Turkish Superman - aka: Süpermen dönüyor (1979)

Alright; bags packed? Passport in order? Good, because we're going on a return trip to our friends to the east.

Namely Turkey: a land rich in rocks, dirt and outright ripoffs of classic American films.

No prizes for guessing which film this beauty's ripping on.

Duh.

I have no idea if there's a Turkish Wonder Woman, a Turkish Incredible Hulk or a Turkish Daredevil, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were. Come to think of it, if there were it would make all the sense in the world - they'd have company out there along with Turkish Spider-Man, Turkish El Santo, Turkish Batman and Turkish Captain America.

At least they'd all be equally matched when it comes to Turkish equation.

In 1978, when Superman: The Movie was released to an eager public, it quickly became nothing less than a blockbuster hit and heralded in a new age of superhero movies: one where an epic tone melded with pop culture and tales of doomed civilizations, romantic idealism and large-scale heroic action.

This did not go unnoticed by the rest of the world.

Many other film-makers and countries (the U.S. of A. included) wanted to ride Supe's cape-tails to the wild blue yonder of profits. So such products came about as India's Indian Superman (1987), Italy's The Puma Man (1980), and Spain's Supersonic Man (1979) - a classic of modern day film. Go get a copy. Seriously.

But Turkey, never a country to let something like this pass by without giving it as much as a glance, immediately gathered their crack staff of writers, producers, directors, chanting monks and spell-casting wizards together to construct something that would thrill Turks of all ages; a creation that would make the populace believe that, yes, Turkeys can fly.

What they ended up with, however, was a film that was not only an insult to Superman, Simon and Schuster and DC Comics, but was a kryptonite wedgie to truth, justice and the American way. And maybe even the Turkish way.

Turkish Superman (or Süpermen dönüyor or Superman Returns...more on that last incarnation in a sec) reassures us that things will be at the level we should expect from its opening in outer space - an outer space populated not with stars and planets but with Christmas ornaments. No, I didn't say Christmas lights...ornaments. Big ones. Every shape and size. You even get close-ups of them so you can see the little wire hang-up loops on top of them. Planet Krypton gets 2-3 close-ups itself so that you can make out the little frosted detailing along its top edge as it wobbles around merrily in the vacuum of space.

Then we cut to a construction paper cutout of Supe's iconic "S" - only it looks here like little Herbie Greenbaum's fifth grade art project. All that's missing is the confetti and dried macaroni.

Of course, the familiar John Williams theme from Superman: The Movie plays during the title sequence - I say "of course" because this is a country that takes unadulterated (Turkish) delight in swiping every popular movie's music/scenes/intellectual property and shoving them forcibly into their own self-same ripoff. Odd that in the instance of Turkish Superman there are no scenes from Superman: The Movie herein. Maybe they couldn't get a hold of a good-enough copy to use. Yeah, like that's stopped them before....

No fancy-schmancy credits, either. They just zoom in on orange text on a black background - yes, just like Turkish Star Wars, but at least these credits aren't painted on cardboard. Yep, someone sprung for actual credits this time around. Just don't expect any crystalline names swooping through a swirling, multi-hued universe at you: just orange text, black background. Period.

Even so, it's not even all in the same font: some of its Arial Bold, some of it is Arial Narrow, and it changes every 3-4 credits on through!

(...hey Turkey: if you're gonna have crappy credits, have consistent crappy credits, okay?? Thanks.)

But I haven't even given you the plot yet! Expecting epic-ness? After credits like these? Keep dreaming.

Turkish Clark Kent walks home to his family's farmhouse in the good part of Turkey (i.e.: the part with grass and trees); Turkish Ma and Pa Kent tell him he's an alien and give him a translucent green cube - this is Turkish Kryptonite...or something; Turkish Clark walks into a cave where Turkish Jor-El tells him about his destiny (and it looks like Marlon Brando clocked him or something - his upper right teeth are missing!); Turkish Clark turns into Turkish Supes and "flies" (see the quotes, there?) above some over-exposed film clips then takes a job at the Turkish Daily Bugle; Turkish Clark then gets wind that Turkish Lex Luthor has kidnapped a Turkish professor who has the parts necessary to finish a modified slide projector that turns things into gold - all Turk Lex needs now is a piece of kryptonite....

Just like that. That's how the story goes; no build-up, no scenes on Krypton, no baby Supes traveling through space, no childhood growing up in Turkish Smallville, no Turkish Lana Lang, NOTHING. This is about as basic a setup to things as you'd get in Sudden Impact, but at least THAT movie gave you Clint Eastwood!

What does THIS movie give us? Glad you asked - apparently no one in Turkey looked like Christopher Reeve's Supes in 1979 so they did the next best thing and cast a guy that could have conceivably been born in outer space. Our Turkish Clark/Supes is one Tayfun Demir (his character is called Tayfun onscreen too - clever), and he is what you'd get if you took Chris Reeve, Kramer from "Seinfeld" and Lurch from "The Addams Family" and shoved them all into the BrundleFly Machine together. Oh, but remove their brains first - that's important.

