Three Supermen at the Olympic Games (Turkey, 1984)

Three Supermen at the Olympic Games looks like what happens when the universe itself rises up in defiance at the existence of yet another entry in the Three Supermen series. One cannot so much review it as draw a chalk outline around it, so does it resemble a sloppy corpse left behind by a disorganized killer. Of course, many of its deficits can be understood when you consider that it was one of the few Turkish entries in the Three Supermen series, which seem to exist only to make the Italian Three Supermen films look like Avengers movies by comparison.

Still, Three Supermen at the Olympic Games is shoddy even by the standards of Turkish trash cinema. There is the usual needle-dropped score (mostly John Williams’ themes to Superman: The Motion Picture), but, beyond that, evidence of the film being used as a sort of clearing house for misbegotten footage from other films is plentiful. Actors were apparently asked to recite their dialogue in close-up against a plain green backdrop, presumably to serve as a kind of narrative glue for insertion into the film as needed. I can’t tell whether this was done out of ignorance of the meaning of the term “green screen”, or if there had been some intention to insert backgrounds behind the actors at some point and someone eventually just said ‘fuck it.” Whichever the case, this practice only serves to increase the disjointed feeling of the movie--with these pallid looking shots of the actors reciting their lines at an uncomfortably intimate remove frequently interrupting the already mismatched scenes.

Given all this, summarizing the plot of Three Supermen at the Olympic Games would be difficult under any circumstances – the IMDB threw up its hands with “Three supermen go to Olympics and mayhem ensues”—which means that watching it without English subtitles, as I of course did, makes it as indecipherable as an alien message in a Stanislaw Lem novel. Still, here’s my best shot:

The Three Supermen (Levent Çakir in a canary yellow wig; Yilmaz Koksal as the stuttering, mentally challenged Superman; and Stefano Martinenghi, the son of director Italo Martinenghi) somehow end up in the service of the Greek goddess Hera (Filiz Özten) and fend off an assortment of medieval knights and modern day gangsters before finally rescuing a stolen briefcase from some pirates. The end.

As you might have guessed from the above, Three Supermen at the Olympic Games’ sense of period is pretty fluid, allowing for elements of ancient Greece, Medieval Europe, and modern day Turkey to intermingle freely on the screen without any kind of visual transition. Probably the most welcome of these anachronisms is a LOT of recycled footage from the comparatively delightful earlier Supermen film 3 Supermen vs. Mad Girl. Returning for a well deserved encore are the colorfully garbed Mad Girl herself (Mine Sun), her army of minions in satiny green Klansmen’s robes, her boss in his dime store devil mask, and, most welcome of all, that silly cardboard box robot with his unmistakably phallic laser gun. The only problem with this footage is that it’s vibrant, comic book inspired color scheme makes the rest of Three Supermen at the Olympic Games look pretty drab by comparison.

You might think that I’m oversimplifying Three Supermen at the Olympic Games, and you’re probably right. For instance, you Syd Field acolytes out there might ask what the point of all its muddled action is—or, to put a finer point on it, what is exactly at stake in it. Could it be, as the title suggests, the Olympic Games themselves? It’s questionable, since we see only a little of those games at both the films’ beginning and end, and there’s reason to suspect that the stock footage used is not of the Olympics at all.

Also, I have to confess to my synopsis being marred by my inability to account for certain of the film’s repeated bits of business, such as the brief clip of Levent Çakir looking into the camera while “flying” (i.e. either being hoisted on a crane or lying on an elevated plank) over a small boat that pops up with numbing regularity. Especially vexing was the Fu Man-Chu wannabe using a mixing console for a control panel who shows up on a television screen at irregular intervals to spout a mouthful of (presumably) expository dialog. Admittedly, these bits, had I understood them, might have smoothed over some of the films more jarring transitions, and if so, that’s my bad. Or is it? Is it my fault that this movie was not in English? I’ll let you decide.

Three Supermen at the Olympic Games’ director Italo Martinenghi, a producer of the original Supermen films in his native Italy, had brought the series to Turkey in the hope of lowering production costs. Three Supermen at the Olympic Games’ stands as testament to the fact that he was resoundingly successful in achieving that goal. It’s hard to imagine it looking any cheaper. If I could recommend it for any reason, it’s that the footage from Supermen vs. Mad Girl it contains is, in most cases, much crisper than that seen in the version of Mad Girl that’s currently available. All the better to appreciate the mighty Dickbot in the light that he so deserves.

