Iron Claw the Pirate (1969)

Like most Turkish superheroes Iron Claw the Pirate has no real superpowers. He can shoot and he can fight, have a sexy sidekick and is obsessed by defending his dear Istanbul from evil masterminds. In this case his name doesn’t even make scene. He has no iron claw and his looks not even slightly resembles a pirate – but he’s still one of the coolest and most violent Turkish superheroes I’ve seen so far, and his leather outfit and square-faced look is damn cool! I would go so far to say that Demir Karahan is the hottest superhero-actor in Turkey! But Iron Claw the Pirate has a lot to offer for dykes and straights to, don’t worry!

Fantomas, the French master criminal has arrived to Istanbul to take revenge on something. Not clear what actually, but he’s very vengeful and wants to kill Iron Claw. Our superhero also want to take revenge on something, but nothing more is mentioned regarding that… anyway, Fantomas has also set up a weapon factory and is planning to use these weapons to create terror everywhere, to sooner or later gain world domination of course! He has a blonde female companion to, and another girl that dances almost butt-naked dressed only in three golden leafs! (Hey, that was for you dykes and straight guys!). So Iron Claw, the female ass-kicking sidekick, his old uncle (don’t ask…) and a guy (maybe a cop) in a nice moustache takes it on to crush Fantomas once and for all!

I’m not by any means an expert on Turkish cult cinema. I watch the stuff I can find and that’s it. But Iron Claw the Pirate could so far be my favourite. On the surface it looks like any other film in the genre, but it has several things that set it apart from the rest: a stylish, cool superhero-outfit. Yes, it actually looks professional and not homemade. Fantomas is a great villain and this version of his rubber mask looks very creepy. The ladies, for those who like them, are extra sexy and cool. I’ve already mention that Demir Karahan is stunningly handsome, so that’s already a plus. The script is thin, but it has an absurd amount of action and stunts. Not that they could afford to do any big set-pieces, but the fights and shoot-outs are among the best I’ve seen in Turkish cult cinema so far.

Everything kinda explodes in the end with a huge body count. I’ve never seen so many henchmen getting shot in the face! A very sadistic detail I must add, and it looks even more painful with their screams and spastic movements when they fall dead to the ground. We’re also treated with some very creative camera movements. The best is when we follow the camera through four-five floors and sees fights and kills on each floor, all the way down to the bottom were Iron Claw makes the final kill. I’m not 100 % sure how they made this, but I guess they used an elevator with open doors – but no matter how they did it, it looks great and is one of the action highlights of this crazy little film!

Torture, executions, explosions, shoot-outs, fist-fights, nudity, blood and moustaches – you’ll find everything in Onar Films awesome official DVD release from 2008, a must buy! So take your chance and order it before it’s out of print – and after that it will never be out again.

Altin Çocuk Beyrut'ta (1967)

In 1967 baby-faced Göksel Arsoy was back in the saddle as Altin Çocuk in Altin Çocuk Beyrut'ta. The first movie proved to be a big success and this wouldn’t be the first sequel, two more would follow and forever put the name The Golden Boy on Göksel Arsoy’s career. This time Altin gets involved after a drug bust at a seedy night club. The drugs, and money leads to Beirut were Altin soon gets involved in sexy ladies and a lot of fist fights. Behind it all is a man dressed in a silvery Batman-esque outfit (complete with pointy ears and a cape). But this time is life extra tough because Altin gets brainwashed, or poisoned, and turns evil! Which leads him too brutally lash his woman, who’s strapped up in a torture dungeon!

Altin Çocuk Beyrut'ta is a more slick and well-made production than the first movie, even if the budget seem a bit lower – not counting the Beirut location of course. The sets are more cramped and the villain’s lair is just a few locations inside a factory. But the stylish approach to the story, the excellent work with shadows and editing makes this technically a better movie. What I miss is the bigger epic style of the first film, with more extras and more dangers around every corner.

