... aka: Horrible Torture
... aka: Scary Rape
Directed by:
Ertem Göreç
I have very little experience with older Turkish horror films but everything I've watched thus far has been an obvious and sometimes even scene-for-scene plagiarism of something else. It didn't matter if that something else was an extremely famous film like The Exorcist, Jaws or The Shining, or something not at all well known outside of cult / horror circles (I doubt anyone was clamoring for a redo of A Candle for the Devil); everything was apparently fair game to them! As per my limited knowledge and equipped with next to no information about this particular title, it struck me that I was perhaps about to watch my very first "original" Turkish horror movie. Unfortunately, this was so bad it ended up making me pine for one of the rip-offs!
A bus transporting a male school teacher / coach and a bunch of high school girls travels through the mountains. They break out into a song that goes something like "La la la la la la la. La la la la la la la la la" before arriving at some remote resort hotel. Seeing how this isn't available in English, I initially had no clue what they were doing there but it has something to do with a girl's volleyball team needing a place to practice or something. Practice volleyball at a hotel, you say? Why yes, this hotel also happens to have a large, school-sized gymnasium in it. You know, like most hotels do. Moving right along...
One of the girls hurts her leg during practice and then, just seconds later, is seen bopping around with the rest of the girls without a care in the world. She and a teammate then go back to their room and strip down to their underwear for a wild night in the hotel bar. There, they dance around in hilarious sped up shots while strobe lights blink, a red light flashes, a record spins and the disco version of Yakety Yak (!) by El Coco plays while a bunch of perverted older men ogle them. Best scene ever? Perhaps not, but it's the probably the best thing I've seen all month. Speaking of perverts, hotel owner Ender (Naci Girgin)), who was previously seen licking his lips checking the girls out during practice as the camera zoomed in on their asses and legs, also shows up at the disco to stare the girls down while his jealous wife (Ayfer Feray, from Dracula in Istanbul) looks on.
The next morning, two of the volleyball girls (one of whom looks to be pushing 40) merrily skip into the woods. Also in the woods at the same time is pretty schoolteacher Serpil (Emel Özden) and about ten little kids she has out on some nature trip. When they attempt to drive around to look for a missing boy, the car gets caught up in some mud. A mysterious red light flashes and eyes peer at them through the brush. While going to investigate, Serpil finds the dead body of the 40-year-old "girl." Four men miraculously materialize in the woods at the same time as if to say "Hey! We'll be your suspects this evening!" There's the previously unseen square-jawed doctor Ekrem (Yalçin Gülhan), a photographer / reporter (Ayton Sert) who wastes no time taking pictures of the corpse, one of the hotel guests and, you guessed it, the perv hotel owner. The young boy who wandered off, Murat (Murat Erton), is also located but is now traumatized and left in a state of shock after witnessing the crime. When the police show up, they find the body of the other missing girl. Both she and her friend were apparently raped prior to being killed, though we don't get to actually see any of it.
As the police commissioner (Ismail Hakki Sen) starts to investigate, the hotel owner's wife begins to suspect her hubby may be responsible when she finds (gasp!) nudie pictures in his wallet. Meanwhile, the little boy is taken to a doctor (Necip Tekçe) who administers a drug to help cure his shock but it's to no avail. The black-gloved killer then sneaks into the hospital to kill the kid but first strangles a nurse to death while trying to rip off one of the two pairs of panties (?!) she's wearing. The rest of the movie is spent showing the psycho stalking, terrorizing and attempting to kill off the teacher.
Weak, formulaic writing, with bland characters, nary an original idea in sight and very clumsy use made of red herrings before trotting out a character we've never even seen before at the very end, ensures little to no plot interest is ever generated while poor direction and pacing ensures there's zero suspense and technical incompetence in nearly every other area (the editing is especially awful) dooms the rest. A few isolated moments show off some nice set design and / or giallo-like colors but it's not nearly enough to overcome all the rest. Neither is the disco scene, great as that was.
As customary with most Turkish films from this time, all of the dialogue was poorly dubbed in later and never matches the lips. The running time is only 58 minutes and the only version available for viewing is in terrible condition.
★