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The Deathless Devil
Wazzuanngu mmenepp thucuu, Doctor Satan?
1975
Review: February 5, 2006
Director: Yilmaz Atadeniz
Starring: Kunt Tulgar, Mine Mutlu, Muzaffer Tema, Erol Günaydin
Up to you.
THE SETUP:
Guy wears a mask to defend his Turkish peoples from the nefarious plots of Dr. Satan
DISCUSSION:
I saw something in the NYTimes’ new DVDs section about this, one of what was apparently a vast number of Turkish grindhouse movies, and of course was interested. There is an opening crawl on the disc that says that at the time of this film, Turkey was pumping out about 3,000 films a year, but very few of them survive. And once you watch it, the whole thing is so disposable, it’s amazing any of them survived at all.
This is a super-low budget crme thing where the action literally never lets up. This is not necessarily a good thing. Someone will be struggling with something, and the second that’s over guys with guns appear and they fight, and the second that’s over one of them has to get in a car and have a chase, but then the car is leaking gasoline… etc. It takes a few minutes to set up, and then it just keeps going. I was completely exhaused after 30 minutes… and there were 60 left to go.
Anyway, what story there is concerns the nefarious Dr. Satan, who is up to something or other, but you can be sure it’s evil, whatever it is. Then this guy whose father was just killed is given this glittery gold-colored Mexican wrestling mask and asked to wear it and fight crime, which he does, taking on the name of “Copperhead.”
The amusement comes from just how incompetently made this is. It’s a little weird, because a reader had just written me about watching Hell of the Living Dead that day, and this is remarkably like that in the way that just how very stupid it is makes you start giggling. For me, like I said, the giggling ended 30 minutes in, but if you had friends and booze with you, I’m sure you could make it through the whole thing [and please be aware that there’s a whole other movie on the disc]. The whole tone here is very much like that of the movies and TV shows being parodied in that one famous Beastie Boys video, except that it takes place in Turkey [which of course adds its own appeal].
Some of the hilariously inept touches include two guys having a fight in a small room, then one of them punches the other and suddenly they’re outside. At one point “the professor” is riding a train and, for no reason, suddenly says: “Maybe we should shut that window.” How unfortunate that this happens one second before the villains pump gas into the car. Please don’t miss the security camera footage that seems to have its own director, cinematographer, and editor. And then there’s just the everyday hilarity of scenes that just suddenly end after delivering no information, making ludicrous non-sequiters with the scene that follows. Throughout all of this the guys are speaking Turkish, which means you’re also hearing things like “Wurzzzh burzzzurcarrch musssingkink Professor, swwuzzzurch myoch hezzussich, Dr. Satan.”
What else? The music that just starts and ends or abruptly changes mid-scene. The sound effects that make it sound like a hurricane is going on during each fight, with barely any attempt made to match the smacking sounds with the hitting of opponents. I also enjoyed the fact that when three rather hot hit men show up to do some evil or other, they’re all wearing tacky suits and obviously have dildoes stuffed down their pants.
But even that’s not enough to sustain viewer interest [plus I was really tired], and so I ended up fast forwarding from 30 min to 90 min, just to see if there was some earthquake or tribute to the French New Wave or ballet sequence or something notable I would have missed otherwise. I report with regret and relief that there was not. It just continues on the way it had, making it an excellent visual wallpaper if you have a party or whatever. I need to have a Home Film Festival called “Films by the yard.”
Anyway, it was definitely good fun while it lasted, and I don’t feel like I missed anything by skipping 2/3rds of it. We’ll see if I even end up watching the other one [I didn’t].
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Sure, it’s always fun to watch total ineptitude. But I would rent an alternate choice, as well.
RELATED FILMS:
TARKAN VS. THE VIKINGS is the other film included on this DVD, that I couldn’t muster up the interest to watch. I assume it’s fairly similar to this one.