The use of Göksel Arsoy as a Bond-style hero might seem weird, but most of the Bond rip-offs made never tried to copy the original Bond-actors, it seem so anyway (not counting the Italian ones, who hade more James Bondish actors than any other country). Göksel has the face of a little boy, a bit mean and mischievous like Jimmy Wang Yu. Like a combination between Kevin Spacey and Robert Vaughn. Not a bad thing, because he more looks like a bloke that never would be able to take down a dozen bad guys within seconds, which gives him more of a chance to surprise both the audience and the baddies.

Action yes, not the film with the highest budget, but the fist fights, oh the fist fights. There are only two countries that really focused on spectacular fights: Turkey and India. I guess it’s a question of budget, it’s cheaper to throw a fight than start a car chase, and in Altin Çocuk Beyrut'ta they prove that two fists and some crazy stuntmen can make the cheapest movie look great. The fights are intensive with big swings and a lot of painful falls into furniture, down in the floor or right into walls, stuff that Hong Kong made popular in the Eighties. Sometime I wonder who inspired who.

Göksel Arsoy produced (correct me if I’m wrong, please) the Altin Çocuk-films with his own company, Goksel Film, and created himself one of the most interesting franchises in Turkey, with his own personality and a big slice of Bondesque storylines and brutal action. It would have been interesting if he had followed the two next sequels with even more Golden Boy films, but maybe the energy and interest ran dry and he decided for a more serious career as an actor.

The only way to watch Altin Çocuk Beyrut'ta is through a version shown on Turkish TV. It’s OK viewing, but looks deteriorated and have, of course, no English subtitles. It’s possible that some scenes are lost, because sometime the story took very quick turns without much explanation. But if someone know a better version, let me know.

Exorcismo (1975)

There’s never wrong with a Paul Naschy movie, and when all other movies fail to entertain, Naschy is there with a magnificent beard doing his job like a real man! Exorcismo isn’t known to be either the best or the bloodiest in Naschy’s vast filmography, but I found it to be better than I thought it would be. Why? I guess because I have a shitty taste in movies, but also that the script was pretty decent and easy to follow. Not so episodic, but with a clear and quite interesting storyline.

Paul Naschy is Father Adrian Dunning, a local priest in a small British small town somewhere. One of the families he knows has a couple of rebellious daughters, and a whiny big brother, and something is terribly wrong. One of the girls, Patricia (Maria Perschy) has gotten herself involved in satanic worship and drugs, mostly due to her boyfriend. But when even he starts to stay away from her, it’s quite clear that Patricia has gotten possessed by something during the childish satanic games. Soon members of the family and staff is starting to get killed by someone twisting their necks, and it’s up to Father Adrian to solve the murders and get the evil spirit out from Patricia’s body!

Exorcismo is a quite slow movie, not much is happening except Patricia getting angry and her family looking worried. But the occasional bloodless murders and the bearded presence of Naschy make up for the pacing. I read a review were someone wrote that this movie has a “mediocre performance from Naschy”, which is of course as stupid as it sounds. Sure, Naschy was Naschy and he mostly played the same version of himself, but most actors do – even if the critics will deny it. What’s interesting with Father Adrian is that he’s a-sexual, which is very unique in Naschy’s case. He’s famous for getting laid numerous times in every movie, often showing off his muscles and hairy chest. But not here, Father Adrian seem even aggressive against when women show him some interest, which once again strengthens Naschy’s ability as an actor. His character don’t need to fuck around, he’s a man of the lord and has other pleasures in life.

The story gets more creepy during the last fifteen minutes when Patricia’s demon finally manifests himself in her look, and it’s extremely effective. Way better and scarier than in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, but maybe not as spectacular. From the dried face and transparent slime running from her lips, to the nasty eye lenses, this is just awesome and very well-made.

