Aska Susayanlar: Seks ve Cinayet

THIRSTY FOR LOVE, SEX AND MURDER is a Turkish film about a man in black who hunts down young women, and does what the title suggests. This is an extremely low-low budget affair. At one point, early on, while the killer is supposedly approaching through some trees, the full arm of someone holding out one of the branches is clearly visible!

This is an attempt at a giallo / exploitation film, and on that level it -sort of- works. There are scenes intended to be "shocking" that might have been so during the early 1970's, but won't cause much of a jolt for today's audiences.

Some scenes, like the swinging dance party, are bust-a-gut hilarious! Then, there are the guys sporting the world's biggest sideburns! The fashions of the era are always a hoot, and here we even get tear-away, paper dresses!

Still, there are moments of near creepiness, and there are times when it becomes almost suspenseful. To be fair, the killer is menacing. The worst parts occur whenever no one is being murdered. That's when we're treated to mindless blather, pointless "romance", and / or soft core cheeeze.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: #1- The man who not only has those titanic sideburns, but also has hair that looks as though it belongs on a much larger man's head! #2- The shamefully inept, utterly rib-tickling shootout / karate finale!

Turkish giallo "Thirsty For Love(Sex and Murder)" is a blatant copy of Sergio Martino's "The Strange Vice of Mrs.Wardh".It is basically a scene-by-scene remake of this classic Italian giallo.It takes the plot of "The Strange Vice" and stretches it out into an almost pure cinematic abstraction.Devoid of suspense it certainly offers a good dose of sleaze and bloody violence towards women.The film is so crazy and wonderfully odd that it's hard not to like this piece of utter delirium.There are some differences between this film and it's inspiration as the plot is simplified and the ending is different.I am a big fan of Italian giallo genre and this is the first time I watched Turkish one.It surely made me laugh a lot.8 out of 10 for its sheer weirdness.

Happily, the profile of high-impact, low-credibility Turkish genre cinema has demonstratively increased in popularity over the years. Wider availability, positive word of mouth, and enthusiastic bloggers encouraging psychotronic fans to watch the enjoyably hyperbolic 'Thirsty for Love, Sex and Murder'. The logic-defying intensity of this cheaply reproduced, energetically mounted Giallo is frequently joyous to behold! This ferociously silly thriller's prolific and wonderfully illicit use of popular rock/soundtrack music lends an additionally vivid veneer of wonderfully incongruent weirdness to this singularly demented Turkish slasher!

Mehmet Aslan's frantic 'Thirsty for Love, Sex and Murder' is certainly no less bewitching in its bravura far-out phantasmagoria than the Italian original. This delirious, modestly faithful iteration of, Sergio Martino's iconically twist-headed, Edwige/Hilton Giallo classic 'The Strange Case of Mrs. Wardh' (1971) maintains its scintillating strangeness! Admittedly, there are some especially lurid narrative embellishments that are most certainly best seen, rather than dully explained. This terrifically thrilling, hyper-delic Turkish Giallo is a hallucinatory, skin-flaying, reality-dodging delight!

The multitudinous skirt-raising, sexually suggestive twists and macabre turns herein rival Charlie Sheen's memoirs and the equally shrill acting performances with its bold appropriation of the original film's music with some gleefully purloined, Ennio Morricone scores curiously adds verisimilitude to the genuinely exciting Giallo. For all its barnstorming, B-movie brevity 'Thirsty for Love, Sex and Murder' packs in an excess of unhinged copy cat craziness in its unusually short running time.