Tarkan Versus the Vikings (1971)

Even though Conan the Barbarian had been around since his first appearance in 1932 in the pages of Weird Tales magazine, it was a little more than thirty years before the most iconic depiction of him appeared in art form.  In 1966, Lancer Books got the rights to reprint Robert E. Howard’s original tales (edited, revised, and/or completed with the assistance of L. Sprague de Camp), and the painted covers were handled by the late, great Frank Frazetta.  Frazetta’s visuals solidified the Cimmerian’s look for all the years to come, and they encapsulated perfectly what the character was all about, being as beautiful as they are savage.  It can be argued that all barbaric characters created after have followed in Conan’s image, both as written and as drawn.  Now, I can’t say I know all that much about Turkish comic books (okay, I know nothing at all), but I believe that I can state confidently that Sezgin Burak’s Tarkan character is likely one that does.  If nothing else, Mehmet Aslan’s Tarkan Versus the Vikings (aka Tarkan Viking Kani aka Tarkan and the Blood of the Vikings) does a solid job of capturing the flavor of barbaric adventure stories and adorns it with enough garish, comic book accoutrements to make for a singular viewing experience.

Bloodthirsty (and I mean BLOODTHIRSTY; they gleefully slaughter infants) Vikings led by the bathroom-mat-wrapped Toro (Bilal Inci) attack a Hun Turk fortress and kidnap Yonca (Fatma Belgen), the daughter of Khan Attila (who is never seen) and her squadron of female warriors.  During the assault, loyal friend and loner Tarkan (Kartal Tibet) is wounded, and his “wolf” Kurt is slain.  Together with Kurt’s son (also named Kurt, apparently), Tarkan sets off to exact bloody revenge, more for the murder of his pet than to get Yonca and the other Turks out of captivity.

Tarkan Versus the Vikings is about as wild a film as you’re likely to see.  The emphasis is on energy, though it’s not something I would call competent, per se, and combined, they form the wealth of the film’s charm (from what I’ve been able to glean, this is the entire modus operandi of Turkish pop cinema).  This movie looks like it was edited in a blender, but here this is a strength not a detriment.  The lightning fast, almost nonsensical cuts form a montage akin to the layout of a comic book page (the key difference being that, in a comic book, the reader paces the story in tune with the artist/writer; with this film, the viewer is thrown in and left to his own defenses).  It jams as much as it possibly can into every minute (nay, second), then tries to pack it all down to stuff some more in.  There’s more action and convoluted plotting in this film’s initial thirty minutes than in the entirety of the last three Fast and Furious films combined.  

Additionally, the movie is as hyper-stylized and scintillating as any four-color comic book (or comic book movie, for that matter).  The Kraken-esque octopus that the Vikings sacrifice their captives to is as ridiculous as the titular beastie from The Giant Claw (also, I couldn’t help thinking that Robert Altman saw this film before making his adaptation of Popeye back in 1980).  The Vikings’ hair almost universally consists of poorly attached, vibrant wigs (one of which flies off an extra’s head when Tarkan gives him the business).  Those whose hair was merely dyed for the production are even more unnatural than those wearing hairpieces (they’re not blonde, they’re yellow).  Their shields are dotted with radiant puffs of fur.  The female Vikings are decked out like the flag for the Rainbow Coalition.  To wit, Viking King Gero’s (Atif Kaptan) daughter Ursula (Eva Bender) is togged in lustrous pink fur, and so on.  This whole review could simply be a list of every gaudy, slapdash bit of costuming, scenery, etcetera, but I’m comfortable with stopping at these.  Suffice it to say, this film isn’t merely a comic book projected on screen; it’s a cartoon in live action (ironically enough, the polar opposite of every blockbuster action film made today).

