A Turkish film industry has existed since 1914 and has, at various points in time, flourished. In the sixties, Turkey was actually the fifth biggest producer of films in the world. Things have slowed down considerably since then but Türkiye absolutely has cinematic traditions all its own. However, classic Turkish cinema remains extremely obscure outside of its borders. Instead, the films that tend to attract the most international attention are the rip-offs. A trend retrospectively known as “Turksploitation” emerged in the seventies, that blatantly copied Hollywood blockbusters, often using footage and music from these films on a strictly unofficial basis. Clips from “Turkish Star Wars,” “Turkish Rambo,” “Turkish Superman,” and that movie where Captain America and Santo fight Evil Spider-Man have circulated freely among the internet for years and years, mocked by dipshit nerds totally ignorant of other cultures. Among those infamous wannabes is what is commonly known as “Turkish Exorcist.” The actual title is “Şeytan” and, while I'm sure a knock-off of a horror classic probably isn't how Turkish horror fans would want their country represented, I'm simply too curious not to check this one out.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Somewhere in the Middle East, a wise old man of the cloth walks through the desert. He approaches a recently unearthed statue of a demonic figure, glaring at it expectantly. Far away, in Istanbul, Ayten is currently in the midst of a divorce. Her young daughter, Gül, doesn't seem too bothered by it. The family enjoys the comforts afforded to by her mother's rich lifestyle. However, she's also been messing with a Ouija board. Next, Ayten hears weird noises from the attic. While looking for the mice that the home's caretaker says aren't present, she comes across a book on the topic of the devil. It's been written by Tuğrul Bilge, an atheist author who lives near-by. It's a concerning appearance that seems to signal Gül's behavior getting stranger. She sleepwalks, starts acting violently, her bed begins quaking at night. Science is helpless to diagnosis her. Soon, it seems her body has been entirely taken over by a spirit that claims to be Seytan himself. Tuğrul is asked to assist and, after the extraordinary evidence piles up, seeks out the help of the only man that can save Gül. A man that you could, convincingly, call an exorcist.
A key difference in that scene between “Şeytan” and “The Exorcist” is that... In the Turkish version, the girl does not appear to be defiling a holy symbol. Instead, it looks like she's merely stabbing herself in the thigh with the demon-headed dagger. Part of what made “The Exorcist” such a shocking success in the seventies is that it had a ream of vile profanity coming out of an angelic young girl's mouth. One can only assume that something is lost in translation but, going by the subtitles on my copy, the worst swear Gül unleashes is to call someone “senile.” Similarly, the scars on the girl's face look like cheap Halloween make-up. Especially when combined with the green skin. The vomiting appears more like spat out globs of snot than vulgar streams of greenish puke. I don't know much about Turkish censorship standards. However, it would seem that, in order to make “The Exorcist” an appropriate story for Turkish audience, the filmmakers of “Şeytan” ended up removing all the edge and danger from the material. In this telling, there's never any doubt that the girl's soul will be saved. The shock value isn't gone only because the audience has already seen this all before. It's as if the transgressive energy has been surgically removed.
That is interesting. Is it interesting enough to make “Şeytan” worth watching, especially if you've seen “The Exorcist” fifty times? Probably not. The differences that do emerge surely reflect variations in beliefs. Does the scene of the rather goofy looking demonic figure appearing in the girl's bedroom, wherein the possessed victim visibly bows before it, reflect a difference in how Islam considers the figure of Shaitan in comparison to what modern Christian demographics think of Satan? You'd probably need to be better read in Turkish culture and Muslim beliefs than I am to say for sure. Nevertheless, whatever anthropological factors “Şeytan” reveals is overshadowed by it being a supremely fangless and rather dryly executed unofficial remake. I suppose I am glad I saw it but, ultimately, it's hard to justify watching more than a high-light as worthwhile in a world when you can simply watch “The Exorcist” instead. [5/10]
For all its many and obvious flaws, “Watchers 3” could be commended for one element. It was something like an actual sequel to the previous entry in the series. While the second movie operated as another adaptation of the original novel, the third at least attempted to continue the story. It didn't do it well. The explanation provided for what happened to Paul Ferguson and Einstein the smart dog in-between movies was not satisfying. The new Outsider in part three was also implied to be the same monster from the last time, suggesting that some re-writing was done between installments. Still, having now set a precedent, you would expect a fourth “Watchers” to follow this pattern too, right? Unfortunately, someone decided to resume the original pattern by making “Watchers Reborn” another adaptation of the story Dean Koontz had written nearly two decades earlier at this point. Perhaps creature effects specialist and “Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College” auteur John Carl Buechler was simply a big fan of the book and wanted to do it right this time. More likely, nobody was expending the necessary creativity and thought process to think of a new story for the fourth “Watchers” movie. Still, there's enough familiar faces and names behind and in front of the camera for this fourthquel to catch my attention.
