Yilmayan Seytan

This is a terrifically fun film to watch because it is so gosh-darn awful! And, when I say awful, it's clearly MUCH worse than even the worst trash that Ed Wood, Jr. ever made! How is this possible?! I dunno--but it is truly awful in every way. But, as a bad movie buff, the film is so bad and so inept in every way, that I thoroughly loved every minute of it! Imagine taking some of the crazy movie serials of the 1930s and 40s (particularly "Spy Smasher") and combining it with the Mexican Lucha Libre (wrestling) films AND "The Aztec Mummy Against The Humanoid Robot"--and even making it worse! That is "The Deathless Devil" in a nutshell!

The film begins with a guy learning that his father was Copperhead--a masked crime fighter much like El Santo from Mexican cinema--though, unlike El Santo, this guy often does not wear the mask. In fact, at times he fights the baddies without the mask--making you wonder why he even bothered to use the mask in the first place! His mission is to stop the hilarious 'Dr. Satan'--a huge mustachioed baddie who spends every scene he's in laughing like a guy who's off his medication. Doc Satan is bent on doing bad things--with the help of an evil serum and strapped on bombs that make people his slaves as well as the silliest robot I have EVER seen! In fact, towards the end of the film, you can see the human arm of the guy inside the cardboard robot costume! In addition to this dumb plot, some 'comic relief' was included by inserting a cretin who dresses like Sherlock Holmes. To say he was an embarrassment to watch is an understatement, as he might just have been the most obnoxious and worst acting sidekick in film history! And, like the other Turkish pop film included on the DVD, there is nudity--which shocked me, as this was made in a Muslim nation--albeit a more liberal one! So here is what you get: terrible acting, a dumb script, horrible special effects, scenes that were clunkily put together (including fight scenes that were clearly fought in DIFFERENT locations in the SAME fight scene), music stolen from the Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (though this hero was no George Lazenby....heck, he wasn't even good enough to be Marty Allen from "Last of the Secret Agents") and non-stop action. All these together make an awful film that is never dull--and might have you rolling on the floor with laughter.

Also, try watching the 24 minute documentary on the DVD about Turkish pop cinema. It's not great, but still lots of fun.

A friend of mine gave this to me recently, and he said it was like a Turkish Santo movie. When I started watching it, I was very happy to see it was a shot for shot remake (mostly) of the Republic serial, "The Mysterious Dr. Satan. Now, that serial is absolutely one of my favorites, because of the characters involved. Sure, there's no Sherlock Holmes goofy wannabe, or sexy topless women, but mostly, the Turkish remake was some goofy fun. There were some scenes that were copied almost EXACTLY from the serial, DOWN to even stealing some music and SCENES from the original as inserts on TV screens that the characters are watching! All in all, a good silly movie you can put on to entertain your drunk friends at a party.

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 crime 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 exhausted 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. This is remarkably like "Hell of the Living Dead" 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. 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.

Anyway, it was definitely good fun while it lasted, and I don't feel like I missed anything by skipping 2/3rds of it.

--- Check out other reviews on my website of bad and cheesy movies, Cinema de Merde. Find the URL in my email address above.