Deathless Devil: Turkish Pop Cinema Double Bill [DVD] [1973] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

In the 1960's and 70's Turkey produced lots of ultra-cheesy action films centered on a variety of themes. These two represent two prevalent themes, "The Deathless Devil," featuring the then-popular Turkish star Kunt Tulgar, is a superhero versus supervillain fantasy tale complete with ludicrous robot, while Tarkan was a very popular comic book hero adapted to a series of films in the "Conan the Barbarian" vein.

"Tarkan vs. the Vikings" is in Turkish with subtitles (as is "The Deathless Devil") and features hilarious ritual drum playing, great costumes, and the world's most unusual haircut. It is a typical swords and sandals epic (imagine Steve Reeves in Turkey) complete with fur-lined shields and helmets with horns. The plot revolves around Tarkan's vengeance on the Vikings for the killing of his beloved dog, Kurt, and a subplot about romance with Attila the Hun's daughter.

During the course of the film, Tarkan deals with a well of snakes and fights an exceptionally ridiculous octopus (think of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood's awful "Bride of The Monster") while fomenting rebellion and jailbreaks, committing general mayhem (complete with horrid decapitation special effects after totally bogus swordplay), and starting a food fight for women's liberation with the miniskirted Viking women at a trampoline party. (Confused?) This may be the only film in history to feature a fight between a dog and an octopus. What else could you want in a movie?

"The Deathless Devil" features the evil Dr. Satan versus Tekin, who is "The Copperhead," a superhero who fights off evil wherever it lurks. I am especially fond of Tekin's mask, which looks mostly like a Mexican wrestler. The film also features Bitik, the comic relief idiot, who enters to strains of the theme from "The Pink Panther" (I'm sure they paid for the rights to the Mancini classic.) There is a kidnapping in a bright red tanker truck (which seems like a high profile vehicle for such an endeavor) and a final fight with the lamest robot I have ever seen, and, yes, I have seen "Robot Monster." Throughout all this not even his closest friends can figure out that Tekin and "The Copperhead" are one and the same, much like "Batman."

These movies are extraordinarily cheesy, but fun to watch. Many of these films were made in Turkey, but most are long gone, and many have had all copies destroyed. I gave the DVD four stars mostly for the historical value of the material, but also due to the brainless fun of watching films of this genre. There is an additional documentary on the Turkish film industry that is brief but quite well done and captivating.

Good lord, this is out of print already? Glad I got mine when I did. This is a double feature of Turkish films from the 70's (I guess) and they're both rather astounding examples of...well, action films like you've never seen, I guess. There's an air of humor to them both that was most likely not intended, and there's more strangeness going on here than can be attributed to only a language barrier. Deathless Devil is apparently a remake of Dr. Satan (from the 40's) and features a sort of "strip tease" to "Witchita Lineman", if you can beleive that. It also features the perpetrator who is dressed rather like a Klingon pimp, for want of a better description. Tarkan vs. The Vikings features a hoard of lusty men clothed in what appear to be pastel bath rugs, doing battle and all that sort of stuff, plus it also features an incredibly terrifying (yeah right) octopus which has an inflatable head and whom victims need to assist in coiling its tentacles about them. All in all, these are incredibly fun but jaw-droppingly strange. Highly recommended for fans of strange foreign output when it comes to films.

These movies are awful...so bad that they're good. Very few movies from the days of the Turkish cinema survive, and these are two of the best. Or worst. Seriously, the guys from MSTK 3000 would have loved these.

Buy them, but don't take them too seriously!