Bülent has an abusive dad and Ali just has a mom and a dog. Well, he had a dog until a policeman shoots and kills it. They’re in the same school and become friends and bond over the alien that they meet, Badi, who completely seriously shoots smoke out of his penis at one point.

In a kids’ movie.

He also eats Turkish Treat instead of Reese’s Pieces and looks through a porn mag, so…I wonder how much of E.T. that director Zafer Par and writer Baris Pirhasan saw before they made this. Probably just as much as Müjdat Gezen when he directed and wrote Homoti.

The craziest. thing is that Badi gives multiple heart attacks to humans both good and bad who are so overwhelmed by his appearance that their hearts literally stop working. The scene where he causes a teacher to have cardiac arrest is played for comedy, just after his appearance upsets a janitor so much that he falls down the steps to possibly his death.

Bülent and Ali give inflammatory speeches to the local kids, who take over an amusement park so Badi can use a Ferris wheel as an antenna to, well, phone home. When the villagers come with torches, along with cops, the kids put on masks and start throwing smoke bombs at adults — this movie is absolutely wild as it has kids rioting in the streets — and help Bodi get back home.

It’s…something.

You can watch this on the Internet Archive.

Korkusuz is also known as Rampage and Fearless, is the second movie that director Çetin İnanç made that follows the blueprint of Rambo: First Blood Part II. Starring bodybuilder Serdar Kebapçılar as Serdar, this has some pretty realistic looking locations and weapons, thanks to the movie being filmed in a real commando camp in Foça. I say realistic except for the rocket launcher, which is made of wood and painted.

Serdar is on an undercover mission to destroy the terrorist element in Turkey. He saves the life of the leader of the terrorists’ brother. Ziya is at least a good enough leader to not believe that this man who came out of nowhere and can’t be cut by knives isn’t a government agent, so he’s waiting to turn on him. He even buries him in mud up to his neck and hits him with a hose of water at one point, but as we all know, Serdar is going to end this guy before the end of the film.

Serdar also was in Kara Simsek, which is Rocky inspired; Intikamci (The Avenger) which has elements of Road Warrior and also has Commando as one of its titles and Asi Kabadayi, which is called Turkish Wolverine despite the fact that it was made in 1986 and the only tie to the Canadian superhero is that Serdar has a metallic spiked glove that also has claws and shoots arrows, which Weapon X cannot do.

*The other is Vahşi Kan (Wild Blood). That movie has Cuneyt Arkin and zombies in it, so guess which one I like more?

Obviously, Dracula in Istanbul is a Turkish version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s based on Ali Riza Seyfi’s Kazıklı Voyvoda (Impaler Voivode), which is nearly a translation of the Stoker book the Mina Harker analogue being a showgirl named Güzin.

It’s also the first Dracula movie to explicitly show his fangs and also the first film to link Dracula with Vlad the Impaler.

A lawyer named Azmi travels to Romania for real estate business with Count Dracula, who is feared by everyone who hears his name. Much like the Universal adaption, Dracula welcomes him to his castle and even says the line, “Listen to them— the children of the night!” as wolves howl. Azmi is attacked by vampiric women, watches the Count scale down the walls of his castle and even empties his gun into the man himself with no reaction before he runs.

His wife Güzin is awaiting his return when she sees four men carrying a coffin filled with dirt from Romania. Dracula soon has his way with her best friend Sadan, eventually turning Sadan and giving her mother a heart attack. Where this film differs somewhat from the expected story is that it seems like garlic plays more of a role in stopping the vampire. That’s because this was made in an Islamic country where crucifixes wouldn’t make sense.

Directed by Mehmet Muhtar, who wrote the screenplay with Turgut Demirag and Ümit Deniz, this has some incredibly ingenious ways of getting effects, like thirty crew members chainsmoking to create fog.

You can learn more about this movie from the always incredible Deja View. You can also purchase a digital version of the film here.

