Seytan

Seytan (Turkish Exorcist) (1974)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Turkish version of The Exorcist, which borrows nearly every scene from the classic movie and it also lifts the famous music score. This is the third or fourth Turkish film I've watched and this one took me by surprise because it actually tries to be a serious film and not just some sort of rip off or spoof. As you'd expect, a young girl gets possessed by Satan so her mother (Meral Taygun) gets help from a writer (Cihan Unal) who wrote a book on possession. As I said, I was really surprised that the film actually tried being a scary horror film and I was also shocked that for the most part it worked. There are some silly moments but overall this was pretty effective and gets the job done a lot better than many of the Italian rip offs out there. The opening sequences of the mother searching the attic and hearing various noises up there worked very well as did the final exorcism scene. I was also impressed by the performances especially Taygun as the mother. There are a few hysterical moments due to the lower budget and some of the possession scenes come off funny but I've found this to be the case in the majority of these films and that includes The Exorcist. The direction is a tad bit all over the place but for the most part it is good, although the zoom function is used way too many times and most of the time it's used very badly. Again, this film is far from a masterpiece but there's enough good stuff here to make it worth watching.

I'll also comment on the "official" DVD of this. I guess you'd call this an official bootleg since Warner would never let this film out there since it ripped their film off and used the same music score. I guess whoever was doing the subtitles just wrote them down on the paper and the makers of the DVD just copied them over without reading what they were working on. There are several times where the guy's notes are put in the subtitles and this leads to some very funny stuff. At one point there's talk of a letter opener and the subtitles include "what's a letter opener". Another funny moment is when the text contains a question mark with an added note to "search Google". When the film is over a "The End" credit pops up and the notes include "finally".

Just from the box art, you know your in for a treat. This movie made me laugh so hard i almost choked! They follow the Exorcist from the start to the end. This baby must have been on a budget of $100. The FX are horrible, the acting is stale, and they play tubular bells 800 times in this movie! But it is so bad its hilarious and i highly recommend it. Pure cheese! One part during the exorcism, the room is all lit up, when the girl levitates, the room becomes dark [to hide the wires i guess] and when she comes back down, the room is dark again. Its in Turkish though, but if you want it dubbed, just dub the Exorcist audio over the whole movie, i am sure it will fit.

This movie is an attempt to make use of a script, which was already turned into a masterpiece by William Friedkin only a year ago in 1973. To make things worse, they had only a tiny budget for this remake and well, I'm sure that the producers of this movie had made some money at the end, yet it was a useless risk for the big director Metin Erksan, who had won the Golden Bear in Berlin with his 1964 movie Susuz Yaz (Reflections).

If you are a fan of The Exorcist you probably should watch it, yet for others, it will probably only be a waste of time. It is not so funny either, so if you attempt to watch it for a few laughs, in many cases you will just end up being bored. There are some Ed Wood/Cetin Inanc type low- budget B-movie mistakes in this one as well, yet someone has to point them out, so maybe you should invite some friends over to share this ridiculous experience, or maybe a talk-show host should examine the movie with the help of a studio audience, and in Turkey that was actually done for this movie ;)

Saw this the other day. What a laugh! Apparently, some films in the 70s were suffering from attention from Warners, who tried to ban them saying they ripped off their classic "The Exorcist". How this slipped by them I'll never know! Not a subtly or even majorly similar film, this is a complete remake! I mean even the same SOUNDTRACK! Tubular Bells is played EIGHT times in this movie. Get some imagination! They try their best I suppose. The actress playing Gul hasn't got any stunt performers standing in for her a la Eileen Dietz puking all over poor Jason Mller, no, this babe hurls the yellow (not green for once) puke herself. I totally loved the dramatic organ music when the bed levitated (God, it took so LONG!) and then the same music a few minutes later when the bed descended. Fantasticaly crap! The mother reminded me of my make up tutor. Hmmm. Couldn't look at this actress without seeing a foundation pot and a bruise wheel. Not to worry. How these people think they can do this and not get sued (hell, they managed) I will never know. Turks have BALLS! See it. It's trash, badly made and completely pants. Great stuff. :O)

Out of all the Turkish rip-off films i've seen, this one is the most palatable in some ways (not the most entertaining, but watchable)... It may have helped that i had subtitles for this one, but part of it was the fact that they follow the Hollywood version very closely, and the basic narrative of the exorcist is solid...

On the other hand, this movie is a perfect example of why story and script can only take you so far in a film... The story is almost identical to the Hollywood version with only a few changes to make it more culturally relevant, but the direction and all the cinematic aspects are much worse. The end result is a movie that fails in every way.

There are no scares, and every scene lacks intensity compared to William Friedkin's version... You would figure that somewhere in the movie there would be at least one scene that would be superior in some way... Some inventive touch that would surpass the original, but even though every scene has a counterpart in Friedkins film, the Turkish version of the scene is always vastly inferior to the point were it's almost depressing. The lighting isn't even remotely atmospheric, the camera choices are all horrendous (except when they copy friedkins exact camera angles), the acting is soap opera level (at best).

This movie is a perfect example of why directors (not writers) are the most important figures behind the creation of a movie. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Lucio Fulci (one of the masters of Italian horror) routinley worked with scripts that were much worse than this one, yet consistently churned out movies that were 10 times better. You can't even really use the poor budget as a justification for this film because many of the problems have nothing to do with any budgetary constraints. It's cheap, but that's not why it's bad.

Most of these Turkish rip-off films play as pure comedy for me, not this one... There is a bit of unintentional comedy here and there, but it's so close to the original exorcist that you can't help but constantly compare the two and the end result is a greater appreciation of the Hollywood version. It will make you thankful that all movies aren't as blandly made as this rip-off.

Worth watching just for the interesting contrast, but not worthy as entertainment of any kind.