Tayfun just stands around most of the time. No heroic posturing, no fists to the hips, just stand around and let the bad guys shoot at you, throw rocks at you, try to punch you - THEN punch them or throw them out of the way or whatever. He doesn't do any facial acting, either. I don't think I saw his face really move very much at all during this. He smiles maybe a couple of times but that's it. And as far as the distant, glassy stare in his eyes - I think I know what happened to all of that hashish they confiscated from Brad Davis in Midnight Express.

There is a Turkish Lois Lane; Güngör Bayrak plays a woman named Alev who is a fellow reporter at the Turkish Daily Bugle and her father is a scientist who is working on making synthetic Kryptonite rocks. Why? IITS (It's In The Script). Her and Supes' first meeting is reminiscent of the '78 movie scene...only replace the dangling helicopter with a speeding truck, and replace their clever dialogue with three or four words. Then Alev faints as Supes jumps/flies away. Why? IITS, and IITMBOM (It's In The Much-Better Original Movie).

And Turkish Lex Luthor? He's not that much of a threat, really, and he and his cohorts are more like the Turkish Mob: issuing threats, tying people up in runaway trucks, playing cards in abandoned wood shops, shooting at people and so on. And Turk Lex doesn't even do anything we expect out of Lex Luthor - he isn't even BALD! Jeez, I mean even Gene Hackman took off his wig at the very last scene in Superman: The Movie! This guy, with his slicked-back receding hairline, dapper suits and thin mustache, looks like he should be barking out orders to his thugs and telling them to kidnap people and...oh wait; he does.

The thugs and henchmen serve no more nor less a purpose than to threaten and kidnap Alev/Lois and her dad/professor and get beaten up repeatedly by Turkish Supes. Over and over again. The same guys, too. It's like they have no collective memory. They even keep shooting at him in spite of the fact they see their bullets bounce off this big lump of Turkish lead. Don't guys like this ever learn?? It's like they cloned Otis.

Nothing Turkish Supes does here is really, technically, super. Sure, he survives being shot at (you only hear ricochets), he stops two trains from colliding (by standing between two stopped trains and spreading out his arms), he crushes a pistol with his bare hands (the gun looking suspiciously like it was cut from black sponge), throws people into trees (by magically "reversing the film"), can take being hit in the chest with a rock (a foam rock but still...some foam can be pretty thick) and withstands being cut in two by a guillotine (through the magic of "cutting away from the action"), but if this was the standard - and you had a video camera - then you also could be a superhero. And if you look like Lurch, all the better.

I mentioned the fact that one of the multiple titles for this beauty was Superman Returns. Really? From what? Or where, even? It doesn't look like Supes has gone anywhere and come back - more than anything it looks like this movie caught him midstream. If he's returning from anything, it was a movie where he was in the middle of something else. Something far more interesting than where we came in.

I'm going out on a limb here: the makers of Turkish Superman never saw Superman: The Movie. They may have had friends who saw Superman: The Movie and those friends told the film-makers what they saw, then they in turn made the film based on their friends' recollections. Granted, the friends probably didn't remember key details and were probably visually or mentally impaired at the time, so there you go.

This sounds funny coming from me, but I can't really recommend Turkish Superman. I know; I loved Turkish Star Wars and 3 Dev Adam brings a smile to my face, but Turkish Superman falls just short of a recommendation - and it's all because it makes the cardinal sin of being - God help me - not Turkish enough!

Where's the wild imagination of two silk-shirted Han Solo-wannabes kicking the heads off of giant red and black Muppets? Where's the cackling hysteria of a switchblade-wielding Turkish Spider-Man knifing Mafiosos and regenerating every time he's killed? Where's the mind-boggling creativity of a group of cavemen appearing from nowhere to battle Dorothy Gale and company traveling to Turkish Oz?

Turkish Superman, alas, plays like a very plain 1940s serial with some misplaced action and stunted adventure. It's like an Indiana Jones movie with 5% of the budget and could have been in any language and still would have been shackled by boring characters who do nothing with their roles. Add to that grade-school special effects and none of the overt insanity the discriminating viewer who's used to this kind of thing expects, and you have a candidate for most under-developed Turkish ripoff ever.

I really wish I could have liked Turkish Superman more. Really. I wanted to and I even gave it the benefit of the doubt early on. But for as much as it wants to entertain and be subversive in the way a kid with a camera says, "Hey! I did a ripoff of Superman! Watch this!", all Turkish Superman can do is remind us that sometimes a reputation is far more entertaining than the end product.

And in this case, the end product isn't all that good to begin with.

If I were you, Turkey, I'd start watching the skies. And if you see a blue bomb buzz Istanbul...run.