Intikam Kadini (1979)

aka Turkish I Spit On Your Grave

A quartet of roaming real estate agents has a car breakdown somewhere in the Turkish countryside. A friendly older gentleman and his daughter Aysel (Zerrin Dogan) agree to help the men out with a place to sleep for the night. That turns out to have been a mistake, because the next morning, the men first rape Aysel, then kill her dad only to merrily go their ways afterwards, I imagine whistling.

Aysel decides against the suicide option to solve what she calls her "state of disgrace". Instead, she vamps up a little - as you do as the protagonist in one of the more exploitative rape revenge films - and seeks out her tormentors one after the other to first seduce (or at least bait them with sex) and then kill them, usually while the needle-dropped soundtrack plays a funky little salsa tune.

Intikam Kadini is one of the relatively few surviving films of the great Turkish sexploitation wave of the late 70s. It seems that most of these films have been systematically censored and destroyed, tragically leaving even less of the films of this sub-genre available now than of the other parts of Turkish popular cinema of its time. Consequently, the version of Intikam Kadini going around is sourced from our old friend, the nearly colourless VHS tape, which itself is sourced from a beat up looking, but at least complete (one surmises) film source.

The lack of actual colours and the dubious state of the print make it a little difficult to say much about the film's look, but I don't think it would be unfair to call it a little bland, with awesome landscapes all around that are unfortunately never used for their full visual impact.

Both lead actress Zerrin Dogan and the film's director Naki Yurter (or Yürter?) were quite big names in their niche of exploitation film, both having taking part in swaths of now lost and destroyed movies. If my sources are correct (and I don't speak Turkish at all, so this might just be stuff someone on the Internet made up to make the films sound more exciting), the director did even land himself in prison for his part in making these disreputable movies. It's a sad state of affairs in any case, even if only the films have been destroyed. People going to jail for showing a few breasts in their films is downright unthinkable for me, although it of course wouldn't have been the first time for that to happen, nor will it most probably have been the last.

On the less depressing level of the actual film at hand, Dogan shows all the talents needed for her role here. She looks nice in a bikini, doesn't have a problem with getting naked or pretending to be enthusiastic in her sex scenes, but is also more than decent when presented with the necessity of doing some dramatic acting. To my relief, she also isn't one of those actresses who play a rape like any other sex scene, so that core moment of Intikam Kadini is just as unpleasant as it should be.

Dogan's cold and angry stare isn't on the level of Meiko Kaji in the Sasori films, and her body language not on that of Christina Lindberg in They Call Her One Eye, but her performance gives some of the sleaze around her a bit more dignity than it necessarily deserves.

I'm less enamoured of Yurter's direction. It is less rough and hectic - more professional -  than I'm used to from the other Turkish exploitation films, but it lacks the pulpy drive or the plain madness that seems to be typical of its peers. Intikam Kadini just isn't all that exciting to watch, which is a problem for a film that just can't deliver on set pieces or eye candy or depth of script as films made in different circumstances could, and has to live either on intensity or mood.

So, while the film is a competent piece of exploitation, competence is not necessarily a thing I (and I'm afraid most people deep enough in the claws of cult cinema to watch a rape revenge flick) am looking for in my exploitation fare.

Historically, Intikam Kadini is of course as important as it gets, granting us a visit to one of the truly lost corners of world cinema.

 

Technorati-Tags: turkish movies,exploitation,reviews,rape revenge,zerrin dogan,naki yurter

Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)

Madeleine (Christina Lindberg), a young woman, lives on a farm with her parents. She hasn't spoken a single word since she was raped as a girl. Nonetheless she seems shy but content.

Looking at the film's title, this isn't a state that can last very long. Soon she meets the slimy-charming Tony (Heinz Hopf) who exploits her naivety well. After filling Madeleine up with alcohol and invites her into his apartment where he drugs her and starts to hook her on heroin. The friendly chap is a pimp and this is the cheapest way to get more prostitutes and fulfill his final dream of settling down in Switzerland.

While Madeleine is being drugged, Tony also forces her to sign some terrible letters to send to her parents, so full of hatred for them that he thinks they will never try to find her.

Finally, when she is fully hooked, he introduces her first "customer" to her. Madeleine still has a lot of fight inside her, though. She scratches the man's face badly.

