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 Video Review: The Turkish Exorcist When Turkey Remakes Classic American Films, our Intrepid International Film Critic is on the Report By Seanbaby 
In the year 2000, The Exorcistwas
modified and re-released in theaters. It was hailed as a brilliant
twist on the tired formula of only showing movies you haven't seen
before. But before the American film industry gives itself a trophy, it
should know that Turkey was years ahead of us when they made their own
improved version of The Exorcist in 1974. Only, they called it Seytan.
It starts much like our version, with Father Merrin investigating an archeological dig in the desert. He finds a brass devil face on the ground being torn up by clumsy workers with pick axes who continue to dig while he examines it. There's no dialogue yet, but the father's grumpiness seems to imply that he'd rather the diggers stop wildly swinging their pick axes next time they come across a priceless artifact. Curators have to be constantly telling him, "Father, while we here at the museum thank you for your work, we do not have the space to display any more piles of ancient something chunks your men find, then destroy." I've reviewed the Turkish remakes of Star Trek, Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Superman and ET, which were set in a cave, a cave, a cave, a cave, and an animal carcass filled street, respectively. It's nice to see that this film takes place in the lovely furnished home of a rich mother and daughter. However, unlike the others, it doesn't have any naked Tarzan robots, pervert midgets, trampoline cookie monster fights, a Superman toy on strings and a smoke farting alien puppet, respectively, so the film has to get by on the brilliance of its dialogue. That means most of the film is a total mystery to me and my non-Turkish speaking posse. So I can really only review its technical aspects. Cinematography: Half a star The best showcasing of the overused zoom shot comes in a scene that begins with a tight shot of a bowl of baked beans. The viewer may ask, "Why are we among these beans? What could this bowl of baked beans mean?" Then, it dramatically zooms out to reveal… My God! Someone's eating these beans for dinner! Also, I should tell you that one of the cameras used to film this movie tints everything purple. It's possible this is some sort of artistic, although insane, use of gel filters. However, the fact that this pink camera doesn't ever zoom supports my main theory that it's just kind of broken. Acting: Three stars Music: Half a star Editing: One star Special Effects: One star
To make a bed look like it's moving under its own power is hard. You'd need like hydraulics or... ropes or something. The Turkish effects team worked around their lack of these things by instead just having the little girl bounce up and down on the bed and act like she wasn't trying to do it. It was sort of working, too, until the mom jumped on with her and the two of them screwed up each other's timing and just sort of looked like two quadriplegics trying to kill each other.
Technical Research: Four stars Comedy: Three and a half stars Linguistics: Four stars Ending: Negative five stars |
No expense was spared when creating this bad copy of a
movie that. The filmmakers were able to procure cameras that, get this,
zoom.
Zooms can be used as powerful cinematic tools. For example, they can
force a viewer to focus on a character while maintaining the world in
which you've placed them. In this film, the cinematographers were so
excited to finally have a camera that zoomed, they lost all narrative
and artistic meaning. There is not one person or object that enters
this movie without first speeding at or away from the camera.
It's
quite possible that these are fine actors. The Turkish language sounds
a lot to me like Dracula squeezing a mouthful of pudding through his
teeth while he scolds someone from inside a washing machine, and it's
difficult for me to tell if they're doing that right or wrong. The
young priest has a very strong presence, which might be because I think
he looks like a Turkish Greg Brady, and will be referred to as such
from here on. I will continue to refer to the exorcist by his American
character's name, Father Merrin, because if I'm hearing it correctly,
his name in this movie is Mrfnblorsh Ayjinorp.
We're
spoiled in this country with our "transitions." Turkish audiences don't
seem to mind if say, for example, a scene of Greg Brady carrying his
dead mother's coffin to her grave gets interrupted by a scene of a man
hitting on a preteen girl at a birthday party. Incidentally, for
fashion reasons, I decided this man was probably named Mariachi Ted.
When
the girl pees on herself, right in the middle of Mariachi Ted's
impromptu piano recital by the way, the Turkish effects team create the
illusion of pee by having a thick gray syrup slop from inside her
nightgown and onto her feet in huge globular plops. I've never seen a
Turkish person pee, but given their diet of rocks and unicorn meat,
it's entirely possible that it looks like this.
The
American version of the girl's vomiting head spinning around became one
of the most recognizable effects in film history. Recreating it was a
challenge the Turkish effects team welcomed, then hilariously failed.
In their version, the girl stands behind a mannequin wearing a
different nightgown from her and slowly turns around. Maybe Turkish
audiences are able to suspend their disbelief hard enough to... yeah,
actually it probably looks like an ugly girl turning around behind a
scarecrow to them, too.
Once
it's clear that evil spirits have taken over this levitating,
spackle-puking girl, doctors do everything they can to diagnose and
cure her. The movie features authentic medical techniques when they
x-ray her skull, fumble a spurting IV into her neck and finally end up
putting her face into a paint shaker and letting it vibrate her head
for a few minutes. This doesn't seem to be a special effect. This child
actor really did get jammed into a paint shaker. I don't know enough
about Turkish medical science to know what good that's supposed to do;
maybe the doctors figured, "If Satan's in there, this'll give him
something to think about!"
After
the doctors rattle her skull at incredible speeds and it fails to remove the satan from it, the girl's mother calls in a hypnotist. The
girl pretends to follow his watch, then with comic timing beyond that
of normal non-demons, she punches him square in the balls. He crunches
into a standing fetal position that is so well-acted that it'd be
impossible to duplicate without actually ramming something dangerous
into your groin. The only reason this film didn't get the full four
stars for Comedy is due to the lack of him waddling out of the room and
saying something retarded in a high-pitched voice.
Once
her satanic possession is in full swing, strange words appear on the
girl's stomach. They read, "BANA YARDIM EDIN." Both priests seemed
shocked by this, so I ran it through a Turkish to English translator.
It means "Me Help Provision." Since this totally didn't seem like
something Satan would write on someone's tummy, I ran it through a
Turkish to Japanese and then to English translator. It gave me a choice
from the three following translations:
1. "maker coffee help equipment."
2. "kickboxing branding iron service provision."
3. "mulatto otter aid robot."
I chose number three and shuddered at what the theological implications
of it could have been.
Greg
Brady finds the girl over the dead body of Father Merrin and loses it.
He wails on her face, and I mean WAILS on her face. It would take a
team of math scientists just to count the number of times he punches
her in the damn head. Eventually he beats Satan out of her body and
into his, then jumps out a window to his death. The girl is actually
not there for most of this fight, so most of it is just Greg Brady
throwing punches at the camera. This could be because it's so hard to
choreograph a fight scene with a child, but most likely because labor
laws require all Turkish child actors to spend at least six hours a day
away from the set and laboring in the haunted salt mines.
The
film then cuts to a scene of the little girl and her mother, Satan-free
and moving out of their home, currently pasted in several layers of
devil spackle puke. They walk to the church, where the girl runs to a
kindly old man we've never seen before, who rubs her head far longer
than appropriate. Then he continues rubbing, without either of them
saying a word, until it starts to burn a hole in her scarf hat.
Finally, the head rub marathon ends when the girl runs happily away. The
Exorcist
piano theme comes on, then abruptly stops three seconds later to a black screen. In fact, this film ends so abruptly and awkwardly that the only way to end a review of it is by