I Blog On Your Grave!

It's March, and what better way to shake off those post-Valentine's-Day fuzzies than wallowing in that most scuzzy of sub-genres, the rape/revenge film. These films sprang up like toadstools in the 70s, when filmmakers were testing the limits of what they could commit to the silver screen. I'm conflicted about these kind of films. I'm not so quick to dismiss them as tasteless exploitation, but the cynical voice in me says that they were a way for filmmakers to have their cake and eat it too; to have scenes of lurid sex and violence, justified by the idea that they were making some sort of feminist statement.

Over the next week we'll be taking a look at three such films... Wes Craven's first feature film Last House on the Left, the arty Swedish entry Thriller: A Cruel Picture and the singularly sleazy I Spit On Your Grave. By the end of it you'll probably be scrubbing yourself raw in a scalding hot shower, only to find out that the dirt just won't come off!

Za ginipiggu 2: Chiniku no hana (1985)

Your tooth decay brings great dishonour to the daimyo

The Za ginipiggu (Guinea Pig) series of films were an attempt to create the most vile, disgusting horror films possible. Based on a viewing of the second, they largely succeeded. There are six films in the series, seven if you count Za ginipiggu 7: Zansatsu supeshyaru (Guinea Pig 7: Slaughter Special), which is essentially a highlights reel.

The first film surrounds kidnapping of a young girl, who is subjected to a series of tortures as an experiment on the human pain threshold. The abuses start out as relatively mild (Loud noises? Punching and kicking? Administering shots of booze and spinning her around in a chair? Around here we call that "Friday night at the pub") but gradually ramp up in intensity. The third film marks a shift in tone for the series, eschewing the documentary realism for a semblence of plot and elements of humour.

The second film, Za ginipiggu 2: Chiniku no hana (Guinea Pig 2: Flowers of Flesh and Blood) is probably the most (in)famous in the series. It gained brief notoriety when Charlie Sheen came across a bootleg copy of film and the called the FBI, believing it to be a genuine snuff film. Looking at the special effects, it's not hard to see why. Only the editing techniques and a few cartoonish sound effects betray it's origin. Completely plotless, and filmed in a grainy, pseudo-documentary style, the film shows a man dressed as a Samurai slowly and graphically dismembering a sedated girl while reciting poetry. And that's it. It's hard to call it a "horror" film. Certainly it has the capacity to horrify, but there's none of the suspense traditionally associated with horror films. It's like the difference between eroticism and hardcore pornography.

And hardcore it most certainly is... it makes the "torture porn" of the last few years look like a model of restraint. The special effects in this film are some of the most gruesomely realistic I've ever seen. As my review history demonstrates, I am a seasoned gorehound, but this film had me staring at the screen in mute horror, occasionally saying to myself "How did they do that?"

The film was written and directed by Manga artist Hideshi Hino, who injects a vein of queasy sexuality into the proceedings. The film was hugely popular in Japan, but came under public scrutiny when they were discovered in the house of a serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, who had apparently re-enacted one of the scenes from the film in the murder of several little girls.

To say this film isn't for everyone would be a gross understatement. I shudder to contemplate who it might be for.

Basket Case (1982)

I heart Belial

Oh man, I love this movie. On a meagre budget of $35,000, Frank Henenlotter managed to turn out a horror gem (however flawed) that delivers on the strength of it's ideas alone.

Dwayne Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) arrives in New York City with a wad of cash, a mysterious wicker basket and a huge head of hair. He takes up residence in the Hotel Broslin, a seedy flophouse filled with drunks, hookers and washouts. Soon it becomes apparent that he is here on a mission, and it has something to do with whatever is in the basket. No, it's not full of hair-care products, but a mysterious creature with an insatiable appetite for hamburgers and hotdogs.

It turns out it's his brother, Belial, a deformed monstrosity who is basically a head with arms and a bad attitude. When Dwayne gets drunk with a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, he spills the story of their past. Belial was once Dwayne's siamese twin. Dwayne's mother died in childbirth and his father grew to hate them, especially Belial. Against Dwayne's will, a trio of doctors (well, two doctors and a vet) surgically removed Belial and tossed him in the trash. Belial survived the procedure and was retrieved by Dwayne, who raised him in secret. Now they're on a quest of revenge to murder the doctors who tried to separate them!