The joy of Antonio Margheriti’s Raiders of the Lost Ark remixes — you can add The Ark of the Sun God and Jungle Raiders to this film — is that you get sequels without waiting for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Starring David Warbeck as Bob Jackson, an American soldier who is hired by British Captain David Franks (John Steiner) to make another try at finding the Golden Cobra, an artifact he almost got a year ago. Jackson has been thinking about another mission since then, as well as the gorgeous non-native woman who somehow was living amongst the tribe of Awoks. No, not Ewoks. Awoks. She saved his life as she was able to command the cannibal tribe, who follow her like a goddess.

But then he meets her twin sister (they’re both played by Almanta Suska from The New York Ripper). She and her uncle Greenwalter (Luciano Pigozzi, as always showing up in a Margheriti movie) have been trying to find her for years and Jackson seems like the best bet.

You know, I’m all for the Philippine jungle being used to great effect in Italian movies, as well as Margheriti’s great use of budget, miniatures and effects. There’s an entire room of cobras and a dummy drop to end the film!

Writers Gianfranco Couyoumdjian (The Last Hunter, The Last Blood, Code Name: Wild Geese) and Tito Carpi (Alien from the Deep, Atlantis Interceptors, Marta) have the Italian movie magic language to make this movie sing. As far as I’m concerned, this crew could have made twenty of these movie serial style movies, particularly when they include scenes where a crazed cult leader interrupts a slide show presentation. Also: Warbeck and Steiner are a fabulous adventure team and their dialogue is sparkling.

Aatank means Terror but what you may think it means when you see the poster for this Bollywood movie is Jaws. Directed by Prem Lalwani and Desh Mukherjee and written by Sachin Bhowmick, the truth is that sharks are just part of this movie.

Jesu (Dharmendra) and Peter (Vinod Mehra) are childhood friends who have become fishermen. Their entire town is run by organized crime figure Alphonso (Amjad Khan, who died during the time this was filmed in the 80s and released in the mid-90s, so his voice is dubbed). Whenever someone sees a little bit of success like when the fishermen find pearls, that fortune eventually goes to Alphonso. And when the gangster overfishes the ocean for those pearls, a man-eating shark is disturbed enough to start eating his divers.

Jesu is the only person willing to stand up to Alphonso. But even he can’t stop what happens next. Peter gets married to Suzy D’Silva and after the ceremony, he and his wife start to consummate their marriage on the beach. And that’s where, nearly an hour into this movie, the shark does what sharks do in movies. As Peter passes out on the beach, drunk from his wedding night, his bride is devoured by a shark that was paying attention to Jaws: The Revenge and roars like a lion.

Peter goes to get revenge and then, as you can expect yet again, is also bitten into pieces. I mean, just look at this shark. It’s nearly a megalodon. At the same time, the government has finally cracked down on Alphonso and his men, so their getaway by helicopter seems to be cosplaying one of the best moments of Jaws 2. Or The Last Shark.

At other times, the shark sounds like Godzilla. I love that choice, I also adore the miniature ships being tossed around on the waves, challenging The Ghost Galleon for realism. The shark attack scenes are also completely wild, mixing quick cuts, multiple looks and seemingly an endless array of colors and angles.

Aatank at times may not seem like it’s the shark movie you’re looking for, but be patient. It gets pretty amazing before it’s all over.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Altin Çocuk means Golden Boy, who is the name of the superspy played by Goksel Arsoy. His mission? Stop Demetrius (Altan Gunbay), a supervillain who plans to destroy Turkey by firing missiles into Istanbul’s biggest nuclear reactor. Golden Boy was also Arsoy’s nickname, so this is his show. He also produced it.

This even gets the James Bond formula down so well that it starts with credits over a gorgeous woman and has an action scene before the main story, as an evil spy named The Wolf rises from the waves and tries to kill our hero with a speargun. But wait — it turns out that The Wolf was actually wearing a Golden Boy disguise and the killer is our hero. Hit the strip club sounding music and we’re off to the Eurospy — err, Turkspy? — action.