Tony isn't amused and cuts out one of her eyes. In the woman's future lie eyepatches and the name of "pirate".

This seems to break her, and she settles into her life of being victimized and abused. Tony even gives her a percentage of her earnings and one free day per week. After all, where is a junkie going to go?

One day Sally (Solveig Andersson), a fellow slave, steals a letter for Madeleine from Tony. It's from her parents and does sound very much like a suicide letter to my ears.

So it is with no great surprise we watch Madeleine finding her parents dead by suicide.

Instead of destroying her completely, her parents' death gives Madeleine a very grim kind of strength and she starts to use her money to pay trainers. Thus the determined woman learns martial arts, shooting and stunt driving.

She takes her time until she achieves something like perfection in the skills necessary for her new chosen profession.

As soon as she is ready, she starts killing her customers one by one and you can be certain she won't forget Tony.

There are a lot of different cuts of Thriller - I saw the 104 minutes version (thankfully) without hardcore inserts, as far as I know this is the cut to watch.

And what an interesting film this is. Sure, the low budget is obvious when one looks at some of the locations and most of the acting that is not done by Lindberg or Hopf is far from brilliant, but those two are the only people in the movie who really need to act, and both are doing their job well enough. Hopf's strange falseness in line delivery and mimic would be more than a little annoying in most roles, here it fits Tony's character perfectly.

Lindberg is probably playing the role of her life.

Bo Arne Vibenius direction is the second star of the movie behind Lindberg. He mostly resists the temptation to sleaze the proceedings up. There is a little nakedness, but not a single moment that tries to milk the story for titillation (that's what the hardcore inserts were for anyway). Instead, the first half of the movie goes for a cool and distanced look at the proceedings; not necessarily a cruel look, more one that trusts the viewer to have emotional responses without being pushed into them.

Which doesn't mean there isn't a strong directorial voice in Thriller. What the film lacks in funds is more than made up by a surprisingly thorough sense of detail, be it in the way Lindberg's wardrobe is color-coded or in the way Tony is never looking at the waiter when he first gets his hands on Madeleine in a restaurant.

The revenge part of the film is even more interesting. Where the first half is hyper-realistic, the second is stylized into the surreal. The "action sequences" consist nearly completely of extreme slow motion shots, as if the world around Madeleine had slowed down to incomprehensibility. Sandwiched between slow-motion death is one of the stranger driving sequences of my career with Madeleine in a stolen police car, pushing lots of cheap, rusty European cars, which of course explode at the slightest provocation, off the road until we are ready for the next slow-down.

The woman's final vengeance is of an archaic cruelty, but also strangely beautiful.

I am a little at a loss what to make of the film. I'd highly recommend it and will certainly watch it again, but I am completely unsure if the movie was meant to feel the way it feels. Did Vibenius use the way the revenge is filmed to show us the state of mind of his protagonist? Or did he use the slow motion overload just to pad out the running time?

I am not even sure if I want to know the answer to that.

 

Technorati-Tags: swedish movies,bo arne vibenius,christina lindberg,action,rape revenge,reviews

In short: Her Vengeance (1988)

Thanks to Lurple's review, I have sought out and watched this rape revenge flick by Ngai Kai Lam, who also directed The Story of Rikki and The Seventh Curse, both prime examples of over the top Hong Kong film-making.

After those films, I would have expected more than a little bit of extreme violence, but would not have expected the intensity of acting and characterization the film delivers. This is of course thanks to the excellent performances by Pauline Wong and Chin-Ying Lam (known from a multitude of Shaw Brothers films, Mr. Vampire and so on, and so on).

The violence starts out gritty and quite nasty, only the finale when our avengers turn into psychopathic variations on MacGyver shows something of the exuberance of the violence in Rikki (which would be completely out of place in a film like Her Vengeance), but toned down to a more down to earth feeling.

Especially good, and showing off Ngai Kai Lam's quality as a director, is the intensity the movie reaches through reduction. There is no filler in the film, every moment is a necessary escalation on the way to its conclusion.

 

Technorati-Tags: ngai kai lam,chin-ying lam,pauline wong,hong kong movies,action,rape revenge,in short