If you turn your expectations down a little bit and doesn’t expect gore and nudity, Exorcismo is a decent and cozy Spanish horror-thriller with a very fine performance by every one, and Naschy in the front row of course. I recommend the OOP release from BCI, easy to find on eBay or other places who still might have it in stock.

Shaan (1980)

I never thought I would see two James Bond rip-offs that both have the hero getting into the evil mastermind’s lair pretending to be a member of a sing- and dance troupe! But I did. The first one was Bond 303 and the second is Shaan, the 1980 super-hit with superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor as the heroes, with good help from veteran hero-actor Sunil Dutt! It’s clearly pushing it to call Shaan a complete Bond rip-off, but I can say that half of the story and half of the movie can be placed under this fantastic pseudo-genre. Why, let’s take a look at the story…

Ambitabh and Shashi is two jolly good conmen, Vijay and Ravi. They survive through elaborated hoaxes and caper. One day they try to fool a young woman and an old man, only two realized they have been fooled by professional daughter/father con-duo Sunita (Parveen Babi) and Chacha (Johnny Walker, yes he named himself after the Scottish whisky). After some comedy and fun they decide to join forces and try to steal a diamond necklace. But they didn’t count on big brother Inspector Shiv Kumar (Sunil Dutt) who arrests them but welcomes them after doing some jail time…. So whats do this lead up to? Well, after an hour someone – the EVIL Shakal, the leader of a crime organization wants to take revenge on Kumar and his effective police force that interferes in the Shakal’s business over and over again, and he won’t stop until they’re all dead!

The special thing with Shakal is that he’s bald like Blofeld, has his own private island with a smaller army, a flock of killer dogs, a man-eating crocodile and of course an gigantic secret underground base! So from a typical easy-going caper movie it explodes into hyper-action and big impressive Ken Adam-style sets. Wow, just wow.

What’s really cool with Shaan is that it works so well, even if the genre-mix is quite extreme and can feel abrupt for the Hollywood-fan. Much must be blamed on the excellent cast, especially the trio of Bachchan, Kapoor and Dutt, who all three are so cool and has enough charisma to put the best action star to shame. Dutt, here 51 years old, acts out he was Superman or something. Falls from great heights without a scratch, hits bad guys so the fly through the walls, get chased by 40-50 dogs and manages to escape them, etc etc. The two younger gentlemen are of course not too bad either, and kick so much Indian butt during the almost three hour length of the movie that Chuck Norris should be afraid.

Except an impressive Dirty Harry-style scene in the beginning, were Dutt alone takes care of a hostage taker, the first hour is quite low-key, with comedy and singing and dancing instead. But when the action finally starts it never lets us down. No less than three car chases (all with impressive stunts), a couple of chases, a fantastic Peckinpah-esque shoot-out at a farm when bad-guy-going-good Rakesh (Shatrughan Sinha) alone protects a family against a dozen shotgun-armed henchmen.

In the end everything explodes – and a few of those clips were later reused in Bond 303 – but here you can see it in good quality and for a miniature buff like me it’s a field day of excess! As a fan of Bond rip-offs the lair is a treasure to behold. From the awesome round table with the killer crocodile underneath (easy way to dispose clumsy co-workers) and the long space-age corridors, this is a marvel of rip-offs, among the most stylish I’ve seen outside the real Bond films.

Shaan is a fine adventure-romp, recommended!

Bond 303 (1985)

Another day, another Jamesbondish movie! The bad words I read about Bond 303 made me even more curious, because I learned to never trust the opinions about hired writers with little or no knowledge in genre cinema. I’m happy I didn’t believe the opinions out there, ‘cause Bond 303 feels like essential viewing for aficionados of world weird cinema. This is not Jeetendra’s first venture into Bondland, He got his big break with 1967’s (THE year of Bond rip-offs!) Farz as Agent 116. He returned several times to the world of espionage, ladies and action – but maybe never as far-out like this big slice of Indian cheese.

