Wednesday 30 October 2013

Representing Turkey: Seytan (1974)

From http://www.sineboyut.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1974_%C5%9Eeytan.jpg
Dir. Metin Erksan

This film, for whatever quality it has, taught me an important lesson. Once, when I was a much younger film fan, I hated the concept of remakes barring those exceptions like The Thing (1982). I created a protest campaign to prevent the remake of the Swedish film Let The Right One In (2008), and except for an email read on a prominent Australian podcast at the time, it failed miserably. I hadn't even seen the original film at this point yet, but did it out of a presumed principal. Many years later, I've grown up. The original films still exist, which many say about the current industry of remaking films. What's rarely said, and I'm learnt through films like Seytan, is that remaking and ripping off other countries' films, even your own, is the bread and butter of many film industries. Ours, Bollywood's, Turkey's, many countries. Look online, or even on only YouTube, and rip-offs are ten to a dozen. Covering the Bollywood version of A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) for this season showed the pointlessness of complaining about this, and this enforces it further. The real problem with any of these films is when they feel like mere commercial product, that they're not that entertaining if you strip away the hope for them. This is the real reason why many people hate the current trend of Hollywood remaking older horror films. For me I just wish one of them was as deranged and shameless as Turkish Star Wars (1982). As for Seytan? Read the review linked below to see...

[Note - One sentence in the review may be completely false information. I may have confused Seytan with a Spanish "rip-off" starring Paul Naschy that got released in its home country before The Exorcist (1973). I wouldn't mind seeing a Naschy exorcism film though regardless.]

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/17106/seytan-1974-director-metin-erksan/

From http://myscreens.fr/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/seytan-05.jpg

No comments:

Post a Comment