They even shot some of the opening in London to give this a more continental air. We get to see Golden Boy drive a sportscar and win over some British ladies before we get down to the actual spy intrigue. But once he gets back to Turkey, he learns that his fellow agent S-99 has been killed and starts to investigate. He also meets a capable female (Sevda Nur) who fights by his side for the rest of the movie.

Directed by Memduh Un, this even has an ending where Golden Boy and his female friend SCUBA into Demetrius’ underwater lair just like Thunderball.

Golden Boy would return in Altin Çocuk Beyrut’ta (Golden Boy in Beirut).

Made in Indonesia two years after Hellraiser by director Susilo S.W.D. and writer Djoko S. Koesdiman, this remake remix ripoff follows the same beats as the original, but has a heart and energy that makes you love it. While later sequels seemed to not even be about the Cenobites — and often weren’t as they were films that started as other stories and had the Lament Configuration shoved in — and the recent film that has none of the lunatic joy and sexiness of the first two or three movies, it seems like everyone is having a blast making this.

Nadia — who is Kristy — has a bad relationship with her recently widowed father Bramasto — Larry — who has married an evil stepmother named Astria or Julia, as we know her in the Clive Barker-directed inspiration. Astria has a secret, as she slept with Bramasto’s brother Lukito — Frank — before her husband and the affair has continued beyond his death, as she’s now part of his occult rituals from beyond the grave.

https://singyourwayhome.tumblr.com/post/40142742220

The sex has been toned down, as you can imagine with this being made in a highly Muslim country, and the effects and Cenobites do their own thing. The Lament Configuration looks like a vegetable with a strange face in it, the Cenobites appear to be zombies in latex masks joined by a pretty decent female follower of Leviathan.

The effects are pretty fun, too. They often take the form of puddles of blood with eyes in them, which is kind of scary when you think long enough about it. Frank, I mean, Lukito’s transformation is also pretty close to the real thing.

You can get this on DVD from Sloppy Second Sales.

A few weeks ago, Scientific American asked, “Are ‘Cocaine Sharks’ Really Scarfing Down Drugs off Florida’s Coasts?” Sadly, that article is more about Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, but there’s some interesting information, including this quote:

“…the idea may not be as wacky as it sounds—especially in the waters off Florida. There sharks in a diverse assemblage swim along a major drug-smuggling throughway, which potentially exposes the toothy predators to floating bundles of narcotics. “This is the only place in the world where a shark could come into contact with such massive doses of cocaine,” says Tom Hird, a marine biologist and broadcaster based in England.”

Some literally insane scientists even did tests on sharks by having them eat cocaine — did they never see a single shark movie? Do they know that LL Cool J rapped “My hat is like a shark fin” after living through Deep Blue Sea? — along with this wild story:

“In 2016 scientists in Switzerland examined the effects of cocaine on zebra fish, a type of striped minnow commonly used in scientific experiments. The researchers were surprised to find that most of the cocaine accumulated in the fish’s eyes instead of their brain. Some zebra fish eyes contained concentrations of cocaine that were 1,000 times higher than levels that would be lethal to humans. The Swiss scientists were also surprised to find that instead of revving up the zebra fish, the cocaine suppressed their movements. “You’d think that a shark on cocaine is going to be swimming around all over the place at 1,000 miles an hour,” Hird says. “But that is us taking our human brains and putting it into the shark’s head.””

But let’s forget about science.

Let’s watch Cocaine Shark.

Originally released as Kanizame Shakurabu (Crab Shark) in Japan, this was retitled with the success of Cocaine Bear. It’s the story of a drug dealer named Gaurisco (Ken Van Sant) and his new creation, HT25, which is made from sharks. To paraphrase Mr. Show, “It’s great. It’s shark crack. It gets you really high.”

Directed by Mike Polonia and written by the mysterious Bando Glutz, this has effects by Brett Piper and Anthony Polonia that encompass an entire ocean’s worth of mutated creatures. Opposing them and the drug dealer is Nick (Titus Himmelberger), a hard-boiled detective who runs afoul of femme fatale Persephone (Natalie Himmelberger) as well as the hallucinations people have on HT25 which allow them to kill as a shark crab hybrid.