Terrorist attacks all over the world. Planes, trains, houses are blown to kingdom come by unknown rockets! The one to call is India’s super agent Bond 303! When the first meet him he’s occupied with a dozen ladies and they all burst out in an intensive sing- and dance number! Bond 303 befriends a young smart scientist, played by the cool Parveen Babi (who later, tragic enough, became very mentally ill and accused more or less everyone for trying to kill her. She died of complications from diabetes in 2005) and they start to gather information about the evil organization behind it all. But someone wants to stop them and sooner than you can say “curry” they are in grave danger!

I read somewhere that it’s important that Indian movies deliver “entertainment”. They should give the audience a good laugh, some sexy men and women, song and dance, scares and action – all in the same film. Not every Indian production are built after this format, but Bond 303 is definitely a good – no – GREAT example of how an Indian (in this case, a Hindi) movie can be. Colorful and filled of energy, this is one of those movies that cuts down on boring scenes and goes from action to dance to action and a chase to some romance and more action. It never waste one second on something people won’t pay to see, like an original script or convincing special effects. But in the whole, that’s pretty uninteresting.

For me who just loves LEGO hair cuts and sudden changes in the storyline, Bond 303 is a dream come true. For example, one sequences almost perfectly copies the dog scene from The Omen, you all know on the graveyard. But instead of our hero finding a Jackal skeleton in the grave he finds a secret passageway, which leads to an underground temple were he and his comic relief is attacked by living life-size statues! Well, I guess they’re statues anyway. They are stiff when they’re not moving at least. This is of course totally absurd, but it obvious has some purpose to the story because they kill a suspect terrorist down there. In another scene one character flees from Bond 303, but instead of get the hell out of there he finds himself a grotesque monkey-monster suit (it looks more like one of the Goblins in Troll 2, but taller and more Bigfootish) and attacks Bond 303 dressed in this, roaring like it was no tomorrow. Genius, god damn genius!

Bond 303 also has super strength when he jumps from a high rise building and lands on his feet and continues to run. Everything leads to a classic Jamesbondish show-down in a huge underground lair, which is pretty impressive considering the budget.

The film has a big body count, lots of stunts and explosions, miniatures (probably stock footage), song and dance and a couple of awesome Kung Fu fights in slow-mo and probably the worst female impersonation ever committed to the screen (by our hero no less). It’s out on VCD and can easily be found. You will not regret watching it!

The Stoneman Murders (2009)

Both a slightly silly thriller and a serious attempt to deal with the infamous Stoneman case that shocked India in the middle of the eighties, The Stoneman Murders is not entirely successful, but is still a quite effective thriller with a solid cast of excellent actors. In the beginning it felt like a similar movie like Memories of Murder, but the further the story goes it’s more like on of those semi-realistic Hollywood productions which take maybe to much liberties for their own sake.

Kay Kay Menon plays the brutal policeman Sanjay who finally succeeds to kill a prisoner during a violent beating. He’s suspended from the police force, but at the same time a brutal murder is committed – a homeless man gets his head crushed by a big stone. Sanjay is convinced that this is something more than just a robbery and his former boss gives him a second chance, in secret investigate the murder at the same time was the official investigation, lead by the cocky Kedar (Arbaaz Khan). Sanjay is so obsessed by the murders that his former colleagues is starting to suspect him – and soon even the killer is after him, trying to make him look even more guilty…

The Stoneman Murders is such a schizophrenic thriller. In one part it wants to show the real life, the dirty and terrible life the poor and the outcast. We’re meeting prostitutes, drug addicts, transvestites (as usual, not a gritty neighbourhood without trannies!), people taking a dump in the street, beatings and just stuff that show us that life is shit. But whenever this is happening, the story kinda floats away and gives us a new red herring or a chase instead – like director Manish Gupta couldn’t make up his mind about what movie he wanted to make. Instead the thriller slowly becomes a murder mystery, not a bad one, but it’s a kind of let down, because I expected something more – ambitious might be the word. The original case is very interesting and I feel they could have done a much more serious movie than what finally was made.

