simple reason - the pointless, unnecessary interest in dialogue. Here, with Dracula In Istanbul, I have proof that, unless it's to do with the subtitles and language barrier, that no one should attempt lengthy dialogue scenes unless they are good at them, and stick to action and events happening instead. So many genre films are clearly created by people who think it's better to have lengthy dialogue sequences which add no character development when you actually stop and think about them. The word, the monologue, conversation, is seen as immensely important in cinema, and for every example where it proves to be true, the rest of the time it's a holdover from theatre and a little bit from literature, though we only realise with the latter when you read a novel that dialogue is not necessarily the backbone of them compared to visual world building. Dialogue is only good when its good or hilarious.

From http://bocadoinferno.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Dracula-in-Istanbul-1953-4.jpg

Characters talk in Dracula In Istanbul talk. They talk a lot. Of their relationships and about Dracula, and none of it is needed. Most of it isn't funny intentionally or not, or interesting baring an occasional line. Some amusement is found in it, some interesting, one case where even in Turkish Dracula you have the famous "Children of the night" quote. But most of it is white noise, comparable to the many, swarming scratches and scars on the film on the version I saw, but at least the damage visually was registered, while at times I suddenly fell out of physical awareness of what was going on when characters started talking I admit parts of the film are blank in memory while I was watching it in real time. Only moments directly related to its supernatural story woke me up, connecting tangentially - those from the original tale or whenever Dracula is involved, like canoodling with a female victim by the sea in full sunlight (?!). This led to the film being a cut-up of sequences which I drifted through, registering only as vaguely interesting bits. This should be interesting for me, who references surrealism in these reviews and dream logic, realising in a film a vague connection of sequences thought-up in a haze, but here I felt the long drags even if it was in a stupor where the images didn't register.

From http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws.com/image/png/
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Viewing this film forces me to realise that a big percentage of cult cinema - the space between appreciating a film for its flaws and "so bag its good" - is mostly worthless to me. Dare I say it, I'm growing up and realising that I cannot stand sitting through shonky overlong dialogue no matter what nationality it was originally written for. The first film covered for this season Things (1989) qualifies in this category of cinema, but movies like it are an exception because its beyond the merely incompetent on the technical level that most "bad" films are, which is why I like that film. I immediately think of the film that really does need the tag "Turksploitation" on it, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam aka. Turkish Star Wars (1982), one of the most technically incompetent films I've seen but it's not just another movie with risible production. Most bad films, like Dracula In Istanbul on this viewing, are bloated, over wordy, don't actually deliver anything of interest. Turkish Star Wars is, in a perverse way, the more technically accomplished film in terms of incompetence for its haphazard editing, its music, its content and set design, and most importantly not for scenes of actors mostly talking but actually giving you the goods in terms of memorable scenes. It becomes a good movie because of its memorable content and energy regardless of its technical imperfections.

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Dracula In Istanbul, despite the battered version I saw, was clearly a respectable film. It seems bad in fact to have used "Turksploitation" in context to it because barring the fact it's Dracula, it's the kind of mainstream horror movie for a big audience in tone, with romance, an opening quarter in a gothic castle, scares and even dance numbers. But its lifeless, with people sitting around or standing, talking, rather than events of interest taking place. Even the horror content, when you get to it, has no power to it. No fright, no tension. Dracula is not menacing or seductive here because he's not allowed to be. He's allowed a funny moment glaring at someone whilst  laying in his coffin because they've smacked him in the head with a shovel, but this isn't a role where the titular being really gets to terrify Istanbul at all. Baring the fact that a minature Koran, rather than a cross, is used to ward off Dracula, there's little in terms of interesting cultural additions with this, more surprising when Dracula's real life inspiration, Vlad the Impaler, was an enemy of Turkey, which should've lead to fascinating additions along with the religious and cultural differences from other Dracula adaptations. At the end there isn't even a climatic duel. It involves suddenly going into a graveyard, borrowing a blade and getting out after before someone is arrested, which is an exact part of the dialogue in the scene after. The remaining characters talk about life getting back to normal, completely casual and nonplussed, barring the fact one never wants to see garlic again. There is no jubilation, just as if a mosquito has just been swatted. Nothing has a weight and the result is dreary.

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Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Don't expect anything remotely unconventional here. A dance sequence gets ghoulish, keys on a piano moving on their own fruition, but that's it.

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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?

Inherently, a Turkish Dracula is, because Turkish genre cinema is not really talked about. Turkish art cinema is talked about more  for obvious reasons, genre films looked down upon especially when they borrow music by John Williams. Only blogs and websites that really dig deep cover Turkish genre cinema, and I know that as a fact as, shameless plug, I write for a site called Videotape Swapshop that has many an entertaining Turksploitation review from my colleagues. This one I've covered would probably test a lot though, and I speak as a Turkish Star Wars fan. In tone and actual content, it's not a film for the site, a pedestrian and utterly dull movie that really shouldn't be here. I realise with a film like this that I need to put away my toys and act like an adult, to use the phrase, because this material was and never will be of interest for me. The closest to this that I love are films that are bizarre even placed next to similar films, and they are rare exceptions when the delight many get in these films is the overlong dialogue and bad fashion, which is not of interest for me. Only the curious should view this, and it's amazing now Dario Argento's Dracula (2012) is a peek above this in terms of quality even if it shares similar flaws.