I really enjoyed reading other reviews of this movie. Nearly everyone hated it because it doesn’t have many sharks, there’s not really cocaine, it’s made with stock footage and it’s only an hour long. Obviously, any of these people would tell you how much they love exploitation movies yet when they are the ones exploited, they realize that sometimes a great poster, an awesome title, a tie-in to some popular pop culture buzz and a little filmmaking magic was enough to con you into watching a movie. Being mad about this movie is like being angry at Jerry Warren or Jerry Gross or someone not named Jerry that got you to watch movies that you never thought you’d watch like Sam Sherman.

I love that movies like this exist and I’ll never get tired of them.

You can watch this on Tubi.

You know, I waited for years for this movie and, like Lemmy always sang, perhaps the chase is always better than the catch.

Originally filmed in Hungary in 1983, this movie was just a rumor for around four decades. But now it’s here.

Now we can talk about it.

Yellowstone National Park is expecting to have 50,000 people show up for a concert. Chief Ranger Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood) is in charge of making sure that everyone remains safe. That’s not going to be easy, because a poacher has killed the cub of a giant grizzly named Tawanda. Nick tries to warn Eileene Draygon (Louise Fletcher), who is putting on the rock show, but that goes over as well as closing the beach on the Fourth of July.

Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin) is in charge of the bears and feels that instead of killing Tawanda, a grizzly expert named Bouchard (John Rhys-Davies) can just tranquilize it and place it into captivity. Great plan, but teenagers are already being killed by the bear. That’s right, George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen, early into their careers, are slashed by the titular terror.

By the end of this, the bear gets backstage and kills the so-called bear expert before its lured onstage and knocked off into equipment, causing a huge electrical explosion that the crowd thinks is just part of the show. Screw them. That bear should be rampaging in the mosh put right now.

The big crowd at that show was because the band Nazareth was performing. It was the largest public gathering in Hungary since the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Originally called The Predator, this film was abandoned by its producer Joseph Ford Proctor on the first day of shooting. It was finished by co-producer Suzanne C. Nagy, who held the rights for decades, thanks to a Japanese investor who showed up and paid for the rest of the filming. The Hungarian government took most of the film’s equipment for non-payment of bills, which is why post-production was never finished.

Cannon Group, Inc. bought the film in 1987 and planned to finish its post-production and release it, but then Cannon started to falter and the movie was lost again. This feels very on-brand for Cannon.

This was written by Joan McCall, who played Allison in Grizzly. She also wrote Heart Like a Wheel and episodes of Days of Our Lives, Another World, Search for Tomorrow, Santa Barbara and Divorce Court. She also acted in William Girdler’s Project: Kill and played Julie, the heroine murdered by Leif Garrett with a stick in the throat in Devil Times Five. She was the wife of Grizzly writer David Sheldon, who co-write the script with her.

Sheldon was originally going to direct this movie but one imagines that when Edward L. Montoro of Film Ventures International disappeared, the rights to this got murky. They got probably worse when Proctor bought the movie and chose to make it with a German producer who has only directed one other movie, André Szöts.

Oh — if you’re like me and love to spot people, Deborah Foreman is in this as Nick’s daughter. Plus, the hunters who screw everything up trying to get the bear are Halloween alumnus Charles Cyphers, Marc Alaimo (Arena), Charles Young and Jack Starrett. That’s right, the director of Race With the Devil, Cleopatra Jones and Final Chapter: Walking Tall was in Hungary, playing a small role in this movie.

Oh yeah again — the robotic drummer in the band The Predator is Barbie Wilde, the female cenobite from Hellraiser II and gang leader Manny Fraker’s girlfriend in Death Wish 3!

It’s not great, you can hear cues from off camera and most of the movie is about getting a concert on the stage. But hey — it’s another bear against man movie and I’ll watch all of those.