KILINK ISTANBUL'DA is almost exactly the same movie I wanted to make when I was 11 or so, right down to the appropriated James Bond themes "borrowed" from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. Actually I wanted to use Queen's soundtrack from FLASH GORDON, but the comparison is still valid.
Kilink is described as "the great Turkish super villain" and is probably the most interesting performance ever given by an actor who's face is never seen and voice never heard. He is a master of disguises, but for reasons never revealed in the film goes around in a Halloween skeleton costume with the bones painted onto a black body suit. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I prefer going around with a little blond myself.
The superhero is named Superhero, dressed in a Salvation Army Superman costume and speaking the name "SHAZAM" (pronounced SHA-ZAHM) for his transformation scenes. He is impervious to bullets, has the strength of a front end loader, and can fly like a bird -- except when chasing bad guys up the side of a hill, when running is of course easier.
The movie is deranged, or insane, in the sense that it is not concerned with "reality" and exists as it's own closed universe. It makes perfect sense for the villain to be dressed in a skeleton costume, for the soundtrack to repeat the same snippets of music over and over again, for the villain's henchmen to all have the letter K on the front of their tunics, and for the movie to exist in a sort of bizarre discontinuous nature due to missing footage from splice breaks. Effects follow cause: we see the water splash in a pool before a character is thrown in, see people spinning away from a punch before it is thrown, and are treated to otherwise unfathomable dialog that is perfectly fitting: Kilink calls his underlings "Losers", tells our hero to watch his mouth after being called "king of rogues", and in my favorite line (recreated here for effect) announces that with his new secret weapon nobody will be able to stop him from ruling the
world.
His goal is to not only rule the world but to tell people what they will think, what they will eat, if they will live or die, and what they will put on. One might be tempted to opine that the person who did the translation was struggling with their English, but for my money it's in the actual verbatim, especially the scene where our hero jokes about whether or not he dares to beat his sexy fiancée again. At ping pong.
I cannot recommend this movie highly enough, especially if you have a sense of humor. It delivers on so many angles, yet manages to actually be thrilling while still having a MST3K sort of goofball appeal. The women in the film are all agonizingly hot, and Kilink has his way with them like any good movie villain or 11 year old would. He does not even bother to remove his mask when kissing his mob moll, and she doesn't seem to mind. It is a very special film, and what's left of it can be found on an excellent Greek made DVD from Onar Films that has an English subtitle for the original Turkish audio track. The runtime is only 70 minutes, and with minimal bathroom breaks you can play it over and over again about thirty times during the course of a day & each time see or hear something which slipped past you before. It's just that kind of movie, and exactly what I had in mind when in the 5th grade. Good ideas don't grow old.
9/10
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