Pete TOMBS : Tarkan



İngiliz Araştırmacı-Yazar Pete TOMBS, Dünya Fantastik Sineması üzerine hazırladığı kitabında TARKAN filmlerinin Dünya Fantastik Sineması'nın en iyi niteliklerini taşıdığını savunur.

More serious was the TARKAN series, starring Kartal Tibet as a hard-fighting warrior from the Dark Ages. Five TARKAN films were made between 1969 and 1972. Their style was close to the Italian PEPLUMS, Hercules films and "Sword and Sandal" epics of the early sixties, with a dash of "man with no name" / Clint Eastwood stoicism added to the mix. With this ever ready sword in hand and faithful Wolf "KURT", by his side (actually a rather jolly-looking German Shepherd dog), TARKAN roams through Central Asia, righting wrongs and defending the weak. On his travels he encounters vicious Vikings, a giant octopous, bloodthirsty Amazons, Kung-Fu killers, evil sorceresses and lots of large-breasted, willing maidens.Although essentially costume adventures, the TARKAN series includes many delirious fantasy episodes.

TARKAN "Altın Madalyon" (Tarkan and "The Golden Medallion"), the wildest of them all, opens with the abduction of a veiled nun and a topless dancer. An evil magician has them strung up on huge crucifixes and sacrificed. Their blood runs down in channels over a waiting skeleton, resurrecting a seductive vampire woman (played by Swedish ex-strip teaser, Eva Bender), who snares TARKAN in a huge, sticky spider's web.

In TARKAN "Viking Kanı" (Tarkan "The Blood of the Vikings"), he comes up against a giant, man-eating octopus.The TARKAN series has the quality of all great fantasy cinema  The TARKAN series has the quality of all great fantasy cinema - you never really know what's going to happen next. But whatever it is, it's somehow exactly right. The films have the logic of a favourite, half-remembered dream. With their dance sequences, dollops of gore and bizarre special effects, they are astonishing products to jaded Western eyes. One of their most refreshing aspects is the use of the Turkish landscape as almost a character in itself, giving the films an epic and refreshingly uncliched appearance from scene to scene. Watching the films in sequence over a short period of time, TARKAN comes to archive a heroic, almost mystical grandeur that is genuinely impressive.

In TARKAN "Gümüş Eyer" (Tarkan and "The Silver Saddle") we see the character's origins. Orphaned, his parents slaughtered by a marauding gang, the baby TARKAN is abandoned in a cave. A family of wolves adopts him and he grows to maturity far from human society. His later experiences amongst his own kind make him prefer the company of wolves, but the pull of his human side is always too strong. His steady, firm but fair demeanour obviously had a deep emotional appeal for Turkish audiences.




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