The film takes an odd perspective on women.  They are generally regarded as strong and strong-willed.  Yonca’s platoon of female furies that guard the fortress are described as worth ten men each.  Ursula and her shipload of female Vikings bear as much responsibility for plundering as any other boat full of seamen.  The Chinese villainess Lotus (the breathtaking Seher Seniz) commands her minions with ice cold practicality.  She also uses her sexuality prominently.  She beds down with men she either respects for their masculinity and/or wants to put in a vulnerable position to drug (something she loves doing).  Her death strip/dance in the film’s back third is equal parts tense, bizarre, and titillating.  Since these women are posited as equals to the men in the film, there are zero qualms about killing them in the same brutal fashion as a man would be.  Needless to say, many a hatchet is planted in a woman’s cranium throughout the picture.  By that same token, women are also very much sex objects to be used and abused.  Women are hung by their hair for hatchet-tossing practice (sometimes over a pit of vipers, sometimes not).  On the Vikings’ big festival day, the Hun Turk women are brought in to be raped and killed at will (and often at the same time, as women are stabbed and then groped and kissed as they writhe in their death throes).  Women are whipped often (but, in fairness, so are men).  Despite what power they are allowed to wield, the women in this film still cater to the prurient interest of both the male characters and the audience.  It’s an uneasy balance (if a balance is even struck).

If you thought that the motivation for revenge in John Wick was a bit farfetched, you’d best strap yourself in for Tarkan Versus the Vikings.  His wolves, Kurt and Kurt, are, in Tarkan’s mind, true Turks, as worthy of respect and loyalty as any human.  The elder Kurt teaches the younger how to be a good Turk, training him on table manners (and these dogs…sorry, wolves…eat up at the table the same as any person would).  Kurt’s son helps Tarkan heal (I assume by finding herbs and shit around the area).  The wolves are so equivocated to man, there’s a sequence where Tarkan and the younger Kurt attack a group of Vikings, and the viewer is treated to an entire sequence vacillating between Tarkan lopping off men’s heads and Kurt ripping out their throats.  It feels a bit like a fight scene from the 1966 Batman television show sans the hard Dutch angles and onomatopoeic effects overlays.  

For all its disjointedness and ludicrously po-faced absurdisms, Tarkan Versus the Vikings is a damned good time.  Obviously, it will never make a hall of fame for technical prowess, but every moment of its runtime is dynamic.  It’s a constantly moving predator, like the myth about how sharks can never stop swimming.  I was just a bit reluctant to dive into this film, but having come out the other end of it a different man, I feel the need to indulge in as much Turkish pop cinema as I possibly can.  Will it be as entertaining and worthwhile as this little gem?  Absolutely not, but the first step in finding gold is to just start digging.

MVT:  The energy of the film is infectious.  It sweeps you along like some half-crazed, drunk idiot friend who wants to hit every bar in a ten-mile radius.  And somehow manages to do so.

Make or Break:  The attack on the Hun Turk fortress.   It fully illustrates where the film’s bloody heart lies, veins and all.

Score:  7/10 

Sorceress (1982)

The Corsican Brothers is a story by Alexandre Dumas which first saw print in 1844.  In it, the brothers de Franchi, Louis and Lucien, are former conjoined twins who still share a bond that allows (you could argue suffers) them to feel each other’s pain.  If this sounds familiar, it should.  The idea has been adapted to numerous ends over the years.  Of course, there is the eponymous 1941 film starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr (and it should be stated, cinematic adaptations of the novella go back as far as 1898 according to my research), as well as the comedic reworking from Cheech & Chong (of these two, this is the one I’ve watched, for better or worse).  Then there are the maleficent twins Tomax and Xamot from the G.I. Joe cartoons, comics, et cetera.  Even the classic children’s educational show The Electric Company got into the act, though the brothers were renamed Miguel and Ramon and taught us how to form words using sounds like “ow.”  Outside of the obvious comic appeal of the concept, the conceit is intriguing.  It shows us, quite dramatically, that the bonds of family, of blood, are stronger than anything else, and this connection can never be severed, despite our possible desire to do so.  Jack Hill’s (aka Brian Stuart, a pseudonym used after a falling out between the director and Roger Corman, the film’s producer; if memory serves, it’s the name of Corman’s nephew, but don’t quote me on that) Sorceress also deals with the core of The Corsican Brothers, though one would be hard-pressed to say that it handles it even half as carefully or intelligently as Messrs. Chong and Marin.

