Tourist Ömer first appeared as a supporting character in a 1963’s Helal Olsun Ali Abi as a friend of that film’s hero. He was so beloved that he ended up being the lead in eight films, with Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek being the final in the series. He’s played by Ayhan Işık in all these films.

Somehow, this became the first Star Trek theatrical release, beating 1979’s monotonous Star Trek: The Motion Picture by six years. It’s a retelling — let’s be fair, outright rip-off — of “The Man Trap” episode. Everything is copied, from the look of the bridge, the characters, the music, sound effects and miniature footage of the Enterprise. Yet the things that are different — Spock wears yellow and Yeoman Rand is a lieutenant — are so off-brand that they are striking.

Oh yeah — the other big difference is that Ömer is beamed onto the ship from modern Turkey and proceeds to drive Spock beyond bonkers. If that isn’t enough, this turns into a greatest hits episode, bringing in elements of “Arena,” “What Are Little Girls Made Of,” “I, Mudd” and Kirk and Spock brawling from “Amok Time.” I was waiting for a Tribble or two just to see what a Turkish Tribble would look like!

Seeing as how the outside footage was shot in ruins of Ephesus — one of the Seven Wonders — instead of Bronson Canyon, this version of Star Trek somehow has better production values than the show that inspired it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Originally known as Killing Joke, this is the story of Myles, a comedian who has never properly dealt with the loss of his wife. Yet his manager believes in him enough to get him booked for one last shot at the big time. The show will take place in a gorgeous theater instead of a seedy comedy club and booking agents will be on their way. The staff is helpful, too. Everything seems to be going Myles’ way until the blood starts dripping down the walls.

You may think that Myles has lost his mind, but there’s also a slasher killer murdering everyone in the venue, turning this into the stand-up version of Soavi’s Stage Fright. I say that as they’re both set in a small theater that has a killer on the loose and not because this movie has the visual flair of that 1987 slasher. Don’t take that as an insult — it’s one of my favorite films and a hard bar to leap over.

Writer/director Jeremy Berg does a fine job here of keeping things tense and moving at the same time, which is quite a feat. He has a good lead in Steve Vanderzee, who lends Myles the right mix of humor, pathos and outright terror in the face of the realitization that his comeback may be his last night ever.

You can get this movie on demand from High Octane Pictures. We were sent a review copy by the film’s PR company, but that has no bearing on our review.

Yılmaz Atadeniz made eighty films or more between 1963 and 1997, amongst them Spy Smasher, several of the Kilink movies, Super Salami and Special Squad Shoots on Sight, which is all about a hypnotist cop forced to work with the mob.

Welcome to Turkey, people.

Thanks to Stomp Tokyo, I have learned that this is a Turkish remake of the 1940 Republic serial The Mysterious Doctor Satan, a movie that nobody was asking for. Well guess what? I, for one, am glad this got made.

Our hero Tekin is investigating some murders when his adopted father — well, he doesn’t know the adjective just yet — tells him that his real father was The Copperhead, who was killed by Doctor Satan, making this seem like a Silver Age update. Moments after this happens, Satan’s henchman kills the secretary and Tekin’s once adoptive, now deceased father. He had two dads, Doctor Satan, and you killed them both!

This may be easier said than done, because the evil physcian has perhaps the most ridiculous man-crushing robot ever made in his employ.

Remember how it was a big deal when the reissue of Shriek of the Mutilated put Hot Butter’s “Popcorn” back in once the song was cleared for music rights? Turkish directors have no idea what that means, so that song is all over this movie, as it rightly should be. I doubt they paid Henry Mancini for “The Pink Panther” theme either.

The star of this movie, Kunt Tulgar, said that Doctor Satan’s robot was supposed to be human until the skin on his arm would be ripped off in a fight scene, revealing machine parts 12 years before The Terminator and a year before Westworld. That said, they didn’t have the money for that and decided to go with a cardboard suit.