Antar in the Land of the Romans, aka Antar Fi Bilad Ir Ruman (Lebanon/Turkey, 1974)

Antarah ibn Shaddad earned his place in history through his contributions to Arabic literature, but in Arabic pop cinema he is known primarily for kicking ass. This is as true in the previously reviewed Antar the Black Prince, which featured the ferocious Egyptian star Farid Chawki, as it is with the Lebanese/Turkish co-production Antar in the Land of the Romans. But, while Chawki managed to maintain a modicum of regal bearing throughout all of his muscle flexing -- allowing Antar the Black Prince to maintain some air of historical pageantry amid all its violence and sensationalism -– Antar in the Land of the Romans is a straight up peplum with Antar as a Hercules-like figure, and its muscle farming star – like Chawki, made up in black face for the part -- a dead ringer for a minstrel Lou Ferrigno.

Directed in Lebanese and Turkish friendly versions, with a mixed Turkish and Lebanese cast, by Samir ul-Ghusayni and Orhon M. Ariburnu, respectively, Antar in the Land of the Romans is an efficient and ruthlessly cheap little film. Literally every expense is spared in presenting us with the glory that was Rome. But first we join Antar in his homeland, where he is being dispatched by his tribal elders on some kind of quest. This time paired with a dopey sidekick named Murad, he bids farewell to his legendary love Abla (played, I think, by Turkish actress Taroub) and heads off toward flimsy sets unknown. The first stop is to steal from a shape sifting sorceress some kind of sparkly, magical shawl that doesn’t seem to end up having much in the way of plot utility.

However, things really kick into gear when we meet the siren Claudia, a vicious and sexually insatiable Roman royal who routinely has her minions toss her spent lovers out of the palace window. When she meets Antar, it is very clear that she like-a what she sees, but Antar, inconveniently, is all “Abla, Abla, Abla”. This does not sit well, and Claudia immediately begins plotting Abla’s capture, aided by her scantily clad handmaidens and a jealous centurion named Marcus (3 Dev Adam’s Santo himself, Yavus Selekman). Thus begins the repeated cycle of captivity, picturesque torture and rescue that exhausts the remainder of Antar in the Land of the Roman’s running time.

One needn’t be a movie detective to divine, fairly early on, that cheesecake and sexploitative shenanigans are Antar in the Land of the Romans’ raison d’être. As such, its actresses devote much of their screen time to the wearing of transparent nightwear and sexy banana eating. This, of course, is very dumb, but I’m afraid that decrying it would be somewhat hypocritical on my part as the women in the film are uniformly stunning and wear the little that they do very well. The actress who plays Claudia, in particular, is a real looker, as well as an ace at the haughty proclamations and looking of daggers that her role requires. I wish I could tell you who she is, but aside from some studied forum commentary, information on this film is very scarce.

Brisk and silly, Antar in the Land of the Romans plumps up its simple plot with a lot of satisfyingly low rent sword and sorcery trappings. There’s a weird looking giant in a furry suit with a mace and, at one point, a nude hippie nymph appears out of nowhere to do a stoned dance for Antar and Murad in the forest. The fights are staged terribly, especially those involving swords, but there are many of them, and we repeatedly get to see Antar hoist his opponents overhead and throw them Dara Singh style. Oh, and there is some gore, too. All in all, though the version that I watched was the Lebanese cut of the film, its reckless desire to entertain placed its Turkish DNA well in evidence.

At Antar in the Land of the Romans’ climax, Claudia puts Antar in a cage -- yes, she did! -- and we finally get to see the full fledged hulking out that we’ve been anticipating all along. A rage amped Antar pulls the bars apart, after which many centurions are so woefully flung. In the end, Claudia’s strange attempts to win the affections of the great warrior poet prove resoundingly ineffective as, true beloved in his arms, he hulks off into the sunset. The princess is left with nothing but her own bitterness -- and we Western Antar fans are left to plumb even more remote depths of world cinema to find his further exploits. Sniff.

The Fury of Hercules (Italy/France, 1962)

One of the things I love about the bustling Italian film industry of the 1960s is how its constant demand for onscreen talent made it a stopping point for such a wide array of characters from across the pop cultural landscape. Body builders, beauty queens, and stars both down-trending and slumming from around the globe all made their way to Rome at one time or another to get a piece of the action, as well as did performers and artists from other disciplines who just needed the extra cash. It is for this reason that today we can look upon such surreal spectacles as that of Southern California born muscle/stuntman Brad Harris locked in mortal battle with iconic French pop provocateur Serge Gainsbourg.