However, a monkey wrench has been thrown into their plans, in the form of Dr Needleman's receptionist, Sharon (Terri Susan Smith, and even in a huge wig she fails to match the fluffiness of Dwayne's 'do) who takes an immediate liking to Dwayne. Soon they're engaged in a stilted and poorly-acted love affair, sending Belial into a fit of jealousy. Will Belial turn against his brother and enact bloody revenge on Sharon for trying to take his brother away? Well, let's just say that Belial's fully equipped downstairs, and demonstrates as such in a sequence that caused most of Henenlotter's crew to walk off set. The film ends of a decidedly final note, but two redundant and inferior sequels followed anyway.

Henenlotter presents a suitably sleazy slice of early 80s New York City. Oh for the pre-Giuliani days, when New York was invariably depicted as a cesspool of crime and corruption! Dwayne gets accosted by drug dealers in Times Square and even takes in some Kung Fu films at a grindhouse cinema. It fits the nature of the film perfectly. Belial is a cheap-looking hunk of rubber that is animated via puppetry and occassionally some herky-jerky stop motion. The effects are crude and hilarious, but Belial has an undeniable creepiness about him, and even a measure of pathos. Truly, Belial is an amazing creation.

It ain't all roses, however. The dialogue is stilted and the acting... dear Lord, the acting. Van Hentenryck brings a kind of charming (if wooden) naivete, but the rest of cast runs the gamut from bad to unwatchable. The low budget seeps into every aspect of the production, and that alone will be enough to turn off most people. Look beneath it's shabby exterior, however, and you'll find a immensely fun and surprisingly engaging piece of entertainment. Basket Case is an twisted and outrageous horror film, a perfect blend of cheesy horror and comedy, and it totally deserves it's devoted cult following.

Rats: Night of Terror (1983)

Rats! AAAAHH!!

For me, watching Bruno Mattei films is like getting really, really drunk. Sure, it's fun for while, but eventually you're curled over the porcelain throne at 3am, praying for death as you heave up stomach lining and bile for the fifth time. The next day you swear you'll never touch another Mattei film for the rest of your life. A week or so later, however, you're eyeing that copy of Rats: Night of Terror and thinking "Hey, why not? What's the worst that could happen?"

Rats: Night of Terror is a hybrid of two genres (post-apocalypse and killer animals) that were already well-worn by 1983 (mainly by the Italians), and further proof that there is not a bandwagon out there that Mattei will not jump onto. In this case he straddles two bandwagons simultaneously!

Since it's a post-apocalyptic film, the film starts with a smudgy opening crawl. It explains that the year is 225 A.B. (After the Bomb), and a bunch of survivors, sick of living underground, have taken to the surface to lead a nomadic, leather-clad existence. The leader of the pack is Kurt (Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, from Zombi 3, Zombi 4 and a slew of other Italian genre films), and with his tight leather pants, sunglasses, and natty red scarf, he looks like he'd be more at home in a Gay Pride parade than a procession of bad-ass bikers. Despite his fancy-boy appearance, he commands respect from his motley crew, and when they arrive in an abandoned city he gives them the all-clear to stop for a while.

Inside an abandoned building they discover a room stacked high with crates of food. In celebration they dump some flour on Chocolate (the token black character) and she dances around singing "I'm white!" to the delight of all present. Chocolate's comedy stylings are interrupted by Myrna's discovery of a mutilated body covered in rats. They also find a greenhouse filled with plantlife, a water purifier, and a control room containing an enormous early 80s computer with an interface that looks suspiciously like a Commodore 64. Video, so named for his video game prowess, gives the computer a "kick in the balls" and the computer spits out a bunch of random code and the phrase "Total Eliminate Group". As Kurt states "Computers and corpses are a bad mix." Damn straight!

Later Lucifer and Lilith (both wearing copious amounts of 80s eyeshadow) are banging away in a sleeping bag while everyone is trying to sleep (in the same room!) They understandably tell the couple to leave, and there is a brief moment of levity as the zipper becomes stuck (ooh, foreshadowing). They adjourn their lovemaking to a filthy alleyway, and after Lucifer goes to find a post-coital drink, a single rat chews it's way into the sleeping bag. It kills Lilith somehow, thanks to the broken zipper. Lucifer meanwhile, drunkenly drops his bottle into an open sewer, and is killed by kamikaze rats during his attempt at retrieval.

