Seytan

Legendary turkish remake of "The Exorcist" is really a hoot. The little girl who gets possessed looks amazingly like Linda Blair, the christian references are severely toned down, (though not quite completely replaced by Islamic counterparts), and they do about what one would expect in such a production. Technical aspects are amazingly minimal, although that isn't really unusual for such Turkish productions. There is a bit of atmosphere and menace to this production, but the cheesy effects work against it. Very rare, I guess, but it should turn up any day now. I suppose it would help if I spoke Turkish, but this is still a mindboggling ride. heh

--Judex.1--

Seytan (the devil) is almost and exact remake of William Friedkin's "The Exorcist". The only differences are the special effects look very cheesie, and instead of using the Bible they use the Holy Qur'an; not to mention the differences in acting, etc. I saw this film before I saw "The Exorcist" and it really did scare me. But I was a kid. Also you should check out the scene where the girl sits on her bed and twists her head 360 degrees. You can easily see the head resting on a stick and her night gown pinned to the bed. Very fake effect but still fun to watch.

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.

Think of bad movies occupying their own solar system, getting more and more obscure as you drift away from the sun. The inner rings would be occupied by Godzilla movies, bad US monster flicks from the fifties, Italian zombie films. Then you have the Filipino action movies and Kung fu flicks, culminating in a massive gas giant constructed solely of Godfrey Ho ninja films, whereupon things get sparser as you pass the rightly neglected Jess Franco planet and the Andy Milligan asteroid belt. Eventually, just as you are about to leave the system and see what counts for a bad movie to a bunch of aliens, you'd pass the Turksploitation film.

Simply known in English as whatever film they are ripping off with the work 'Turkish' stuck in front, these films are not for the faint hearted. I've only watched a few myself, but I do remember Turkish Star Wars being so painful it took a few attempts to get by the initial scenes, which basically involved Turkish actors pretending to be piloting ships while someone actually projected footage from Star Wars onto a wall behind them. I'm not kidding.

You have Turkish Spiderman, Turkish E.T, Turkish Some Like It Hot (?), Turkish Wizard of Oz etc etc. These films occurred, from what I understand, not to rip-off successful films for cash (like the Italians did) but because it was cheaper just to remake them in Turkey, rather than pay to import the actual film. Therefore, you get cheap knock offs of Hollywood films at a fraction of the budget, usually with results that will give you a nosebleed.

Now, the problem with Seytan (Devil) is that it follows the film the Exorcist almost exactly to the letter. It has the same music, same story, everything. Only it features different people acting in the exact same roles, and doing the exact same things, so what I'm not going to describe is...The Exorcist.

Out at an archeological dig, an old man is confronted by an ancient, cheaply made, statue of a demon, and looks at it thoughtfully. Back in Istanbul, some lady is hearing noises in her attic and just about the same time her daughter starts playing with a Ouija board. At the same time again, some writer is having to deal with his mum getting dementia and becoming ill. Blah blah demon possession etc.

Nearly everything from the original is included here, from the girl pissing herself at a party, to the medical experiments, to the head spinning and the pea-soup spewing (although here it's like a budget portion of mushy peas). What's toned down is the foul language (no "Your mother sucks cocks in hell" here) and the violation with the crucifix is changed to what might be a letter opener, but it's not clear because even the person translating the dialogue into subtitles admits to being confused...within the subtitles.

What you'll also notice if you get bored enough to watch this is that for obvious reasons the Catholicism angle has been removed. You don't have Muslim clerics doing the exorcism (exorcism being common in Islam) rather than two academic types. Everything else is the same however. Only, you know, not as good. Except the bit where the guy tried to punch the demon out of the little girl and the bizarre special effects used to simulate electro-shock therapy.

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.