Remake, Remix, Rip-Off does for Turkish popular cinema what Machete Maiden's Unleashed! (2010) did for its Philippines equivalent. In other words it celebrates a national cinema that, over a specific time period, produced a mind-bogglingly large number of insane and hilariously ridiculous cheap movies that served an audience hungry for more. The period most specifically featured covers the mid 60's to the mid 80's, which in all honesty remains the golden age of the B-movie generally around the world. In Turkey this meant lots of films of many types. Unlike a lot of other nations, these films were almost exclusively meant to serve the domestic market only and unlike most exploitation films from other parts of the world were, for the most part, mostly family-oriented films. Like you might expect, the highlights in this one comes in the form of a plethora of clips from the movies themselves. Words aren't really adequate in describing these but suffice to say, they are played straight yet are often exceptionally ridiculous and very often laugh-out-loud funny.
The name of this film comes from the fact that Turkey is a country that does not recognise international copyright laws and this consequently led to film-makers producing movies in a, shall we say, 'unique' manner. I've often heard people accuse the Italian genre film industry of ripping off American movies, well that is nothing compared to what the Turks were getting up to! They were at liberty to not only replicate plots and characters but even to edit out whole sequences from some Hollywood films and simply splice them into their products. Soundtracks were dealt with in a similar manner. There were Turkish versions of, amongst others, Star Wars, Superman, The Wizard of Oz, Rambo, Rocky, Star Trek and E.T. Of course, the results seem so hopelessly clunky nowadays as to make them incredibly lovable. This has gone some way to making some of these films cult items in the west.
We learn a lot about the Turkish industry itself. It churned out hundreds of films, yet the money was very tight indeed. This led to them cutting all manner of corners. Seemingly there were only three script-writers who wrote all of these films, the special effects were of the 'special' variety and there was no money wasted on health and safety, meaning the actors seemed to do all their own stunts which were often draw-droppingly dangerous. Overall, this is a cinema entirely without pretensions, everything was made with public consumption in mind and the results were utterly populist fare. Naturally, this makes them all the more fun to look back on. This is a worthy addition to the group of documentaries that focuses on the peculiar pockets of cinematic output we find in specific corners of the world. For psychotronic film fans it's a must.