Upon discovering Lilith's body, they open the sleeping bag down to her navel, giving us another gratitious breast shot. Due to the lack of visible injury they conclude that Lucifer strangled her to death. That is, until a rat crawls out of her mouth!

Noah, meanwhile, is hanging out in the greenhouse. When rats start dropping into the water purifier, swimming around and pooping, he has a mental breakdown that must be seen to be believed. He shows up later, covered in gnawing rats, so they turn their flame thrower on him. He stumbles about in flames (with rats perched on his head) before leaping out of a window and into the street, briefly doing the worm, and then expiring. Then they blast him with a shotgun for good measure. With friends like that, who needs the rats?

Soon even escape isn't an option, the rats having chewed up their bike tires, so they set about barricading themselves in and boarding up the windows and doors. This wouldn't be a very effective measure against rats at the best of times, made worse by the fact they forget to board up a large and prominently featured window. I probably don't need to tell you what happens when Diana backs right up against the window. The weather forecast is cloudy with 100% chance of rats!

Deus, Video, Kurt and Taurus head down to the greenhouse to find some fresh water, but find it overcome with rats. Unfortunately, Taurus falls down the stairs and is showered with rodents. When they return, Duke, who has been challenging Kurt's authority at every opportunity, gets Myrna on his side and locks them out. In one of the most laughable effects in the film, an army of approaching rats is represented by a bunch of fake rats on a conveyor belt. When Chocolate finally overpowers Duke and lets them in, Kurt gives him a righteous kick in the balls.

A supremely ineffective suspense sequence follows, where they have to cross a room full of indifferent rats a-la The Birds. Afterwards they discover Taurus, standing with his back to them. As he turns around, it becomes apparent that his face has been gnawed off by rats, and he collapses, dead. Was he standing there that whole time? His torso subsequently explodes wide open, showering the survivors in rodents. I can honestly say I did not expect that to happen.

Duke, meanwhile, has taken Myrna hostage and attempts to escape in their APC, but is surprised to find it filled with rats. Ever the strategist, he tosses a grenade at his own feet in an attempt to take out the rats, blowing himself, Myrna and the APC to pieces.

Diana goes nuts from her earlier rat attack and slashes her wrists, and the four remaining survivors find a magic exposition device in the control room. A recording states that the laboratory used to be run by some group called Delta-2 and they were supposed to meet up with a bunch of underground scientists called Omega-1. Mutant rats have taken over the surface and want to kill all humans etc. The monologue itself isn't particularly interesting, but the voice gradually gets more strained and ridiculous as the recording continues.

Their only means of escape destroyed, the survivors barricade themselves in a room. Eventually the rats manage to batter down the door, killing Kurt and Deus while Chocolate and Video cower in fear. Things are looking grim, but our two remaining heroes are saved when a bunch of guys in hazmat suits arrive, spraying the rats with poison gas. The film ends with one of the silliest twist endings in cinema history.

There have been a lot of killer-rat films, and I've probably seen more than I'd care to admit, but rats have never looked less threatening than in this film. When the rats attack, some poor Italian production assistant pours a bucket of rats over the head of the victim, who screams and flails instead of taking a step to the left. In many shots the "rats" are actually spray-painted guinea pigs. Don't bother looking for the "No Animals Were Harmed" disclaimer; rats are liberally kicked, thrown and set on fire, but at least they died for a good cause.

This is probably the most entertaining Mattei film I've seen, next to Hell of the Living Dead. It's got a cheesy synthesiser score, a grimy post-apocalyptic setting, and bikers with names like "Lucifer". If that weren't enough, there's a bit where a guy turns a flamethrower onto a bunch of rats and shouts "I'm gonna warm their whiskers!" Now that's entertainment!

Demons III: The Ogre (1988)

Hope you like scenes of people wandering around in dimly lit cellars

It's never a good sign when a film has the title X [numeral]: The Y, where creature Y has no relation to creature X. It's a good indication that an unrelated film has been shoehorned into the franchise. Demons III: The Ogre bears absolutely no relation to Demons or Demons 2, save being written and directed by Lamberto Bava, and that's nothing to brag about. It was originally an Italian TV movie, which is worse because it means it's even cheaper than usual with no blood and gore.

