Tarkan (Kartal Tibet) awaits his fate in TARKAN & THE BLOOD OF THE VIKINGS (1971)
While the PEPLUM genre basically died in and around the mid-1960s, other countries, like Turkey, kept the tradition going. The Tarkan films were basically PEPLUM movies made in Turkey. There are so many of them that I don't know if I should dare go down that rabbit hole but I'm familiar with two of them. This one and the first TARKAN (1969), which has gladiators in them. The editing in this one is pretty much choppy. The movies were so popular that parents would name their newborn sons Tarkan.
You can view this particular Tarkan epic on Youtube. The channel has more Tarkan titles.
Thanks for the interesting photo. The monster looks first class.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen any Tarkan films, but I suspect that their female leads had to wear pretty conservative costumes due to the influence of Islam. Is that true?
The outstanding Turkish TV series THE MAGNIFICENT CENTURY has been criticized in Turkey by Islamic traditionalists.
Oh yes; this is the one where Tarkan fights Vikings. Some of the Vikings have hair dyed green, for some reason, and people are wearing furs in bright red, blue and purple colors. It's a very colorful movie in many ways.
ReplyDeleteAs for the women, they are beautiful and while not exactly scantly clad expose their hair as well as bare legs and arms. So definitely no Islamic influences there. Turkish cinema has a very interesting history, where many films have both graphic scenes of violence as well as hardcore sex scenes edited into was was generally mainstream movies. It's all very odd!
There was also a very popular and very good-looking Tarkan comic book, so he was a pop culture character that at one time was very well-known in Turkey.
ReplyDeleteIn total there appear to have been seven Tarkan films:
1. Targan: Falcon of the Steppes (1968) [Bozkırlar Şahini Targan]
2. Tarkan: Monster Tower (1969) [Tarkan: Canavarlı Kule]
3. Tarkan: Sword of Mars (1969) [Tarkan: Mars'ın Kılıcı]
4. Tarkan: Silver Saddle (1970) [Tarkan gümüş eyer]
5. Tarkan: Blood of the Vikings (1971) [Tarkan Viking Kanı]
6. Tarkan: Gold Medallion (1972) [Tarkan: Altın madalyon]
7. Tarkan: Mighty Hero (1973) [Tarkan güçlü kahraman] a.k.a. Tarkan vs the Armless Hero [Tarkan kolsuz kahramana karşı]
The actors playing the titular role were: 1. Tanju Korel (1943-2005), 2. Ünal Sahin, and 3-7. Kartal Tibet (1939-2021).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanju_Korel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartal_Tibet