So, once more, with feeling: A government research facility blows up. A dog and a monster escape. The dog is smarter than the average canine. The monster likes to rip people's eyes out. Dr. Grace Hudson, a geneticist involved with the project, goes in search of the hound. A group of G-man assassins, led by Lem Johnson, are out to destroy both projects and eliminate any witnesses. This time, a traumatized police detective named Jack Murphy ends up with Einstein, the smart dog. It's not long before Grace finds him, the trio going on the run from both the federal agents and the monster. The doctor and the cop fall in love, as she seeks to protect Einstein and communicate with the Outsider before both are killed by the ruthless Lem.
With a blue print provided by Koontz' novel and three previous movies, you wouldn't think “Watchers Reborn” would be as sloppily assembled as it is. The standard chase plot is routinely interrupted by weird digressions. An extended scene follows a couple in a bar, arguing with the mobster who wants to sell drugs in this establishment. As you begin to truly wonder what any of this has to do with the rest of the movie, the monster busts in. Another scene has Hamill hitching a ride with a random driver. This seemingly unimportant passer-by persists for a number of scenes afterwards. Far too many moments in “Watchers Reborn” are like that, allowed to ramble on for far longer than necessary. It creates a slapdash feeling with an incredibly unmotivated pacing, events changing depending on who was available that day and headed in no determined direction.
Much of “Watchers Reborn” is set in forgettable looking apartments, barns, and warehouses. This does not dissuade the notion that the movie was made cheaply and hastily with whatever was available. Aside from a scene where he writes his name out in gravy on a newspaper, Einstein the dog doesn't get nearly enough to do either. How do you make a movie about a super-smart dog and not have most of the plot revolve around him? It's not any more faithful to the book than previous adaptations. I guess the “Reborn” subtitle is technically correct but the film certainly lacks the renewed energy you expect from a rebirthing. How can a book be made into a movie four times and each of them miss the mark on what made the original special? A decent cast was pulled together for this one but there's very little else about “Watchers Reborn” that justifies its existence. Maybe someone will give this story of brainy dogs and the monsters who hate them a proper shot some day... [5/10]
As an ignorant American, I only know of Steve Coogan for his appearances as an actor in Hollywood movies of varying middlebrow-ness. I am vaguely aware of the Alan Partridge character that he's played many times for British television but that's about the extent of my knowledge about that. However, upon discovering that Coogan also created and starred in a series spoofing classic British horror movies, well, that's a lot more up my alley. “Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible” aired for six episodes on BBC Two in the fall of 2001. Coogan introduced each episode under heavy make-up as “Dr. Terrible,” a slightly senile seeming mad scientist type who would present stories from the fire side, like Roald Dahl in “Tales of the Unexpected.” As the title indicated, the Amicus anthology films was a primary source of inspiration but episodes also spoofed Hammer horror, “The Hands of Orlac,” and Yellow Peril stories. Sounds like a fairly niche idea for a series to me and I''m not surprised to read that audiences didn't warm up to it. But maybe I will...
The final episode to air, “Scream Satan Scream!,” is primarily inspired by “Witchfinder General.” In it, Coogan plays Captain Slater: Witch Locator. He travels the countryside with his depraved dwarf assistant, Tygon, and looks for beautiful woman to accuse of being witches. It would seem that his methods of determining if a woman is consorting with the devil involves quite a lot of personal inspection of their naked bodies. At some point, Slater actually did burn a real witch at the stake. Now, her two sisters have placed a curse upon Slater and are determined to turn the hysterical, devil-fearing mobs that he riles up against him. Somehow, however, Slater keeps escaping being hoisted by his own placard.