The film begins in Portland, Oregon with a young girl in the midst of a terrible nightmare. She finds herself in a spooky house and like any sensible person, heads down to the darkened cellar, teddy bear in tow. She finds a slimy, pulsing cocoon hanging from the ceiling, but wakes up before the creature inside fully emerges.

Many years later, Charel (Virginia Bryant), a bestselling horror author (not that you'd realise from her writing), and her family are taking a working-vacation to an ancient Italian villa in their comfortable and luxurious Jeep Cherokee Chief. The family consists of Charel (pronounced "Cheryl", by the way), her husband Tom (Paolo Malco, from House by the Cemetery) and son Bobby (Patrizio Vinci, with a shocking dub, though not as bad as the same-named son from House by the Cemetery). On their journey, they stop in at a village where the locals grow hostile upon mention of the villa, and the camera holds on a random bunch of orchids for a really long time (that's what pros like Bava call "foreshadowing").

Although the film doesn't bother explaining it, Charel is the little girl from the beginning of the film, and upon arrival she realises that it's the same villa from her childhood nightmares. She even finds her childhood teddy bear in the cellar! During their stay, she keeps coming across evidence of an ogre infestation, like hand-prints in the flour. When her husband arrives they're always gone and if you think he does anything other than belittle her and call her crazy, then you haven't seen too many haunted house films.

When he's not too busy slapping her or denigrating her life's work, he goes hiking with her son so we can be treated to repetitive scenes of Charel wandering around the house alone, for minutes on end. She does find a hidden room full of random junk, but it's never referred to again.

The spooky ambience inspires her, and soon she's feverishly writing out her latest masterpiece, A Drawer Full of Teeth - Fantastic Novel by Charel Bates Mancuso (way to toot your own horn). She also befriends a local, Anna (Sabrina Ferilli), who may or may not be a witch, and her sister Maria (Stefania Montorsi) comes to babysit so Charel and Tom can play grab-ass in the tub. It is also revealed that the ogre is attracted to orchids, but I don't know what that has to do with anything. Eventually, Maria falls victim to the ogre during a game of hide-and-seek. Enraged by her ugly 80s knitwear, he tears the jumper from her body and kills her.

Soon Charel realises that everything she is writing in her story is coming true, and with a bit of investigation she discovers Maria's bloated corpse, among others, in a (surprisingly deep) fetid pool of water in the cellar. Tom is still not convinced, and upon reading a chapter where Anna is molested by the ogre (a scene that is played out as he reads), dismisses her writing as the "sexual fantasies of a bored, frustrated housewife"; nothing turns a woman on more than ogre rape!

Eventually their son goes missing, and Tom and Charel find him in the cellar, along with the ogre. Tom manages to stun it by smashing it with a huge barrel of wine (nooooo! What a waste!) while Cheryl heads out to their Jeep Cherokee Chief, where their son is already reclining in the plush interior. She runs over the ogre several times but, thanks to it's hardy construction and excellent safety features, the vehicle is undamaged. Upon death, the corpse fades away (try explaining that to the insurance company).

The next morning they are packing up their Jeep Cherokee Chief to leave (it's roomy interior providing ample storage for their luggage) and a throwaway line reveals that Maria came home that morning and Anna is fine, so I guess it was all in her mind after all? During the credits, they are sure to thank Renault Italia for the generous loan of the Jeep Cherokee Chief.

The ogre is a deformed monster in a ruff and tunic that make him look like a ren faire reject. The outfit and the other artifacts Charel finds might make you think that the origin of the ogre is explained during the 90 minute runtime. It isn't. Neither is it's connection to orchids, the old man who paints pictures of the ogre cocoon, or Anna's connection to witchcraft. Perhaps all that had to be jettisoned to fit in all the crucial scenes of Charel wandering around the cellar?

Some scenes, such as where Charel discovers Maria's body underwater, work very well. The villa is also a pretty spooky place, though if you've seen one haunted house, you've scene them all. Since this was a TV movie, there's no gore and the budget is limited, but that's no excuse for the movie being so utterly dull. Fans of the gory, action-packed Demons and Demons 2 are advised to stay away.

