Öyle Bir Kadin Ki

Intikam Kadini (1979)

** (out of 4)

This "film" comes from Turkey and was actually the first "adult" movie to be released there even though there aren't any hardcore scenes here. The sexploitation genre from Turkey has pretty much gone unknown because the government destroyed the majority of the films but this Turkish version of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was saved for those interested. Four real estate agents have their car break down so they ask an old father and his daughter (Zerrin Dogan) if they can spend the night. In the morning the men rape the woman and kill her father. The daughter fights off a suicide thought to seek revenge on the men. At just over an hour there's really no "story" being told here as the rape takes place by the two-minute mark and the revenge starts about ten-minutes later. What's interesting about this film is that I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE didn't really get that title until 1981 when it was re-released. The first three years of that films life had DAY OF THE WOMAN as the title so I'm rather curious why this film remade it and especially before it gained notoriety. Those familiar with these Turkish rips know that dialogue and scenes are pretty much shot scene for scene but that never happens here so I'm really not sure how much an of actual "remake" this is. It's certainly not as shockingly bad as some of the other Turkish rips of such movies as STAR WARS, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and THE EXORCIST. For the most part this thing is mildly entertaining if you like pure crap cinema. The performances are all bad, the screenplay a joke and for some reason there's a salsa music score that really feels out of place. There are several sex scenes with big-breasted women who could easily be in a Russ Meyer movie but this adds very little to the actual film. The death scenes are all pretty silly including one where she runs over a man who doesn't even attempt to get out of the way of the car. Another funny sequence has the woman thinking about jumping off a cliff so the director gives us three zoom shots of the woman looking to the bottom of the cliff. The director then gives us three zoom shots from the ground to the woman and then back to the woman to the ground three times. After the second go around you'll certainly be laughing.

In this softcore, loose remake of the putrid I Spit On Your Grave, a girl tracks down those who assaulted her, and killed her father.

Degenerated film stock ruins on-location photography in Turkey, with washed out colours, yellow/ orange sky, and it looks as though the left third of the screen wasn't properly exposed, as it repeatedly blows out completely white, before seemingly being hacked with a machete, then reassembled with Scotch tape. Screen also turns completely blue for a few frames at a time, and I'm not sure if that is the film itself, or just a glitch in my tape of it. I'm also not sure why people in the background, staring at the camera, and the guy holding the boom mic made it into the final cut, or the blood splattering on the camera after Dogan cuts the guy's throat on the boat.

Speaking of Zerrin Dogan, she is gorgeous, and she alone makes the film worth watching, even in its degenerated state. (Seriously, I've seen silent films from the turn of the century which are in better shape than this film)

The annoying soundtrack veers wildly from prerecorded disco, to what sounds like Lurch (from The Addams Family) playing the harpsichord.

Good for unintended laughs, and for gorgeous Zerron Dogan. I'm going to search for more of her films.

(By the way, I cannot post my review of the real I Spit On Your Grave, as it consists of just the single word "sucks")