Sultan Khan of Turkey has fallen in love with Princess Iren of Byzantium. When he asks her father Niktol for her hand he refuses and tries to kill Khan. The Sultan's armies then attack and overtake Constantinople (now renamed Istanbul). Niktol kills Princess Iren and flees with his army to the island of Lesbos. From Lesbos, Niktol launches a series of ruthless attacks on Turkish villages resulting in the death of one of the Sultan's guard's mother. The guard, Murat, is sent by the Sultan on a mission to avenge his mother's death and bring back the head of the man who killed Iren. Murat goes undercover in Lesbos posing as Royal Guard Kostas, seeking the killers.
This film comes from a time when Turkish cinema was booming (at least within Turkey). The lead actor, Cuneyt Arkin, was a huge star within the country. Many of the Turkish films were very cheap ripoffs of American films - for example "The man who saved the world" used scenes from Star Wars, while Rambo was 'remade' in Turkey. This film is not quite as bad as that (although it does music some of the score from Patton: Lust for Glory), however the fact that it was very cheaply made shines through in every single area.
The plot however is actually pretty good and holds the interest well however the other values take away from it. First of all the acting is terrible! I said Arkin was a star I never said he was any good. It's full of heroic stands and evil stares to convey character, the camera doesn't help by zooming in on people's faces etc. The whole directing and editing is terrible - it's very badly cut and jumps uncomfortably between scenes, within scenes with music and action very poorly blended (eg the score just stops regularly). This carries on into the fight scenes, where swords and arrows suddenly appear in people's bodies and they fall down screaming. The fight scenes are also a bit ridiculous, many feature Arkin clearly bouncing around on a trampoline just out of shot, others see him taking on armies single handed. The fights are terrible by even 1970's standards - armies run at our heroes one at a time to allow him to dispatch them with a single blow, one at a time. Only one fight is good, it blends comedy in much the same way that Jackie Chan does in his fights. However the majority of sword fights feature rubber swords and terrible fake blood.
Overall this is of interest as the Turkish film industry no longer exists as it did then. In fact many of the films have been destroyed and the silver extracted from the negatives. As a film it has a good story but is so cheap that it's hard to see past the wooden performances and effects.