The film also suffers for having no likable characters. Charel is a hysterical ninny; at one point she's frightened to death of a cow. Tom is an insensitive tool who manhandles her more than the ogre. I would probably skip this film except for the stunning shots of the fabulous Jeep Cherokee Chief, available at a Renault Italia near you!

The Other Hell (1980)

Mother Vincenza (Franca Stoppi) prepares to take a big bite of scenery.

Nunsploitation is a subgenre of film that sprang up in the 70s. Usually set in a Middle Age convent (though this one is set in the present day), they often involve demonic possession and lesbian hi-jinx. They were very popular in predominately Catholic countries, like Spain and Italy. They could be seen as a subversive criticism of the social and sexual suppression in organised religion. Or as an excuse to have a bunch of sexy nuns get freaky in a convent. Both are fine with me!

Actually, after enduring twelve years of Catholic schooling, the idea of a sexy nun is about as bizarre and otherworldly as a Bruno Mattei film that doesn't suck. Wait, did I say Bruno Mattei? Yes, glaring like a biohazard warning from the DVD cover of The Other Hell is "The Bruno Mattei Collection". With Claudio Fragasso writing to boot! It's a bit of a Johnny-come-lately to the subgenre (nunsploitation had pretty much crapped out by the time the film was released) but Mattei isn't one to let a lack of public interest (or time or resources or talent, for that matter) stand in the way of his compulsive need to stick his dick in every genre under the sun.

The film begins with a lost nun stumbling around an ossuary in the dark. She happens upon the embalming chamber, where Sister Assunta is performing some rather unorthodox burial procedures with Victorian-era equipment (test tubes, beakers etc). She cuts out the corpse's lady-bits and starts waving them about, ranting on about how the genitals are the gateway to damnation (yep, sounds like the Catholic church to me). Suddenly a paper mache devil head with light-bulb eyes appears and causes Sister Assunta to go even more nuts and frenziedly stab the other nun to death. Then, presumably, she kills herself.

Mother Vincenza (Franca Stoppi) tries to hush things up and dismiss their deaths as an accident (she fell backwards onto her knife twenty or thirty times), but the church sends in Father Inardo (Andrea Aureli) to investigate. As soon as he arrives, demonic forces get all up in his grill, causing his bible to burst into flames and a rubber bat to mercilessly hump his crucifix. After a possessed nun bleeds to death from stigmata, he is convinced that Satan is afoot.

The higher ups are unconvinced by his supernatural explanation, and decide to send in a younger, more rational priest, Father Valerio (Carlo de Mejo). He is determined to find a logical explanation for the deaths, but setbacks dog him at every turn. When he arrives he is forced to run for as life when a dog lethargically trots after him. Mother Vincenza is less than helpful and the other nuns are afraid to speak out against her. He does a lot of wandering around in darkened passages and finds little except a bunch of creepy dolls hanging from the ceiling. While Father Valerio is conducting his investigation, Father Inardo sneaks back into the convent, but he is burnt alive by Satan and his roasted head stuck in the tabernacle.

Father Valerio's lack of progress drives him to drink (I was feeling the same way about this movie) and he decides it's time to get tough. If you're hoping (like I was) that he was going to start punching out some nuns, you'll be disappointed to know that he just searches their rooms. In the room of a catatonic nun, he finds a matted clump of hair under the floor. What this is supposed to signify, I have no idea, but it causes the nun to wake up from her coma and attempt to choke him with some rosary beads.

It is about this time that his tape recorder (which shows video somehow) starts randomly dispensing some handy exposition. It seems that some time ago, Mother Vincenza had a baby girl and the Mother Superior, citing the child as the Devil's spawn, attempted to boil the baby alive. Mother Vincenza plucked it from the cooking pot, but not before it's face was horribly burned. Subsequently, the baby (which has transformed into a very unconvincing doll) uses telekinetic powers to force the Mother Superior to strangle herself to death. Mother Vincenza now keeps her daughter locked up in the attic.

There is also a nun with blank white face and a cat skulking around, and I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the same person. Like the Almighty, Mattei works in mysterious ways. The creepy gardener (Franco Garofalo, who would team up with Mattei/Fragasso again in Hell of the Living Dead) makes the mistake of feeding her cat to his dogs, and soon he is dished up for dessert.