Mondo Macabro released this on a double DVD with Tarkan vs. the Vikings. So if you see a strange man prowling your used video store seeking Turkish reisues, say hello. That’s me.

The joy of Turkish cinema is that it allows you to relive movies that you already enjoyed, like Death Wish. And, well, Death Wish 2.

Orhan — the Turkish Paul Kersey — and his wife Filiz, along with his sister Sevgi and her boyfriend Jahit, have just come back to Istanbul from an escape to the country. Moments after that peaceful time ends, some drugged-up bad guys assault the women, killing Filiz and leaving Sevgi in a coma, much like Paul’s daughter Carol in the original. The police won’t be able to help outside of taking statements. Now, it’s up to Orhan to get the revenge that no one else will for him.

Director Memduh Ün may have been inspired by Michael Winner, but like all the best cover songs, he realizes that he has to put his own touch on the material. Serdar Gökhan seems more like an everyman than Charles Bronson. When Bronson’s Kersey pukes after his first night of being a vigilante, we’ve associated death and destruction so much with the actor that we realize he’s going to get over it. We want him to embrace the angel of death. Instead, we see Serdar’s take slowly descend from a man willing to attend to an injured dog in the midst of his vacation to someone willing to toss a man to his death. Somehow, this movie remakes the original and premakes the sequel, all with probably a tength of the budget.

You can watch this on YouTube.

While this movie is known by many as the Turkish Jaws, it really has nothing to do with that movie other than a shark attack — and of course, the ripped off theme song — near the end of the movie.

If this movie is about the ocean, why is it called Desert? That’s because the title was supposed to be The Blue Desert, but the printer making the posters coudn’t understand how a desert could be blue, so he just cut the title to Çöl. The filmmakers couldn’t afford to print more, so that’s how we got here.

Çetin Inanc directs Cunyet Arkin again in this film that has him playing a supercop and Emel Tümer being as gorgeous as she always is. However, there is some betrayal in this one that makes this more a tragedy than most of Arkin’s films.

If you’re looking for ripped off music, good news. The theme from Psycho? It’s in here. Songs from Enter the Dragon? Yeah. How about a flute cover of Whole Lotta Love that plays over and over, only to be interrupted by just as many repeat plays of Eye of the Tiger? You know you want it.

I’ve never been let down by any movie that Arkin has been in. He’s like the film analogue of grain alcohol. It’s not fancy, but you’re guaranteed to get black out drunk.

The makers of The Return of Superman didn’t have money to create a field of stars. They did not feel like stealing the footage from another film. So instead, they laid several Christmas ornaments on a blanket and just let the camera roll. If seeing that makes you say, “How cheap!” then you aren’t ready for the world of Turkish remixes.

This is 67 minutes of Superman’s origin, except that it’s really Captain Marvel — the Shazam! version — who has the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles and the speed of Mercury.

Tayfun Demir plays Tayfun, who is our Clark Kent here. Once he learns from his Earth parents that he came from space, he’s given a green Plexiglass paperweight that leads him to the magical cave of Shazam. Or his father. Before you know it, he’s trying to win over Lois Lane when he isn’t using his X-ray vision to check out the other ladies at the Istanbul Planet.

According to director Kunt Tulgar, the budget was so small that Demir had to resew his shirt every time they shot a scene where he pops the buttons off his dress shirt to reveal his Superman shield. After the fourth time, Demir refused to sew any longer.

Richard Donner’s Superman was sold with the idea that you would believe a man could fly. Here, that man is a Ken doll being held by a string in front of photos of Istanbul. The logo at the end of our hero’s shield? A latch hook rug.