The Fury of Hercules was the second of two peplums that Gainsbourg appeared in for director Gianfranco Parolini during 1961, both of which were filmed in Zagreb and starred Harris (an apparent favorite of Parolini’s who would later star in the director’s Kommisar X eurospy series.) These followed close on the heels of Gainsbourg’s Italian screen debut in another sword and sandal adventure, Nunzio Malasomma’s Revolt of the Slaves, in which he also played a heavy. The singer was well into his career as a songwriter-for-hire and cabaret performer by this time, but was a few years off from the pop success that would lead to the legendary status he holds today, so it can be assumed that these were acting gigs taken to keep food on the table. It was an arguable boon, then, for Gainsbourg that his distinctive look –- which the recent biopic Gainsbourg, A Heroic Life explicitly paralleled to the caricatures of “the evil Jew” found in Nazi propaganda from the 40s -- made him an apparent strong candidate for playing villain roles in the Italian genre films of the day.

Fury finds Harris’s Hercules arriving in the city of Arkad, hoping to pay a visit on its king, a friend of his from previous adventures. Instead, Hercules finds that the King has died, and that his daughter, Queen Canidia (Mara Berni), who has risen to the throne in his stead, has fallen under the sway of her power hungry advisor Menistus (Gainsbourg). Under Menistus’ guidance she has turned Arkad into something of a national security state, following his directive to build an enormous wall around the city at the expense of many slaves’ lives. In response, a rebel movement has sprung up within the kingdom, one on which Menistus hopes to pin the blame for his planned murder of Canidia, after which he intends to seize power. After a number of failed attempts on the part of Menistus and his cronies to get Hercules out of the way, the hero joins up with the rebel forces and leads an attack that will end his malevolent reign once and for all.

Given the flat, American-accented dubbing of his character in the English version of the film that I saw, it’s difficult to gauge Gainsbourg’s performance in The Fury of Hercules. I will say, though, that it stands out against the typical scenery chewing of Italian genre movie villains of its day for its very low key nature. Rather than furiously projecting menace, Gainsbourg instead relies upon what seems to be his natural ability to exude an air of casually sinister, feline decadence. Menistus seldom shouts or declaims, but instead quietly insinuates his menace, like the hushed narrator of one of Gainsbourg-the-singer’s more debauched lounge numbers.

As for The Fury of Hercules as a whole, it’s a fairly run-of-the-mill peplum, one that would likely rate little more than a dismissive footnote for any chronicler of Gainsbourg’s career. Even so, its classic B movie trappings -- styrofoam boulders, inopportunely blinking corpses, mangy gorilla suits -- might make it an irresistible anecdote to include in the tale of a figure ultimately destined for greater things. As for the man himself, I sincerely doubt that the film would rank very highly in the hierarchy of memory for one who counted bedding Brigitte Bardot among his many accomplishments, but I would nonetheless be curious to know what Gainsbourg made of the whole adventure. He was, after all, a man with both an artistic soul and a keen knack for pop exploitation (this is, don’t forget, the guy who once promoted himself by tricking a teen starlet into singing a song about a blowjob) and here he was, not just commenting on, but actually collaborating in the very trash cultural “Pop! Bang! Whizzz!” that he would later ironically celebrate in the song “Comic Strip”.

At the end of The Fury of Hercules, Menistus dies an ignominious death at the hands of his oppressed subjects, which I have to admit was an outcome I found a little disappointing. Perhaps made greedy by the many possibilities suggested by the film’s odd confluence of talent, I was really hoping to see Hercules toss Serge Gainsbourg into a volcano or something -- not the least so that I could have the pleasure of typing that sentence. Of course, the producers very well may have thought that having the hulking Harris square off physically against the slight crooner would have undermined their hero’s sportsmanlike image, and I don’t blame them. Still I am grateful that, for a brief moment, such a possibility even existed. And for that, Italian cinema, I thank you.

Hercules (India, 1964)

I think that my relationship with Dara Singh is one of those that maintains its longevity by acting out its own demise at regular, cyclical intervals. The passion’s not always there, and there are times when I walk away in frustration. But I always come back. And one of the reasons that I do is that, despite the relationship being sustained by its fair share of compromise and lowered expectations, there are also those times when Dara unexpectedly comes home with a nice bouquet of flowers or box of chocolates. Hercules is that box of chocolates.

