Tarkan Vs. The Vikings

How do you make it look like a dog is climbing a stone wall? Tilt the camera sideways! How do you make sound effects for arrows? Have your foley peeps make loud unvocalized "whick whick" noises! How do you make it look like underwater footage filmed in a pool is actually the ocean? Um... why would you need to do that? They're already under water! I guess you could kind of half-assedly wave some green shit in front of the camera, to heighten the "illusion," but, really, they're already under water! That's really all that matters! What if the shot you took of a guy walking out from the fortress to a boat to greet the king's just returned daughter turns out to be too long? Just speed up the whole shot!

Such are the technical innovations of Turkish Pop Cinema as presented in Tarkan Vs. the Vikings. Frankly, this part of the double-bill wasn't nearly as amazing as The Deathless Devil, but it was still quite enjoyable. But whereas Devil seems to have taken the technical limitations of Turkish cinema and somehow managed to use them to create a movie of almost pure kinetic energy, Tarkan only manages to be incredibly charming. Of particular note:

-The costumes! I think they were supposed to look like they were wearing animal furs or something, but it looks like they actually just slaughtered a nation of muppets and are wearing their skins around. The absolute best touches were the fuzzy shields, which were shields that inexplicably had a ring of day-glo shag around the edges. I guess so the vikings could use their shields as pillows during long nights of pillaging? Or for that point in the day when they all just take a nap at once on their boats, leaving the door wide open for their oarmen slaves to kill them all and escape... although, of course, the oarmen only took advantage of that opportunity when Tarkan was there...

-Of course, the Octopus! I love that they didn't bother even trying to disguise the fact that it was just a some giant rubbery inflatable thing. It was never really clear, when various characters were fighting the octopus, if they were winning or not. Especially the scene when the giant fights the octopus, the first of the obviously-in-a-pool shots, where from the underwater shots it was obvious that his head was above the water and he was just kind of floating near the surface while the octopus sank slowly down, which looked like he'd vanquished the monster, but the reaction shots of the other characters--and the fact that the giant never appears again and the monster does--make it clear that the shots were supposed to depict the giant being killed and eaten by the octopus. I have to say, though, that even though it never stops looking completely ridiculous, there is still something very subliminally menacing about the shots of people just standing there screaming in agony while the octopus's tentacles limply hang on their bodies--as if what the octopus is actually doing to them is so terrible that it can't really be depicted, or something...

-The dogs! Both named Kurt, apparently. Maybe that's the Turkish word for dog? Obviously they had trouble getting the dogs to do exactly what they wanted, so they just kind of let the dog do whatever it wanted and we figure out what it's supposed to be doing based on the reactions of the human actors. They couldn't even get enough shots of the dog barking, apparently, so they just played barking noises over shots of the dog standing there obviously not barking.

So, yeah, at best this movie is enjoyably silly. The only part that really matched Devil for kind of insane success totally in spite of itself were the orgy scenes, which were just far more chaotic and actually orgy-like than anything you'd see in "competent" movies, probably because their tactic for filming an orgy was to just have a bunch of actors all pretty much have an actual orgy. Likewise the chaotic final battle scenes, which, of course, were pretty much mixed in with the orgy scenes. I don't know if I've ever seen scenes shot with such a total embracing of the chaos they were trying to film. Obviously whatever was happening was pretty much out of the control of the director and the camera people. Another thing just occurs to me about these scenes, which is that in almost all other movies I can think of, which the possible exception of Clockwork Orange, because scenes like this are supposed to be obviously morally contemptible they're filmed toward that end, but throughout the whole three hours of Turkish Pop Cinema you have on this disc, it's totally clear at all times that every aspect of what's being presented is supposed to be a cathartic joy for the (presumed entirely male) audience. So the orgy scenes, or the scene where Lotus inexplicably does a striptease for Tarkan before she's going to kill him, these are all presented without any hint of moral conflict: they're absolutely there to be enjoyed by the audience. The audience is not supposed to wonder if these things are possibly bad or prurient or something: they obviously are in reality, but the whole point of the movie is expression of how fun they are when removed from reality. I don't really know a lot about Turkish culture and how different it is from American culture, but I'm sure there must have been tons of moral posturing by the types prone to that sort of thing in Turkey, but nevertheless, part of what is ultimately so exciting about these films is that the people who made them obviously had no such qualms, or even the slightest inkling toward them. The heroes are the good guys just because that's their function in the movie, and the villains are evil just because that's their function in the movie, and once that's established they don't feel really any need to prove it or show why. It's kind of at once very stupid, but also refreshing in that it doesn't presume an audience that needs to be taught those lessons for some reason. I guess, maybe, if the movies are just by default disreputable, they don't have to try to pretend that they're not?