DIGG THIS ARTICLE. 1970, Turkey. Starring Aytekin Akkaya, Dogan Tamer, Giray Alpan. Directed by Yavuz Yalinkilic. Buy it from Xploited Cinema.

So when's the last time you heard someone say, "Man, I really want to go to Turkey"? I ask because the only people I know who've been to Turkey were either A) born there, B) have family there, or C) went there for business trips before deciding they liked it. And when I started talking about going there (which I will do some day), people kept warning me against it because it was dangerous and... y'know, Islamic and Arabic and probably terrorist. 'Cuz I guess most Americans think of Turkey as being Arabic (even though the language is more closely related to Central European languages), and of course it's a predominantly Islamic nation (although the secularity of the government has its roots in the 19th century), and, frankly, I think a lot of Americans seem to think of the Middle East as one big desert, full of terrorists and Allah and surly peasants.

In reality, Turkey has a rich cultural history. I'm not just talking about the Ottoman Empire; there are also a plethora of Greek, Roman, Hittite, and other ruins in Turkey. I've repeatedly been told that it's cheap to travel there, that the people are exceedingly friendly (at least outside of the cities), that much of the landscape is beautiful, and that it's touristically like going to Italy for a fraction of the price (though that comment isn't meant to suggest that there's nothing uniquely Turkish about Turkey; I think it was meant as an analogy).

It's no real secret that Turkey has a history of weird cinema. I mean, there was an entire chapter of Mondo Macabro dedicated to Turkish films, and reviews of some of those films are becoming more and more widespread on the 'net. The films themselves are in some cases getting easier to obtain, but in most cases it's still hard to turn up so much as a 5th-generation vhs dub of some of the most compelling of these movies... and for your sake, I hope you're not afraid of going in without subtitles. Weird cinema's niche market is positively thriving these days... but overall, Turkish movies, like Turkish culture, seem to be often-overlooked, and scarcely given any of the attention due to them.

Enter Onar Films. A small group of people located in Greece are hard at work under that moniker, trying to share rare and neglected gems of Turkish weird cinema with the world... and so far, their work has been vastly under-appreciated. I'll be reviewing a few of their releases in the coming weeks in hopes of drumming up a bit more interest (and business) for these DVDs, which each feature lengthy interviews, useful filmographies (which are hard to find for Turkish figures sometimes), and improved (if necessarily not always perfect) audio and video transfers. So there's the plug. I'm sincere about this; I really would love to see these people continue their work, as there's a whole wonderland of crazy Turkishness out there that sorely needs DVD formatting... A Turkish Rambo with Cuneyt Arkin and zombies (!!!); a Turkish freakout often cited as being weirder than Turkish Star Wars, with Cuneyt Arkin, a zombie/mummy, a bush that eats people, ninjas who kill suburban poolgoers, ninjas who kill other ninjas, motorcycle chases, and some guy throwing a pigeon through the window of Cuneyt's house; a plethora of ripoffs and amalgams of Superman, Batman, The Phantom, as well as foreign comic book heroes like Zagor, Fantomas, and Karaoglan; etc. I don't mean to turn this review into a billboard, but I do want to give the very valuable work of Onar Films its due credit... they're helping to share a significant and generally unknown part of weird cinematic history with the rest of the world.

So. The Dead Don't Talk. Let's talk about it.

I should mention that the DVD it's on is a double bill; I'm just dealing with one of the two movies here. The other will come later.

As the very informative interviews explain, this 1970 film is one of the earlier forays into Turkish cinema. After a semi-'horrific' film in the 40s, 1953's Dracula in Istanbul was a considerable success, based on a Turkish novel which in turn sort of Turkishized Stoker's famous novel, changing the Christian themes into Islamic ones. According to Giovanni Scognamillo, and his student Metin Demirhan, this was the first film in which "Dracula showed his canines"... But horror didn't really catch on afterward in Turkey. The interviewees cite a couple instances of fantastic films incorporating Vlad the Impaler (for instance, as an adversary of serial hero Kara Murat), but really, there have been very few horror films up until the present era, when digital filming, DVD technology, and a crop of young directors seem to be responsible for a sort of "boom" in Turkish horror production.