The more surreal, absurd bits are the ones that made me chuckle a bit more consistently here. None other than Warwick Davis appears as Tygon, an obvious shout-out to the production company that made “Witchfinder General.” Davis never speaks but gets in a number of amusing physical gags, such as when he repeatedly stumbles into metal traps. A sequence in which Slater gets a branding iron all ready only for his intended victim to successfully dispel it, forcing him to brand Davis instead, made me chuckle. That weirdness persists throughout, especially in the climatic sequence where the devil itself appear. The show also attempts to draw humor from the conflicting elements of various witch lore, which is the first joke anybody makes about swimming a witch. I laughed a little but this is an odd one. What would the modern American equavelent to this be? Eric Andre convincing Adult Swim to fund comedic homages to Ray Dennis Steckler? I think I admire the audacity of something like this actually making it to air more than I enjoyed it as a comedy. [6/10]
La femme qui se poudre
Horror is one of the few cinematic genres that can entirely get by on mood and atmosphere. Furthermore, it often invokes the surreal and absurd, violating the natural order of the world, in service of unnerving the viewer. Because of this, horror and experimental film making sometimes cross paths. As is the case with "The Woman Who Powders Herself," an inexplicable fifteen minutes of nightmare imagery from French mixed media artist, Patrick Bolanowski. Through a shadowy, distorted, silent movie-like aperture, the short presents a number of bizarre scenes. People wearing dehumanizing, plaster masks motion to each other through the darkness. A woman cakes herself in dust while a man tends to her within a geometrical room. A figure moves across a desolate, surreal landscape. Someone pours a black liquid – Blood? Oil? – into a tea cup until it overflows and consumes the screen. Ominous figures advance on the woman while floating material assembles itself into a tower out in the distance. All the while, a discordant soundscape plays as the footage crackles, warps, and twists through filmic, photographic, and animated means.
When a film wanders as far into the art house as "The Woman Who Powders Herself" does, what it all means is as much your guess as mine. The provided synopsis describes it as "a study of human anxieties about beauty, youth, and objectification." The actors' faces are twisted into crude caricatures of humanity, except for those who seem to wear a wreath of tumorous tissue around their heads. I suppose that relates to beauty. Is the titular woman meant to be elderly, fighting off her aging appearance by covering her face? Or is she hiding from the world that seeks to objectify her, which descends on her at the end? If that's the case, what does all the other weird shit mean?
Trying to fashion a narrative out of almost purely experimental filmmaking like "The Woman Who Powders Herself" is hard to do. The desert-like landscape and warped faces gave me post-apocalyptic vibes. The increasingly cracked and popping visuals certainly feel like a depiction of a world falling into nonexistence. Though the touches of animation seem almost whimsical compared to the otherwise haunting imagery. The musical score is composed of mechanical shrieks, foghorn-like cries, and what sounds like water dripping into a sink. All together, the result is a total head scratcher that, nevertheless, summons up an eerie feeling in the viewer and presents our eyes truly with some things we haven't seen before. One wonders if a young David Lynch wasn't influenced by the film. “Eraserhead's” score and visuals share some similarities. While I have zero doubts that E. Elias Merhige swiped nearly the entire "Begotten" aesthetic from this. Nowadays, if you slapped some gnarly doom metal on top of "The Woman Who Powders Herself," you'd have a pretty fucked-up music video. [7/10]
When a film wanders as far into the art house as "The Woman Who Powders Herself" does, what it all means is as much your guess as mine. The provided synopsis describes it as "a study of human anxieties about beauty, youth, and objectification." The actors' faces are twisted into crude caricatures of humanity, except for those who seem to wear a wreath of tumorous tissue around their heads. I suppose that relates to beauty. Is the titular woman meant to be elderly, fighting off her aging appearance by covering her face? Or is she hiding from the world that seeks to objectify her, which descends on her at the end? If that's the case, what does all the other weird shit mean?
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