All of this leads up to a couple of boring confrontations between Father Valerio, Mother Vincenza and her daughter, and the conclusion leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Was the daughter the spawn of Satan or just the victim of a crazy mother and telekinetic powers? What was with all those dolls? Why am I even bothering to ask these questions of a Claudio Fragasso script?

Now, if I've learned anything from nunsploitation films, it's that as soon as a bunch of young women are sealed up in a convent, they start dropping habits faster than an AFL player gearing up for a urine test. Unfortunately, this film suffers from a severe boob drought. Mattei must have realised this deficiency, because he would make up for it in the following year with the True Story of the Nuns of Monza, a film which has no shortage of hot nun-on-nun action. Ever the frugal filmmaker, Mattei shot several of the scenes for Nuns of Monza at the same time as The Other Hell.

I think Mattei was going for The Exorcist meets The Omen meets Rosemary's Baby meets... whatever other bits from successful films he could shoehorn in. It's confusingly edited and makes not a lick of sense, but then it is a Bruno Mattei film. The Goblin soundtrack for The Other Hell was appropriated from the Joe D'Amato film Buio Omega (which also stars Franca Stoppi), and it works okay here as well. All in all, this film is okay, but if you want to introduce yourself to nunsploitation, there are far more nuntastic films out there.

Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (1982)

Just one example of this film's flagrant boulder abuse.

The Italians may know how to suck at a genre's teat until it's a shrivelled, black husk, but when it comes down to pure, copyright-infringing cojones, you can't go past the Turks. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Turkey plundered a lot of Hollywood films to make their own low-budget localised versions. Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) aka "Turkish Star Wars" is probably the most well known of them. That's not to say it's a scene for remake of Star Wars. It's an utterly bizarre tale of magical brains, exploding boulders and big red muppets, but it liberally salts the proceedings with stolen material from Star Wars and other films. The pilfered soundtrack is particularly egregious... the score from Raiders of the Lost Ark is used extensively, as well as sections of Flash Gordon and Moonraker.

The film starts with some random clips from Star Wars spliced with some stock footage of rocket launches, while a monologue explains how the Earth is being broken into pieces by evil space lasers and protected by a shield made of compacted brain molecules. Or something.

The best two Turkish pilots the planet has to offer, Murat and Ali (Cuneyt Arkin and Aytekin Akkaya, both major Turkish film stars at the time) are taking part in a thrilling space battle. This scene was filmed by thriftily rear-projecting Star Wars space battle footage behind the two actors as they wear motorcycle helmets with mouthpieces attached. This is made even less convincing by the fact that the Star Wars footage is in the wrong aspect ratio and little effort has been made to edit it appropriately.

The villain trying to destroy the Earth is the "magician", a beardo in a spiky cardboard helmet who is equal parts Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless. Murat and Ali manage to save the Earth, but crash land on a strange desert planet. Eventually they come across some stock footage of Egyptian ruins (the Sphinx, pyramids, etc), set to the spooky sounds of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-minor. It should also be noted that the desert planet scenes are filmed in Cappadocia, and the idea that a Turkish audience would buy such a well known tourist destination as an alien landscape is optimistic at best.

Soon, about half a dozen soldiers on horseback arrive and start fighting with our heroes. It is here that we are introduced to the first of many fight scenes, which are played out with the skill and grace of a drunken bar fight at SpazzCon '08 (which was great, by the way). Their Turk Fu is so strong, enemies are wounded by punches that miss by at least a meter. Also, each enemy spear thrust is punctuated by someone going "wshhhk" into a microphone.

Eventually they defeat the soldiers and escape on horseback, while actors in cheap masks randomly roar into the camera. Your guess is as good as mine. Soon they are attacked again, this time by Cylon knock-offs, and captured. They are taken to an outdoor arena, where a bunch of gladiators engage in battles to the death. This is overseen by a knock-off Robby the Robot. Murat and Ali watch while the robot chokes a kid to death (Robby never did that) before leaping into the fray and mopping the floor with the alien thugs.

In the heat of battle they sustain a few wounds, and the subsequent gush of blood reveals to magician that they are human beings. This is important because he needs a human brain in order to break through the forcefield surrounding Earth. Murat and Ali manage to escape into a cave thanks to the help of a mute blonde woman. Murat starts making googly eyes with her while some sort of Turkish Obi-Wan Kenobi starts going on about the 13th tribe, and advanced technology, I don't know, it's all very confusing and stupid.

