GSeditor

The plot kicks off with a beautifully shot night-time scene of a masked woman (her mask is somewhat like the one in Eyes Without Face) venturing outdoors to a forest to meet a grisly fate. Next, we meet Alice who learns that her mother has been discovered dead and she temporarily moves to her mansion which brings back quite unhappy childhood memories since her mother was one dominating matriarch. In addition, something is lurking in the grounds near the house and apparently also in the dark shadows inside the house... Both the tense as well as violent scenes are handled quite effectively. The resolution of the mystery was also quite intelligent and surprising. The only downside of the movie is the performance of the lead actress; perhaps it is not entirely her fault, the acting direction and script (her lines, etc.) may also be partly to blame.

Use of miniature cars in one car chase sequence is fun to watch and there is also one fun reference to Roger Moore (who was playing James Bond in those years), but that's all there is to recommend in this otherwise mediocre action/adventure film obviously produced to ride on the popularity of the Indiana Jones films.

The plot concerns an American burglar who is hired by an Istanbul-based British guy to steal an ancient sacred artefact from a hidden temple in the Middle East so as to prevent it from falling into "wrong hands" (!). A guy in Arabic dress is monitoring them and he curses that the damn westerners are trying to steal their heritage. Well, actually he is quite right from an objective point of view, but the point of the view of the filmmakers is that of colonialism so he is the villain of the movie! It is also ridiculous to have them riding camels (!) in central Turkey of 1980s.

The cast is interesting 'though: An aged Luciano Pigozzi, a familiar face from countless great Italian horror movies from 1960s often in the role of creepy butlers, is on board and Aytekin Akkaya, who had played Cüneyt Arkin's sidekick in the notorious "Turkish Star Wars" Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam plays the main villain.

A copy of this long thought to be lost legendary movie, which hadn't had a video release during the video boom years, was finally reported to be found last year and eventually appeared online.

It is a very unusual erotic horror film as it is evident from the very beginning with its opening with a quote from Marcuse: throughout the film, lectures on the psychoanalytic theory of Eros and Thanatos (which was the movie's original title in its first and banned version) are heard first from a lawyer who argues that his client is insane, and then from the director of a mental hospital. The basic thesis of the lawyer and the screenwriter is that deviant behaviors are rooted in childhood traumas caused by family or authority figures. It is debatable whether the film was sincerely shot with the aim of promoting such a thesis or whether it is an exploitation film that uses this as a front; I think that both arguments are valid. Regarding the exploitation aspect, the sado-erotic horror/violence scenes contain mise-en-scènes that might be memorable, but the recently surfaced version appears to be a 'trimmed' version: the fotoromanzi edition of the film in my collection is more daring.

More on its versions: As detailed in Curci & Di Rocco's Visioni proibite book, Eros e Thanatos was flatly and firmly rejected by the censors. The filmmakers then submitted a self-cut and slightly re-edited new version titled Raptus. The censors grudgingly approved that version with even further cuts. Some of the shots ordered by the censor to be cut, such as a killer caressing the dead body of victim (which is visible in the fotoromanzi edition) is missing in the newly surfaced print. On the other hand, some of the scenes which the filmmakers themselves had reportedly cut to appease the censor, such as a flogging scene, is present here.

-Kaya Özkaracalar.