Ölüme Son Adim (1983)

aka Last Step to Death

aka Turkish Mad Max (as usual, there's not much Mad Max about the film, except for the way Arkin dresses in its second half and a bit of borrowed soundtrack)

Ultra hardcore mercenary Kaan/Kagan/Kahan (Cüneyt Arkin; my ears, the subtitles and movie databases aren't exactly of one mind when it comes to his character name), the kind of guy who carries an astonishing amount of large knives on his body at all times, is hired by some guy in a suit with a nervous tic to rescue a Professor who has found the cure for leukaemia from some unnamed and unexplained heavily armed evildoers holding him somewhere out in the country. Tic guy is willing to pay Kahan 100 million - who knows in what currency - for his efforts, so there's no reason for the mercenary not to take the offer.

Kahan doesn't think that this is the kind of job even he could manage alone, though, so he grabs his best friend Ali (Yildirim Gencer) - a specialist in tactics and sexual harassment - and his female friend Leyla (Emel Tümer) - a specialist in wearing clothes so skimpy she'd look less nude if she were naked, and kicking people in the face - to assist him in the case.

After some training against mechanical dolls that use live ammo, the trio's off to rescue the Professor. Fifty or so dead goons later, the Professor is in our heroes' hands. Surprisingly, he also comes with a girl who might be his daughter or his girlfriend (the film ain't tellin'), which delights Ali's grabby hands to no end.

Now it should be just a simple thing for the friends to deliver the rescued man to their client. Of course, they find themselves betrayed and will have to kill even more people to get to the end of the movie.

As it is a cooperation between Turkish exploitation god Cüneyt Arkin (of the chiselled chin, the steely gaze, the monkey-like gritted action scene teeth and the wild arm-flailing) and his favourite director mad, mad Cetin Inanc, Ölüme Son Adim is of course a film as crazy as a fever dream. Everything I've written about any film directed by Inanc still holds true here: the film's pacing is as hectic as toddler on a sugar binge, the editing as choppy and devoid of transitions as it can be, and half of the scenes are shot from the most improbable angles, preferably from below. Whenever I see one of Inanc's films I suspect one of the man's ambitions must have been to become an avantgarde director of the type who wouldn't even shoot the simplest of scenes straight, and when his path led him to exploitation filmmaking, he didn't see any reason to not shoot his exploitation films as he would have his dream avantgarde projects. Another possible explanation is of course that Inanc just didn't really know what he was doing, but because both theories lead to the same conclusion - namely that Inanc's films are inexplicably weird - I will probably never know.

Anyway (to fall into the tone the film takes for eighty minutes for a moment), what can you expect from this cinematic wonder!? Scenes shot from below a table! Crotch cam! Way-too-close-ups of faces (of course shot from below and slightly to the side! Shouting! Loud punching! Loud kicking! Loud (and very large) throwing knives! A loud bow! Arkin Fu! A grenade launcher gun! Horrible jokes! Two guys - who don't have secret sexual thing going on between them at all, no siree - permanently telling each other they are the worst friends ever and sharing cigarettes! Machine gun nests built from footage that is "borrowed" from some different (and very yellow-tinted) movie! Highly concentrated leering at Emel Tümer's ass and thighs (looks like former softcore and hardcore porn man Inanc compensated for the ban on nudity in Turkey at this point in time by fixating as much on Tümer's lower body half as possible, like Jess Franco exploring every hair of Lina Romay's nether regions, just dressed)!

Now that I think about it, Ölüme Son Adim is a lot like a Pakistani exploitation film, only without the musical numbers, the pointed fingers, the thunder claps; It's just much more condensed. This only goes to show that people want pretty much the same thing from their cheap and exciting films the world over, even if the actual expression of these wants is a little different from country to country. Humanity truly is a great and wonderful thing.

