Rock Valley had at least four businesses that rented movies when I was growing up. Grocery stores had candy, movies, and video games hanging by the checkouts. Gas stations were crammed with VHS boxes, motor oil, and salty snacks. This was great for a kid who loved movies.
Competition was tough, though. The shelves were usually picked clean of the popular titles. That wasn't a bad thing. I watched Paul Newman in The Hustler after school when I was senior. That was the only movie that was left to rent. It was so good; I stop watching the clock. I was almost late to suit up for that night's football game. I ran out the door right after those thugs broke Paul’s thumbs.
My college dorm didn’t have cable, and I didn’t have much cash. I checked out movies from the university's library out of necessity. The offerings were mostly art-house and foreign films. I didn't mind; these weren't movies I could find at Casey's. While I was watching 'Round Midnight, a girl who was looking for my roommate knocked on my door. When she heard the French language and saw the subtitles on my TV, she said without any sarcasm, “I didn’t know you were smart.” (How do you react to that?)
A friend snuck me into his Politics in Film class. I watched screenings of movies like The Manchurian Candidate and The Brother from Another Planet. He wrote analysis papers based on our conversations, and I saw movies on a big screen that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Friends at work introduced me to the action of John Woo films and the humor of MST3K. I discovered Italian gialli, German krimis, and Japanese kaiju films through the internet. My dad only wanted to watch war movies, and Daphne's dad is really into spaghetti westerns, so directors Sergio Leone and Sam Fuller are old friends.
I also learned a lot by reading Tim Lucas's magazine, Video Watchdog.
It was here that I discovered the crazy world of Turkish films. I was inspired by the 2002 article, "Yilmaz Atadeniz: Superman of Turkish Cinema” by Kaya Ozkaracala and David White.
"Between the mid-1960’s and the early 1980’s, the Turkish film industry produced some of the most frenetic and colorful B-movies in the world... these films were irresistible celluloid meeting rooms for international popular culture; a place where America’s Batman could match with France’s Fantomas and Italy’s Killing went mano-mano with Frankenstein’s monster.”
Check out that movie poster on the back of the magazine. A rip-off of an American Superman fighting a rip-off of an Italian Killing: who wouldn't want to see Kilink Istanbul'da?
"Looking back, the most intriguing quality of these films is their sheer shamelessness. Absolving themselves from any responsibility to obtain permission for some of the more famous characters, Turkish filmmakers turned copyright infringement into an art form...”
As interesting as these Turkish mashups sounded, I was intimidated by overseas shipping costs. I also wasn't sure I wanted to watch Turkish language films on VCD with no subtitles. (A VCD is a CD that contains digital video and audio files. The video quality is close to a VHS tape.)
I was able to see Kilink Istanbul'da (with English subtitles) a few years later with the help of a Greek DVD lable, Onar Films. Helmed by Bill Barounis, Onar Films (basically a one-man operation) released 16 Turkish movies on 14 discs. There would have been more releases, but sadly Bill died from cancer in 2011.
I have the complete set of the Onar DVDs.* Each one is from a limited numbered run.
In these movies you can find Turkish versions of Captain America, Santo, Spider-Man, James Bond, Tarzan, and two different Supermans (Supermen?) to name a few. The special effects are sometimes unintentionally funny, and the film elements can be scratched and grainy, but all of these films are watchable. It's cool to see how these movies take elements from all over the world and spin them into something uniquely all their own.
You can tell that Mr. Barounis loved these films, and that he put a lot of effort and pride into each of his DVD releases. He wrote the 40-page Turkish Fantastic Cinema Guide that was included with one release, and other DVD extras include documentaries on various Turkish film genres, bios, trailers, and filmographies.
Many of the DVDs arrived with a mini reproduction of the film poster.
Are these Turkish movies great films? That depends on semantics. I can say that these films are not bad. I have learned that a movie's budget, language, color, year, and quality have nothing to do with a movie being bad or not.
This is not my theory, but I agree with it:
The only bad movie is a boring movie.
And that brings me to my latest movie purchase:
The Man Who Saves the World (Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam) is a Turkish science fiction! fantasy! martial arts! superhero! film from 1982. How can this be boring?
The Man Who Saves the World is sometimes called Turkish Star Wars because the filmmakers blatantly stole footage, music, and sound effects from the original Star Wars movie. But that's not the only movie they stole from.
"The musical soundtrack is entirely lifted from popular movies. The main theme used is "The Raiders March", composed by John Williams, from the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark. Other scenes incorporated the music of Moonraker, Ben-Hur, Flash Gordon, Giorgio Moroder's version of Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, Moses (!), and Disney's Black Hole" (wikipedia).
I first read about this movie and its blu-ray release on the Spaghetti Western Database, of all places.
The website for Big Bosphorus Media has information about the film and video examples of their blu-ray's transfer, but there's no info about the company. I'm actually surprised anyone can sell a physical copy of this movie with all of the copyright infringements. The fact that it's only for sale for the month of October is also weird, "Once it's gone, it's gone!"
The whole thing seemed a bit sketchy, but that didn't stop me from ordering a copy.
It even came with a mini movie poster!
This just arrived, so I haven't watched the whole movie. I did take it for a test drive to make sure the blu-ray worked. It does.
The exposition was a bit of a chore to get through (like this blog post), but it was surreal seeing Murat and Ali flying around the Death Star. (It's been noted that the Star Wars images are squeezed, and it looks more like the Death Egg.) I was happy to see that the film makers inserted their own rubber halloween masks into the cantina scene, "That's what I'm talking about!"
Welcome to my collection, The Man Who Saves the World. You're in good company.
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* Side Bar: After Bill Barounis died, Turkish film critic Ali Murat Guven helped Bill's family by selling what was left of the Onar DVDs for them. It wasn't easy for him to get the DVDs from Greece to where he lived in Istanbul, but he took no profit from the sales.
I ordered the discs that completed my collection from Mr. Guven. As a gesture of appreciation, Ali included personalized posters signed by producer, director, and actor Kunt Tulgar and actor Aytekin Akkaya.
Without even knowing it, I already owned a personally signed poster of one of The Men Who Saves the World?
This needs a frame.
Nov. 1st update:
I bought a frame.
Whew. And it looks I got my copy just in time.
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