Soon enough, one of the magician's henchman, an alien made entirely of carpet samples, busts in and start murdering everyone in sight, including about half a dozen children, but by this stage Murat and Ali have escaped with the blonde woman and her son. The magician drinks some blood through a novelty straw, which turns the bodies of the kids into paper mache mummies wrapped in toilet paper. I swear I'm not making this up.

Now it's obvious that our heroes are no match for the magician in their current state, so Murat and Ali engage in the most hardcore rock-based training montage I've ever seen. Rocks are mercilessly punched, slapped, kicked and bench-pressed. Murat also ties some boulders to his legs and starts bouncing around as if there were trampolines hidden just out of frame. By the end of it they are punching boulders in half and kicking rocks into cliff-faces so hard that they explode. Such is the power of Turk Fu.

After Murat and the blonde woman engage in the most brief and dispassionate kiss I've ever seen, he and Ali head off to the local cantina to mete out fist-based justice. Scenes of the cantina are intercut with footage from the corresponding scene in Star Wars, which only brings the cheap Turkish costumes into sharp relief. Soon Murat and Ali are beating on all manner of alien beasts, including a hilarious fuzzy red alien. Eventually they are interrupted by the magician, who captures them and takes them back to his palace.

The magician tries to convince Murat to join him, while the magician's wife tries to seduce Ali. They refuse, and within a minute or two both are fighting some more aliens. Murat uses his unstoppable Turk Fu to chop off a alien's arms with his bare hands, and stab it with it's own severed limbs. They continue to cause mayhem until some budget Cylons appear and zap them with lasers.

The magician then renders unto them a horrific act of torture, which consists of putting them in some tombs and dumping a small amount of dirt on their faces. They defeat the magician's evil plan by sitting up. Probably embarrassed by this development, the magician then punishes his wife for her failure to seduce Ali by turning her into a monster from a completely different film. Then into a spider. I think.

Despite the fact that the two heroes have stomped the guts out of every henchman so far, the magician feels it would be a good idea to put them into yet another arena battle. This time the foe is the carpet-sample monster, which Murat defeats with the awesome trampoline jumping power of Turk Fu. Aliens subsequently swarm the arena and Ali is captured.

After some instruction from Obi-Wan, Murat and the girl are sent to find a magical golden brain and sword which they can use to defeat the magician. After some more fights Murat finds the two mystical artifacts. The sword is cleverly disguised as a cheap balsa wood prop. He tears up some alien shit and heads back to the palace to save his friend.

Once he has been rescued, Ali gives the artifacts to Obi-Wan, who turns out to be the magician in disguise. Then he is fatally injured in a random explosion. Following a tearful death scene, Murat melts down the sword and brain and dips his hands and feet in the resulting goop, which surprisingly results in a matching pair of golden gauntlets and boots and not deep tissue burns.

He then proceeds to bust a wide variety of alien heads, chopping them in half and punching them so hard that they explode. Meanwhile, it is shown (via some more stolen Star Wars footage) that the magician is about to blow up the Earth. Murat uses his jumping powers to dodge the magician's attacks and his explosive boulder-kicking abilities to disorient him. Eventually Murat is victorious, smacking the magician in the face a few times before karate chopping him in half.

A job well done, he says goodbye to the blonde woman, giving her a fairly apathetic kiss on the forehead. Thus ends the story of Murat, the man who saved the world through the power of rock-punching.

The confusing and disjointed nature of this plot review only barely manages to capture that of the movie. I think the script was taken in dictation from a hyperactive 10 year old breathlessly describing the best movie EVAR. Why does the magician need Murat or Ali's brain when the desert planet is filled with people? What's up with that golden brain? Who cares, let's punch some more aliens.

Turk Fu is pretty fun to watch the first few times, but the fun of watching a man awkwardly pummel a fuzzy red Chewbacca gets old the fifth time around. The film is about an hour and a half, but it seems like at least two due to the interminable fight scenes. If you're going to watch this film, then keep one hand on the fast forward button. Or just watch clips on youtube.

There's also a sequel, but before you start punching boulders with excitement, it was released in 2006, it's a comedy (intentionally) and it's currently number 7 on imdb's bottom 100 movies.