Some will be put off by this thrift store level effort. As for me, I found it charming, a film closer to the George Reeves-starring TV version than a big budget Hollywood blockbuster.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Obviously, the entire week that we spent on Italian Westerns should let you know how much I love Django. Now, after double digits of rip-offs and remakes in his native Italy, the man once played by Franco Nero (and Jamie Foxx, Anthony Steffen, Glenn Saxson, George Eastman, James Philbrook, Franco Franchi, Tomas Milian, Ivan Rassimov, Gianni Garko, Terence Hill, Jack Betts, Brad Harris and certainly several more that I’m neglecting to remember) has made his way to Turkey.

He’s also brought along another Italian character, this time the antihero Killing, known in Turkey as Kilink. Here, he’s merely called the Death Rider, but we all know who he is. Who else would cut the hand of one of his own men off, then feed it to a dog, and still have everyone like him?

I have no idea how a remix like this happened, but I’m glad that it did. Also, the Turkish film industry made plenty of ripoffs of Ringo, including Kanunsuz Kahraman – Ringo Kid, which rips off 7 Men from Now and uses the music from Winchester 1965/1966. Of course, it stars Cüneyt Arkin.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

As you may have learned from this week of films, Turkey is one of the biggest producers of pop culture in the world, despite a film industry that still has no budget, huge demand and little to no training. To keep up, often screenwriters and directors began creating cover versions of movies and characters from all over the world.

Creator Cem Kaya grew up with Yeşilçam movies from Turkish video stores in Germany. Over seven years of making this movie, he would meet with the directors, producers and actors who created these astounding films.

There’s a great moment here when one of the most successful Turkish TV producers looks back fondly at the past, sharing how much content they must crank out and how burned out the people making it are. The Yeşilçam movies of the past seem more filled with joy than the constant need to deliver more and more fuel for the furnace of a fickle public.

As you can tell from this week of films, we have a special feeling for the cinema of Turkey. This movie is a perfect introduction to what makes these movies just so strange and special. The personal touches that Cem adds to the film make it that much better. This is a perfect primer or refresher or reminder, no matter where your knowledge of these films lies.

You can learn more at the movie’s official site.

The third of Cecille B. DeMille’s Biblical trilogy, following The Ten Commandments (1923) and The King of Kings (1927), this religious-themed movie actually upset Catholics so much that the Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization dedicated to identifying and combating objectionable content, was formed in 1934. I used to love checking out what movies they rated as O for Offensive, as quite often, those were the ones I sought out.

The scene that did it is when Poppaea (Claudette Colbert) bathes herself in the milk of asses, which was really powdered milk that soon went sour under the hot lights. Actually, more than one scene did it, as the Hayes also asked DeMille to cut Ancaria’s (Joyzelle Joyner) seductive dance for a woman, the orgy scene, a gorilla dancing around a nearly nude woman, a dead body-filled cart, elephant stomping on Christians and a crocodile getting ready to chow down on a tied-up girl.

Somehow, someway, this movie was sold to three audiences: regular movie fans, churchgoers and then students. It’s an early attempt at market segmentation and changing the ad message for each group. I have no idea how the religious and the young reacted to some of the insanity in this movie.

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar (Charles Laughton) is burning Rome to the ground and blaming it on the Christians, but Roman Prefect Marcus Superbus (Frederic March) has fallen for one of the enemy, the Christian Mercia (Elissa Landi). This causes Empress Poppaea (Colbert, who hadn’t played an evil role at this time in her career), who yearns for Marcus, to team with Nero to kill every religious person left.

John Carradine plays numerous small roles in this — a Christian martyr, the leader of the gladiators and several voices — having been hired when the out of work actor’s booming voice was heard by DeMille on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s like Cannibal Holocaust, except at some point, everyone knelt and prayed instead of shredding a turtle to pieces.

The glory of DeMille’s Biblical epics is that they both want to save and damn your soul at the same time. It’s blood and circuses, spectacle and sermon, all at the same time. There really hasn’t been anything like these Pre-Code movies ever since.

You can get the new Kino Lorber reissue of this film, complete with two commentary tracks by film historians Mark A. Vieira and David Del Valle, here. This is a moment of history that demands to be in your collection.