Oluler Konusmazki is one of the few examples of Turkish horror occurring between Dracula Istanbul'da and the films of today. It appears to have been a dismal failure at the box office, so I guess that means that the general demographic of 1970s Turkey didn't experience film like I do. Director Yavuz Yalinkilic is known for minimalistic scripts, low budgets, and action. Since this is meant to sort of be an atmospheric film, the action is somewhat reduced here, but the other two definitely hold up.

In fact, to call the script "minimalistic" is really... well, too minimal a descriptor. The running themes in the film are twofold: "Wait... what?" and "What the fuck? No..." This is not a bad thing, as I'll explain, but definitely, if you're a curmudgeon for logical plots and artful and rich exposition, this film might give you an aneurysm, put you in a coma, and then torment you with incomprehensible dreams until you're finally excused to meet the hereafter. (Yeah, that's morbid, but this is a horror film I'm talking about.)

We begin, very abruptly, with a young couple, Mehli and Oya, in a scene that sets the tone for the whole film. A man in a carriage rides up and accosts them, telling them to get in. Mehli (played by a young Aytekkin Akkaya, famous to many of you for his supporting role in Turkish Star Wars) asks where they're going and why. The man explains that it's an old mansion, and the only place nearby for someone to stay. As they ride through the forest to the mansion, the man repeats ad nauseam that it's the 15th of the month, and he has to get home soon, because it's the 15th of the month, so he has to get home soon. He drops them off and rides off without payment, because it's the 15th of the month, and he has to get home soon. Shrugging, Mehli takes Oya inside.

Yalinkilic has spared us the need to contemplate such trivialities as, say, who Mehli and Oya are, where they're traveling, how they ended up in a town that only boards people in the haunted mansion where people always die, and why they'd let some random and ostensibly unstable guy insist on taking them through the woods in his carriage to anything, whether it be a haunted mansion or, y'know, an abandoned camp. And then there's the matter of what time period this movie takes place in; it could be the 19th century, or maybe it's the 1960s... And we never get the name of the town, either. Not even a silly name like "Nilbog"; nothing at all.

So. The house has a habit of automatically slamming doors shut behind people, as one might expect. Oya is scared, but Mehli insists that he doesn't believe in ghosts in this day and age, and they go upstairs to find a table set for two. They split up to look around, naturally, and Oya admires herself in the mirror before screaming when she sees someone staring through a peephole at her. Then the couple sits down to eat.

Hasan, the... guy who... well, I guess attends to people at this house, comes in and explains that it's the 15th of the month, so there are always only two visitors, though this is never explained and it never comes up again. He also explains that he opened the door for the couple, though they did not see him. Finally, he explains that the food is always delicious because he makes it, though after saying that he walks off with some of the food that I think the couple was supposed to eat. Hm.

Anyway, in between 'conversations,' or if you prefer, 'rapid exchanges of newspeak-efficiency communication,' Mehli digs into the soup, asking, "What's the worst that could happen?" Oya does come up with one scenario, but I'm sure you can come up with a number of them yourself...

Then Hasan brings Oya down to "show her something." Hasan, I might add, looks kind of like a Turkish Vincent Price on a vampiric kind of day. He shows her a very old portrait, explaining that Oya is beautiful like the depicted woman. She died, but he lives only for her... Only for her... But the beautiful women always leave him. On cue, Oya retreats from the room, walking the same route they took to get there, but in literal reverse (i.e. backward).

Of course, backward and forward are played with a bit in this film, as Yalinkilic delights in the use of mirrors. I think every room in the mansion has at least one full-length mirror, and sometimes it's hard to tell if we're watching a mirror or watching the action really unfold.

The soundtrack, I should also add, is... interesting. Often it's sparse: the ticking of a clock, or silence except for the "dialogue." Other times, it's vaguely ominous. Often, though, it's the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey: as the trumpets build, the suspense is supposed to build, with the "freakout" or "startle" moment predictably coming when the drums come in. I was never sure if someone was about to die, or if it was the filmmakers' subtle way of telling us that somewhere else in the mansion, a monkey was cracking ribs with a femur.