 

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Vahsi Kan (1983)

aka Wild Blood

aka Turkish First Blood (and it's even true this time)

An evil rich guy named Hasmet rules a Turkish village and its surroundings with an iron hand. But his reign of smirking evilness is threatened by a middle-aged man, his daughter (Emel Tümer), and her little brother who are driving to a trial regarding one or more of Hasmet's evil deeds. Obviously, the easiest way to get rid of them is to have a bunch of henchpeople pretend to be a heap of corpses lying in the road and kill the family once they stop their car. Thanks to the surprising not-zombies, the man and his son die unpleasant deaths, but the daughter escapes.

She's soon not the only one stumbling through this particular part of the countryside anymore. Ex-commando Riza (Cüneyt Arkin) has an unpleasant run-in with some of Hasmet's men, and begins to repeatedly go Rambo on the bad guy's henchmen's asses, utilizing the awesome power of being filmed in undercranked shots when running, transforming not into a manikin like normal movie heroes do but into a ragdoll when falling from any heights, classic Arkin fu, an affinity for traps and monologue-ing  about blood, and a very big knife. When the two Hasmet-haters meet up, Riza tailors his new partner an awesome ripped red disco jungle woman outfit, proving he's a man with talents for every situation, and the sort of eye for women's clothing that would make him a reality show mainstay today.

A little later, we'll also learn that Riza is an old acquaintance of Hasmet too, and that the old evildoer is holding him responsible for his son losing both of his arms and the use of his legs. Obviously, this being a First Blood rip-off, Riza's former commanding officer will make an appearance too. But mostly, there will be ranting into the camera and killing.

Whenever Turkish exploitation master director Cetin Inanc and Turkish exploitation acting god Cüneyt Arkin made a film together, fantastic, explosive and very special things happened. And I don't just mean especially egregious cases of needle-dropped music like the cues from First Blood on the soundtrack here.

Inanc's permanently excited style of direction - heated even by the hyperactive standards of Turkish popular cinema - and Arkin's talent for steely staring into cameras, as well as the latter's ability to look ridiculous and awesome at the same time during weirdly choreographed fight scenes usually turned the films these two made together into viewing experiences even more exhausting than was the already quite exhausting standard of Turkish cinema of the time. Neither Inanc nor Arkin had much believe in standing still (or at least shutting up) for even a single second, and so their united works turn into a whirlwind of very Turkish kung fu, wild shouting, wide-eyed ranting by the film's bad guys (the wheelchair bound son - only complete with his own explosive trap - doing his thing with special enthusiasm), extreme close-ups, crotch shots, and thigh shots, all filmed with copious use of the most aggressive, probably manhandled, handheld camera and edited during an all-night cocaine binge.

It's all as ridiculous as it is intense, but Vahsi Kan is not the sort of film that leaves its viewers room or breath to contemplate its rather perfunctory script or said ridiculousness. There's only time for the most manly manliness of Cüneyt Arkin when he's really angry (you wouldn't like him when he's angry, unless he's angry at your enemies, then you'd think he's awesome when he's angry), some leering in the direction of Emel Tümer (though the leering in Turkey of 1982 was a lot tamer than it would have been ten years earlier, "thanks" to the new censorship regime), explosions, and shouting about blood and vengeance.

I have to admit that I like this version of First Blood a lot more than the original. Vahsi Kan has no time for that other film's less than believable attempts at being anti-war that were quite at odds with its obvious love for violence; there's some talk about Arkin's character's love for peace, but Inanc is nothing if not an economic director fully conscious of the fact that nobody watching his movies cares about being morally enlightened by them, and isn't ashamed to revel in the silly violence. I also suspect that Turkey's military regime of the time wouldn't have liked a film that was too clearly critical of war or the military itself.

However, if a viewer doesn't ask the film about its morals, it's certainly not going to talk about them (except for some mumbling about "blood, vengeance, wild blood, blood" while cackling insanely), and will instead merrily demonstrate everything Inanc and Arkin know about making an action film, Turkish pop cinema style, which is everything you can know about that particular aspect of the art of filmmaking without selling your soul to a godhood of your choice.