One of the reasons that I chose Hercules to begin this latest chapter in Dara’s and my journey through life together is that –- like the previously reviewed favorites The Thief of Baghdad and Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077 –- it is the product of the Bohra Brothers, this time with brother Shreeram Bohra directing and Ramkumar Bohra producing. As I have come to expect from these aspiring kingpins of the 1960s stunt film, the end product is cheap but exceedingly colorful, and shows a real enthusiasm for being as entertaining as possible within its means.

Hercules, like Samson, is also one of those Dara Singh films that shows most clearly the influence of the Italian peplums. Such influence is to be expected, since the popularity of Italian sword and sandal films in India goes back to the silent era, when the original Maciste films starring former dockworker Bartolomeo Pagano drew crowds in Bombay’s theaters, and in fact had a formative influence on the Indian stunt genre as a whole. (That information from Valentina Vitali's Hindi Action Cinema: Industries, Narratives, Bodies) So strong is that influence in Hercules that it could almost be mistaken for one of the Steve Reeves or Brad Harris joints of its era, with all of the boulder hurling, leopard print sarong wearing, and dinosaur punching that that implies. That is, of course, except for all of the singing, and, this being a Dara Singh movie, the inordinate amount of wrestling.

As with many of Dara’s movies, Hercules begins with a nation’s throne being unlawfully seized, though this time, for once, not from Dara. Nevertheless, Dara’s Hercules promises his old ma that he will fight to restore that throne to its rightful heir, a blandly handsome entity by the name of Jesson. Now in that seat is the evil Maliz, who is played by B.M. Vyas, an actor who, in the 1960s, seemed to play all of those types of roles that would be played by Jeevan in the 1970s.

Of course, this being Hercules, the task of restoring Jesson to the throne involves a series of grueling and increasingly outlandish physical trials, the first of which involves Herc battling a Hydra that is at once both rubbery and conspicuously inflexible.

That done, Hercules and his loyal crew -- who seem a little heavily skewed toward the useless comic relief end -- set sail on a quest to find some kind of magical whose-a-ma-whatsit. It is at this point that things really kick into high gear, starting with the group getting shipwrecked on an island where the men all find themselves enchanted by a tribe of amazons lead by Helen. It is then up to Hercules’ lady love -- who, confusingly, is also named Helen, but is actually played by the actress Nishi (thanks, Memsaab!) -- to break the spell and get the guys back on point.

That done, Hercules and his men continue in pursuit of their true target: Medusa! Unfortunately, as fun as it would be to see how the filmmakers might realize a character whose hair is made of live snakes, the Bohras here cop out by making Medusa merely a gray wigged old crone with a creepy little gnome for a sidekick. Fortunately, Medusa later makes up for her lameness by turning into a giant Cyclops.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Because, before he can take on Medusa, Hercules must first battle a giant ape person and a pair of green and red painted guys who laugh in the extremely loud and forced manner that you would only if told the world’s least funny joke by a man who had your scrotum trapped in a drill press.

And then our hero must face the worst monster of all, Dara Singh arch ring nemesis and world’s least fit athlete, Hungarian wrestler Emile Czaja, aka King Kong!

Happily, once Medusa, King Kong and the Cyclops, et al. have been vanquished, the viewer need not fear that the mad monster party is over. For -- just as they did with The Thief of Baghdad -- the Bohras and cinematographer/special effects man B. Gupta have worked overtime to insure that Hercules is a creature-fest of the most generous order. Thus, once back in Greece, Hercules must do battle with yet another largely immobile example of cryptozoology in the form of a salamander-like dragon who needs a conspicuous amount of help from his opponent in order to maintain his threatening demeanor.

Finally, Hercules ends up chained to what looks like a giant bust of Sigmund Freud, at which point Helen shows up again to do a dagger dance very much like the one she did in The Thief of Baghdad, about which I have no complaints whatsoever.

And then Dara breaks loose to perform the requisite climactic act of pillar pulling, not to mention an awful lot of wrestling. And, yes, I am indeed giving you a very shorthand version of Hercules. For instance, as she so often does in Dara’s movies, Mumtaz makes an appearance, albeit in an uncharacteristically tiny role as a dancing oracle named Diana. Also, Dara manages at one point or another to strangle almost every male cast member in the film.

But why should I do all of the work for you, when doing it yourself is so much fun? Granted, the VCD I watched it on made the film look like it was shot inside a septic tank (a title card before the start of the movie read “This is an old film, so please cooperate with us”), but only in the land of Greek mythology could we ask for a miracle such as an obscure old Indian B movie being presented to us in a format that didn’t make it look like complete shit. Simply consider this the trial you must endure in order to reap the many rich rewards that Hercules has to offer. Go forward, heroes!