On a sultry, fog-shrouded night, Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) and his cronies hunt down Traigon’s wife, who has fled with their newborn twin daughters.  Unable to tell which of the two is the first born (this is crucial for Traigon’s sacrificial plans, though not nearly as crucial as you’d think, as we will learn later), the nefarious sorcerer is thwarted by aged magician and martial artist Krona (Martin LaSalle), who spirits the girls away, gives them some ill-defined superpowers, and spouts some prophetic gunk about them being “the two who are one.”  Fast forward to Mara and Mira’s (Lynette and Leigh Harris, respectively) voluptuous young adulthood, where they inevitably find themselves on the path to slay Traigon and stop his plan along with a small group of disparate allies (Baldar, a Viking [Bruno Rey], Pando, a satyr [David Millbern], and Erlick, a barbarian [Roberto Nelson]).

I know I made a big deal about the Corsican Brothers angle, but aside from the constant reference to “the two who are one” (a phrase which characters spout as if it had been drilled into their heads from birth but without any other context than that it’s important; it’s not), there is only one allusion to the psychic/sensual bond that the sisters share.  Of course, it takes place when one of the twins is having sex, and it gives the filmmakers the impetus to have the other sibling writhe on the ground in orgasmic ecstasy (it should be stated that screenwriter Jim Wynorski’s fingerprints are all over this film, this being one of the larger marks left on it).  So, why make the girls be cosmically/mystically conjoined?  Outside of the standard prophecy angle of the Sword and Sorcery genre, the answer is novelty.  More precisely, it’s the novelty of having two beautiful twins who aren’t afraid to doff their clothes in this milieu.  There is nothing going on in this story that in any way expands on this idea of bonding (at least not that I could see).  Fair play, since the film was a financial hit for Corman and New World Pictures, so the absolute minimum you can say is that one, it is distinguished from other efforts in this genre in this regard, and two, the producers certainly knew their target demographic.

To no one’s surprise, I’m about to labor a point, so bear with me.  There is a heavy religious angle at work in Sorceress, and it all starts at the opening.  The twins are being spirited away from religious zealots who would kill them, shades of the story of Moses (no floating them off down a river, however).  Krona is a Judeo-Christian God parallel with his long beard and mane of hair, his simple attire, and his invulnerability to things like fire.  Krona gives the twins to a couple of lowly goat herders to raise, and these two form a correlation to Joseph and Mary, the lowly carpenter and his wife who reared Jesus to adulthood at the request of God.  Naturally, this being a Sword and Sorcery film, Traigon’s religion is considered evil, calling as it does for the sacrifice of a human being in order to attain some nefarious end.  This also circles back around to more Christian references (are you tired of them yet?).  The face of Kalghara (Germaine Simiens), Traigon’s bad deity, is half serpentine, a Satan reference.  The good deity, Vital (Vitara?  I couldn’t tell completely), is a winged, lion-esque creature.  In combination with the sacrificial element of the film, he and the twins symbolize the duology of Jesus, who was referred to at one point as both the “conquering Lion” and “the Lamb who was slain.”  These are not exactly straight lines I’m drawing between this picture and its biblical references (and I would be shocked as all hell if they were overtly intended, but I believe this is likely one of those times when themes and motifs appear unconsciously in a piece of work for any number of reasons).  After all, the film has to satisfy its generic requirements.  But they seemed pretty obvious to me (and I haven’t opened a Bible in decades).  Nevertheless, I don’t recall horny satyrs or horny ape creatures in the Bible, so I could be wrong about all of it.    