 

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Cöl (1983)

aka The Desert

aka Turkish Jaws (though it really, truly, is not)

Unfortunately, this film isn't available in subtitled form and my Turkish is still non-existent, so I won't be able to go into the intricacies of its plot. Fortunately, my experience with Turkish pop cinema tells me that there might not be any intricacies to go into or if they do indeed exist, understanding the dialogue might not help comprehending them at all. And really, what's more important in the end - plot or Cüneyt Arkin kicking people in places politeness doesn't allow me to mention?

What I do understand of the plot is the following: Cüneyt Arkin is the manliest man on Earth and goes around a Turkish coastal town, killing bad people. He's quite excellent at it, too. When he's not murdering people left and right, Arkin plays with his sunglasses like the cooler brother of David Caruso in that TV show about fascist killer commandos in Miami.

After some more killing and punching, Arkin hides out on a ship that is anchored close to the coast and belongs to an older friend of his and that friend's son(?). There, he has time to rest and have flashback nightmares to the terrible things the bad guys have done to him, namely torturing him, killing his mother and/or wife and separating him from his dog. Unless the boy in the flashbacks isn't supposed to be a young Arkin. In that case, they also did something terrible to his son.

In the present, our hero also finds time to romance Emel Tümer, who likes to stand on rocks, wearing a bikini with great talent.

But Arkin can't have too much peace, so his captain friends betrays him. For money, it looks like. Yet not even being tied to a piece of wood and being set adrift on the ocean can keep a real man from his vengeance, even when he has to fight an adorable plastic shark to get to it.

Cetin Inanc-directed films featuring Turkey's action hero number one Cüneyt Arkin are the movie version of having a mad guy from the street break into your flat and shout at you for seventy minutes while an old-fashioned boom box screams someone's favourite music at you. From time to time a car races through your living room. It might be a bit frightening at first, but it sure doesn't lack in excitement.

The four things Inanc likes most in life are low-angled shots, uncomfortably close close-ups, shaking his camera in the air like he just don't care and Arkin punching/kicking the camera. That doesn't mean the director has no eye for emotionally meaningful framing and composition at all. He just prefers to use outlandish yet clever ways to shoot a scene, as long as the set-up is quickly done and cheap enough to be do-able in five minutes and with no equipment to speak of. This lends Cöl the hysterically dynamic feel typical of the better part of Turkish popular cinema of this era, a style of filmmaking that isn't so much "point and shoot on amphetamines" as in the 70s anymore as it is "scream and shake and sometimes pretend you're an arthouse movie on amphetamines".

Apart from the screaming (and a bit of shooting, and car stunts), the film also delivers some of the most ridiculously awesome sped-up non-Kung Fu fights with asynchronous sound effects ever committed to celluloid. It looks like all the energy missing from boring US martial arts movies has landed in Turkey and won't leave until Cüneyt Arkin has rammed a piece of wood he's carrying in his mouth through someone's throat. That's not a metaphor, by the way.

Of course, the violent exploits of Arkin aren't all that Cöl excites with. There's also some expert, yet random low-angled bikini booty shaking at the camera by Tümer. But don't worry, the camera is shaking too; I suspect out of sheer exuberance about having! a! woman! (actually even two)! in! its! view!. And there are also at least five continuous minutes in which our hero doesn't shoot, kick or hit anyone and instead has his camera-shaking nightmares of the terrible things the bad guys did to him and his family before he can go and kill a few more people or a poor helpless plastic shark, so there are sped-up attempts at character depth too.

No Turkish movie made before the 90s would of course be complete without needle-dropped music. This time, it's a bit of the soundtracks of various Jaws movies, some rockin' guitar music and a whole lot of Eye of the Tiger. The film uses its stolen soundtrack in a way that seems at once cool and utterly ridiculous, without a care about cheesiness, copyright laws or good taste.

In this, as in a lot of other aspects, Cöl reminds me heavily of the music of Thin Lizzy. That is to say, it is at once idiotically macho and completely conscious of how much of its machismo is a lie and a ridiculous, untenable-in-real-life pose, yet can still revel in it without getting all campy and ironic on its audience.

 

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