Anyway, then the couple goes to bed. In separate rooms, it seems. If they're not married, I guess that might make sense in Islamic Turkey, but... well, we'll assume that's the case. Mehli is then attacked by a weird-looking guy wearing a hat and a trenchcoat of sorts who is completely impervious to the bullets in Mehli's gun. I'll try to keep plot summary minimal from here on out (what does that even mean in this context anyway?), but... this guy is worth talking about.

He's a stocky Turk with thick, though maybe not bushy, eyebrows, and he laughs like a motherfucker. I mean, seriously. He laughs when he's angry, he laughs when he's excited, he laughs in triumph, he laughs in defeat, he laughs maybe as some form of propulsion (he's a pretty slow walker)... If he's not talking, and usually he's not, he's just laughing. Laughing and attacking people. Laughing one of those "evil villain laughs," mind you, but laughing it with the reckless abandon of those novelty Halloween decorations they sell at drugstores that go off every time someone walks past them.

This guy is really the only main character of the film, because he's the only character whose presence persists throughout; everyone else is relatively ephemeral. We're later introduced to some apparent graverobbers who give the film its title (one says to the other that it's all right to dig up graves because "The dead don't talk"). Then the "new teacher" comes to live at Hasan's mansion, where she also gets the soup-and-"I-live-only-for-her"-soliloquy treatment. She lasts a little longer, though, making friends with some guy with a mustache who seems normal--except for the time that she asks about the village, and he screams at her that he doesn't understand his existence.

But hell, I have friends who'd probably do that, too, if they weren't too stoned most of the time to scream at all.

Eventually, the four characters who close out the movie decide to take on the hat guy using spiritual, and not doggedly scientific, means. Their adversary is apparently some form of the living dead, and he melts in a puddle of blood or chocolate syrup when caught in the sunrise, after talking about the voices of his people, the dead, who are screaming out or calling to him or something.

So. The movie is actually negative on the "how much sense does this make?" scale... and I give it props for that. The Dead Don't Talk exists in a weird vortex of logic that undercuts conventional apprehension of film much as its "the power of the spirit" theme undercuts, in its own way, scientific knowledge production as being the end-all be-all of existence. Did the director intend that effect? Hell, I don't know, but does that matter? The disorienting editing, the black-and-white photography, the abrupt start-and-stop use of the soundtrack, the constant, constant, constant laughing, the liminality produced by the lack of a definite (or approximate) setting, the sometimes-effective and sometimes-amateurish use of mirrors... these all have a synergistic effect. The flashes of competence in the film actually join hands with the amateurish failures to make the film feel more oneiric and more surreal. The repetition of some scenes is almost incantatory, and in light of the absolute incomprehensibility of The Dead Don't Talk, I found the film's attempt at horror to occasionally be paradoxically effective.

I'm not exactly saying of the film that it's so bad it's literally frightening, but... well, on a certain level, in a certain way, to a certain degree, I think it is. Believe it or not. Even if the horror element doesn't work for you, the film can provoke its share of laughter, and the surrealism of the cinematography and its editing is genuinely artistic at times in a "best-of-Jess-Franco" kind of way... In fact, in some ways this film reminds me of some of Franco's work, except for the lack of nudity and random sex toys with obscure theological significance just laying about on the floor. Of course, I like this film better than I personally like most of Franco's work, but the ideal of Ligottian oneiricism isn't really limited to Franco anyway... The only reason I don't say "Lucio Fulci" is because there's nowhere near enough (or any) gore here to make that comparison. The film doesn't suffer for the lack of overt physical violence, though. Frankly, if you ask me which film is better at evoking the disordered fibre of a nightmare, City of the Living Dead or The Dead Don't Talk... I think my vote is with the latter.

Watching The Dead Don't Talk, whether it will leave you laughing or contemplative, requires a sort of zen of movie watching. Don't question things; such behavior will ultimately hurt you. Just roll with it. I concur with Jared at World Weird Cinema on this point (http://www.worldweirdcinema.blogspot.com/): you've just got to sit back and open up your mind, the same way you have to let a shot of liquor just kind of slide down your throat if you want to do it right. And then, when it's all said and done, your head will be spinning in what seems to me to be a uniquely Turkish sort of way.

Labels: Country: Turkey, Horror, Turkish Horror Double Bill, Year: 1970