Sorceress has enough interesting things going on, at least from a visual angle to make it worth seeing.  Unfortunately, it’s also pretty slapdash in a lot of ways, and there are dollops of broad humor that make a pie in the face look like a Lenny Bruce monologue (an ape gets shot in the ass with an arrow, a troop of zombies molest a gaggle of vestal virgins to a “what can you do?” aside from Baldar).  This is the type of film wherein every character will believe absolutely anything they’re told.  Mara and Mira believe they are boys, despite the obvious physical differences (even if they had never seen a man in their entire lives, did they never notice or question the differences between their parents?), and don’t know quite what to make of Pando’s engorged penis (okay, that was actually kind of funny).  Worse, the other characters believe the twins are boys up until they disrobe in front of them.  No one is that naïve.  No one.  Traigon’s whole scheme calls for the virginal sacrifice of the first born of the twins but after she’s been impregnated (huh?!).  One of Traigon’s soldiers commands the girls be taken alive and then commands their deaths not even a minute later.  

Still and all, there are things to enjoy, as well (one could argue that the things I just mentioned are some of them).  You get a medieval set of nunchucks.  You get a decent amount of female nudity (and even some male butt).  But more than that, you get a movie that feels like a rollicking, carefree adventure, not so much because you’re glued to your seat following its progression in peaks and valleys, but because you can enjoy the gleefully madcap, thrown-in-a-blender nuttiness that occurs constantly throughout it.  Yes, Sorceress is a mud puddle of a film, but it’s a mud puddle that’s kind of fun to slop around in from time to time.

MVT:  John Carl Buechler’s creature and makeup effects are imaginative and skillfully done.

Make or Break:  Honestly, for this film I have to go with the skinnydipping scene.  It has a little nudity, a little creature effects work, and a little juvenile humor that just about works.  Something for everyone.

Score: 6/10

Ironmaster (1983)

Thousands of years ago, the Tribe of Zod (before whom I’m sure they all knelt) grappled with the paucity of game to hunt in their domain.  But then, the Earth trembled, and the people were frightened.  Tribal leader Iksay (Benito Stefanelli) decides that good-hearted, musclebound lad Ela (Sam Pasco) will inherit his mantle when he is gone rather than his own son Vood (George Eastman).  Needless to say, Vood doesn’t cotton to any of this, and after he discovers iron (prior to the Bronze Age, mind you), he conquers the land, but Ela still has a few tricks up his non-sleeves.

What Umberto Lenzi’s Ironmaster (aka La Guerra Del Ferro: Ironmaster) draws its direct inspiration from is Conan the Barbarian’s “Enigma of Steel” speech.  Unlike John Milius’ superlative epic of savagery, however, there is little wisdom to be found in this film’s take outside of what it says about weaponry and men swinging their dicks.  Conan’s father speaks to his son about the relationship of men to their world (“This you can trust”).  Vood’s relationship with the Earth is strictly on the basis of exploitation and power (“War is our reason for living”).  Disregarding the differences in subtlety of approach, Ironmaster does still have legitimate things to say, though.  When humans discover something new, something which has the capacity for destruction, they will tend to use it for that purpose first.  Iron is not a strong material with which to build sturdier shelters for these people (Vood’s tribe live in caves for the entirety of the film, and the other prominent tribe dwell in straw huts) but a tool for subjugation.  In this way it talks about man’s inherently bellicose nature, and this is even stated outright in the film’s opening monologue.  While these sentiments do ring true, they’re addressed bluntly in the movie, creating rather obvious, facile metaphors where the possibility of a more nuanced insight is just as attainable.  This is not to say that a high degree of finesse is essential in this sort of story, especially considering its genesis.  Unfortunately, it does point to the filmmakers’ method of building narrative, for me, this was an issue.

What I mean by this is that Lenzi and company structure the film in a “lather, rinse, repeat” fashion.  There’s a scene of Vood and his minions slaughtering a bunch of people.  Cut to Ela and Isa (Elvire Audray) wandering around, lamenting their plight, and arguing over if and how they will fight Vood.  Cut to Vood lording it over his newly enslaved iron gatherers.  And so on.  It gets old after the first two iterations, and this is in a film that’s almost one hundred minutes long.  That it’s all delivered in the plainest manner possible only makes it more painful to endure.  This is how much I like all two of you; I sat through the whole thing just to report this.