But sure, it’s not a bad movie. It’s a really good thriller with a lot tension and some nice scares. The killer is eerie and spooky and the reason for the murders is both absurd and banal, which makes it even scarier. The best thing with the movie is the excellent cast, all of them are top-notch and worth of all the good reviews they can get. What’s not so good is some of the HUGE logical leaps the story takes. There’s a couple of instances were I just talked to the TV, trying to get the characters do the correct thing and not act like morons. For example, our hero of course grabs the killers knifes and holds it until the police sees him so they REALLY can suspect him for the killings. Like in all bad thrillers. Come one, don’t touch the fucking knife! The worst thing is in the end, and I still can’t explain how they solve that problem – but hey, it worked anyway.

The Stoneman Murders is a good, decent Indian thriller with enough tension to keep you hooked for 95 minutes. If you can ignore the tasteless sing and dance number with happy, ultra-sexy, prostitutes it’s an even better production.

Kitami (1989)

I’m very unfamiliar with the Japanese Pinku genre and to be honest, until a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t name one single movie. So I’m quite happy to finally got the chance to experience Hisayasu Sato’s Kitami, aka Muscle aka The Madness Night aka… ya, you know the rest, a new title for each damn territory. The first one mentioning this movie to me was Jason over at Cinezilla, and that’s the reason my friend Tommy in Japan was kind enough to send me the official DVD. I’m very grateful for these two gentlemen helping me see the Gay Pinku light.

Takeshi Itô is Ryuzaki, an editor for a Muscle magazine. He gets involved with an experimental dancer, Kitami (Simon Kumai) and at first the relationship is very kind, very gentle, but Kitami slowly drifts into sado-masochism and wants Ryuzaki to cut him, hurt him. It ends in Ryuzaki cutting of Kitami’s arm and ends up in prison for a year. But he’s still in love with Kitami, or maybe just obsessed by him, and starts to search for him in the back alleys of Tokyo. One reason is to give back Kitami’s arm that he has in a big jar in his apartment and find true love again…

Just an hour long, Kitami squeezes so much drama and passion into these 60 minutes that a lot of other directors and screenwriters should be ashamed of wasting hours and hours of valuable of time on cliché-ridden scripts about love and pain. This is concentrated passion. I guess some people would find the story a bit to dark, a bit too negative, but those are also the people that pretend that they’re living in a silly dream world. Happiness isn’t only flowers and hearts, for some people it can be the pain and the suffering – for them the only way to know life. What I’m curious about, did Kitami want to loose his arm? Maybe, but Ryuzaki still have to give something back in the end, and in all its macabre details, it’s one of the most romantic endings I’ve seen.

This is the first Hisayasu Sato film I’ve seen, but I’m impressed by the realism and the length the actors go to create characters that feels real, that maybe even are real. There’s no poseurs here, no lightweight pretending. When Ryuzaki and Kitami have sex it’s the characters getting on with it, not actors pretending to be something else (do I have to mention it’s pretty hot to?). Both Takashi and Simon is very impressive in their parts, and manage to stay away from being pretentious – which must have been extra hard for Simon Kumani who plays a very arty farty dancer, a hard thing to do without boarding the performance to parody. But a good script and a good director overcome everything. In a Swedish movie things like this would just have been preposterous, that’s why I’m bringing it up.

I also need to mention the haunting score by So Hayakawa, I wish it was released somewhere. I never really cared for “happy gay movies”, what I care about is real gay movies. Movies that’s not shallow and stupid, stereotypical crap. We, the gay community, seem to be forcing ourselves to only like happy movies, but I demand the right to also be multi-layered and not so damn happy, just like the rest of the world. Kitami succeeds in this, long before any brokeback mountains or any other mechanical Oscar-winning project.

It takes a genius to make a movie like this, and I can’t wait to dive into the filmography of Hisayasu Sato!