Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Turkish Delight: Rampage aka Turkish Rambo

Thank you, Internet.  Today's film is Rampage, alternately-known as Turkish Rambo.  It's a funnier title, so let's stick with it.  It was made in the '80s and tried to emulate the Rambo films.  It's not an exact copy, but there's enough there to justify the joke title.  The lead- Serdar- is pretty much just here to flex and not emote.  The film is brought to you by Cetin Inanc, the man who also made Turkish Star Wars- a classic of fun crap cinema.  The actual DVD, however, is brought to you by Ed Glaser, a guy with a plan, the ability to manufacture DVDs and that knows someone who speaks Turkish.  I've gotten movies under sillier pretenses, so why not?  This film's plot is a bit hard to nail down, especially as it gets closer to the Third Act and just blatantly cheats.  To find out more about this unearthed 'gem' from Turkey, read on...
After a bit of driving, some guy is kidnapped by bandits.  Two of the men behind the attack are wounded and captured.
Our emotionless hero is hired to break into the gang and rescue the guy.  As long as the job requires flexing and no emoting, he's their man!
The villain is a Bandit King who's face appears to be slowly melting.  I'd be evil if that was happening to me too.  Sorry, Turkish John Carradine!
There's a female character here.  Her role is to whimper and just generally doing nothing.  It's only in death that she serves a freaking point!
For rescuing the men from the Police, our hero is tortured.  Kind of a weirdly-evil boss, right?

Watch this scene to see the wonky Editing too.  It alternates between the shot below, him surrounding by dry rocks, random close-ups and back again.  It's...odd.
Why did they hire Serdar again?  Oh right- never mind.
Our hero goes off on a mission...for the guy who just tortured him and suits up.  He gets the colors 'wrong,' but you get points for trying.  You get double points for the goofy fighting.
Hey, this guy is in the movie.  He has no purpose and only appears in this one scene.  What.  The.  Hell?!?
Speaking of random, the final battle breaks out when Serdar brings the target back...who immediately says that he's a Cop...and so is the hostage.  Shooting time!

To make things even goofier, Serdar gets an RPG Launcher from a Thug.  He literally finds ammo lying on the ground all over the place.  What is this, Charlton Heston's compound?!?
The entire film is worth it for the hilarious RPG launching effect (accentuated by a THOOMP sound added by Glaser).  On top of that, the weapon blows up five feet from people...and then they die from the burns.  No, really.

With this silly weapon, our hero wins the day and just kind of leaves.  The End.
Thank you, Ed Glaser!  This movie is crap, but for all the reasons that make it hilarious.  The production values of nil, the script is silly and the movie just comes off as goofy.  It's too complicated for its own good...and then turns really silly.  Seriously, how does the guy that Serdar brought back to the bad guy know that he's undercover?  Not once does he say anything about it in front of the guy...so what the hell?  Maybe the guy didn't know it- he just said it to get the guy killed.  Dick.  Aside from that, Serdar has the range of a discus thrown by Stephen Hawking.  He just kind of makes sad faces during dramatic scenes and goes as blank as Lance Storm every other time in the movie.  He's very similar in that regard to Alexander Nevsky from Moscow Heat.  To be fair, this movie is Dubbed, somewhat for comic effect.  The movie is still pretty incompetent in an amusing way and I highly recommend it.  To get the film (and other works actually made by Ed Glaser), go here.  I highly-recommend it, silly fall and all.
Next up, I return to Paul Naschy territory with a film in which he plays three roles.  The story involves voodoo, soap opera plot twists and...Groucho Marx?  Stay tuned...

1 comment:

  1. This was so wonderfully, stupidly entertaining. O_O That final battle scene...wow.

    Honestly, what shocked me in a positive way was that the martial arts bits, while not actively good, were not horrid either. The actors went at it pretty fast and furious and used more martial-artsy moves instead of basic brawling. And, at times, they even remembered to look like they wanted to hurt each other. Wasn't what I was expecting, so that was a nice surprise.

    That rocket-propelled grenade sequence makes the movie, though, by breaking the movie. O_O I think my favorite was when the explosion went off near a building's porch and a few moments later a couple soldiers ran up and dove towards the site of the blast for some reason. Were they late? Did someone get confused? I'm still not clear what happened there, but it was hilarious.

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