But back to the film’s more interesting elements.  Aside from the abuses of physical power in the film there are the abuses of religious power.  Ela’s tribe worshipped the god Zod, and he is more or less a benevolent deity (he’s called “Punisher of Evil”), in as much as any absentee god is.  His mouthpiece (priest, what-have-you) in the tribe is Rag (Jacques Herlin), and he is thoughtful and considered in his counsel to Iksay.  Nevertheless, Rag is an older man, so what he augurs in the flames of the tribe’s camp fires could just as easily be his interpretation of probabilities based on past experiences, but his advice is still sound.  After Vood unearths the iron, he is approached by Lith (Pamela Prati), who worships Eferron (get it?), the Earth Trembler.  Vood and Lith use the gift of iron as proof that Eferron has named Vood as supreme ruler and that the god’s wish is for his people to crush the world beneath their feet.  Of course, the other tribe members are enthralled by this, largely because they are inherent followers.  However, they also experience the feeling of might that comes with conquest, and they desire more.  This is all reinforced by Lith and Vood’s insistence on their divine right.  With just a small amount of manufactured/imagined proof, the pair gull their fellow men under the guise of Eferron’s will.  This is not to say that Lith and Vood don’t believe that they are justified in their motivations or the genesis of same (or we are never shown anything indicating different).  By that same token, Lith seems far more deceptive than Vood, so if anything, one could easily suppose that the entire plot is Lith’s machinations with Vood acting as bulky figurehead for a male-dominated society.  

Another thing this movie does (in fact, what so many movies of this ilk do) is places its various factions into distinct groups with little to no intermingling.  So, along with Vood’s warmongers and Isa’s peaceniks, we also have the Mudmen, the Ursos (read: Apemen), and (apparently) the Lepers.  This is important for several reasons.  One, there need to be distinctions between the factions which the audience can easily distinguish.  Two, there need to be contagonists to get in the way of both the protagonists’ and antagonists’ goals.  Three, other tribes are needed to draw out the plot and pad the runtime with (in this case, rote) action set pieces.  Four, there need to be more wildly inhuman tribes outside of the main two so that the primary conflict makes a bit more sense.  After all, if any of the contagonist tribes were physically indiscernible from Vood’s or Isa’s, they would become viable contenders for rulers of the land rather than visually interesting monsters/subhumans to be dominated.  I mean, the Baseball Furies were never going to rule all the five boroughs of New York City any more than the Crazies were going to rule the above ground world of Manhattan, but they are memorable as serious (but still minor) obstacles in their cinematic universes.

One final distinction, perhaps the most important one (perhaps not; I’ll leave that to you), is in the nature of the two tribes as embodied in their locales.  Vood’s tribe is hard.  They live in caves next to a volcano.  Their weapons are rigid, unbending.  Their men even eat iron (yes, really).  Isa’s tribe is populated with tranquil fishermen.  They live in individual straw huts under an open sky.  They have no weapons because they believe that people will leave you alone if you do them no harm.  At first, Ela believes that the way to defeat Vood is with iron weapons of his own, but he comes to the realization that flexibility can overcome inflexibility when applied properly.  The ultimate revelation of the film falls in line with Lao Tzu’s quote, “nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”  And while, the protagonists follow their learned philosophy to the correct conclusion of this story, we know how humanity will develop down the line (assuming this all takes place on our Earth, naturally), making for a hollow victory of sorts.

MVT:  George Eastman’s Hercules-esque headgear is the best thing in the film.  Normally, I would be inclined to give it to Eastman himself, but he doesn’t do anything especially notable in the movie, and besides, he looks better doing it with the headgear on than with it off.

Make or Break:  The Break for me was Vood’s discovery of the semi-titular ore.  The volcano effects are quite well implemented, and this is in many ways the most interesting scene in the entire film.  Sadly, it also inexplicably succeeds in being overlong and dull.  The repetitive structure of the film’s remainder is simply more nails in the coffin, comparatively speaking.

Score:  4.75/10