Cotton. Jerry Cotton.

Chances are that most readers of this blog who have any knowledge of American actor George Nader at all do so as a result of him being the star of Robot Monster, a 1953 film that has earned its rightful place alongside Plan 9 From Outer Space as an exemplar of the worst its medium has to offer. However, those readers might be surprised to know that Robot Monster, despite its fearsome awfulness, was still successful enough to provide something of a stepping stone for Nader, and that the actor went on to have a fairly long and varied career in film and television in its wake. Taken under contract by Universal shortly after Robot Monster's release, Nader was groomed by the studio to be one of its hunky young leading men, though, in that regard, the actor would never manage to emerge from the shadow of his more successful friend, Rock Hudson. After a period of consistent but inauspicious feature work, he moved on to television, where, throughout the late fifties and early sixties, he appeared as a guest star on a number of series, eventually landing the title role in a short-lived syndicated show called Shannon.

I haven't been able to find a clear account of what specific circumstances lead to Hollywood going sour on George Nader. But it seems pretty clear that it involved an unhappy collision between the obsessive machinations of Confidential magazine publisher Robert Harrison and the simple fact that George Nader was gay. While not "out" in the modern sense, Nader at the time shared a home with his longtime partner, Mark Miller, and, unlike other of his peers, resisted studio pressure to enter into a phony marriage -- though he was known to go on the occasional PR-mandated "date" with a female starlet. I've found a number of sources that refer to rumors that Nader was offered up as a sacrifice by Universal in order to quell a story that Confidential was planning to run on Rock Hudson. The actor Tab Hunter is known to have fallen prey to a similar deal on Hudson's behalf, which may, depending on how you look at it, either lend veracity or shed doubt upon those rumors as they apply to Nader. Whatever the case, though, it's clear that, by the mid-sixties, work was drying up for Nader on these shores. In response, he and Miller packed up their lives and relocated to West Germany.

And it is in Germany that Nader's career entered an interesting new phase, starting, in 1965, with him being cast as the lead in a new series of films to be produced by the studio Allianz Filmproduktion. These were to be based on the adventures of Jerry Cotton, a fictional, Manhattan-based FBI agent who was at the center of a popular and exhaustively voluminous series of German pulp novels (something that, judging from the equally voluminous Kommissar X and Perry Rhodan book series, the German publishing industry apparently thrives upon). The resulting low budget productions ended up being enormously popular with German audiences, and would eventually come to comprise eight films in all, all made between 1965 and 1969, and all starring Nader as their hero. As a result, Nader became one of the country's most popular actors during the period, neck-and-neck with fellow American -- and former Tarzan -- Lex Barker, who played the recurring role of Old Shatterhand in the much beloved Winnetou films.

Despite the Jerry Cotton films relying on standard cops-and-robbers elements for their plots, they are today considered to nestle cozily within the Eurospy genre. And to understand why, one need only watch them. These are movies that would not exist in the absence of James Bond; In contrast to other cinematic treatments of the FBI's exploits from the era -- many of which take on a more procedural approach, emphasizing the machine-like precision of the organization as a whole -- the Cotton films are really all about Jerry, depicting him as a kind of super agent who, despite being teamed with a partner played by German actor Heinz Weiss, could conceivably defeat any nemesis single-handedly. In addition, his red Jaguar E-Type and tailored suits testify to a taste for the finer things well beyond the reach of any real-life G-Man. Overall, you get the sense that the filmmakers didn't put a lot of thought into the jurisdictional issues and niggling points of law that delineate the actual Bureau's scope of operations, with the clear priority instead being the presentation of a Bondian fantasy world steeped in action, speed, style and violence.

At this point I've only seen two of the Cotton films: the series' second entry, Operation Hurricane: Friday Noon (aka Schusse Aus Dem Geigenkasten) and 1967's The Body in Central Park (aka Der Morderclub Von Brooklyn), which was the fifth entry in the series and the first to be filmed in color. (My Teleport City colleague David Foster has in-depth reviews of some of the other Jerry Cotton films over on his fine blog Permission To Kill.) For me, one of the things that was most striking about these films is how, despite the obviously meager resources that the filmmakers had to work with, so much effort is dedicated to establishing the New York setting. This is accomplished by way of lots of stock footage and photographic backdrops, shooting on only the most anonymous German locations possible, and scenes in which the actors are very obviously standing on a tiny soundstage in front of a rear projection of Times Square. This arsenal of primitive gimmicks contributes to there being something just a bit "off" to the overall feel of things, and -- in complete opposition to the intention behind them -- a strange, neither-here-nor-there sense of placeless-ness that I found more than a little captivating.

I also found it interesting that, unlike in the Bond films that were so clearly an influence, Jerry is not provided with the expected array of female conquests to signpost his virility and sexual magnetism. In other words, despite what the promotional materials might lead you to believe, there are no "Cotton Girls" to 007's "Bond Girls". It's tempting to see a connection between this aspect of Jerry's milieu and the private life of the actor who played him, but this de-emphasizing of sex is reportedly a feature of Cotton's print adventures as well. In any case, I found the change refreshing, as it afforded a break from the leering schoolboy humor that usually passes for sexual sophistication in Eurospy films.

But the impression I get above all else about the Cotton series is that they are films that work very, very hard to entertain their audience, which is more than I can say about a lot of other films in their genre. Despite the threadbare nature of what you see on screen, the pacing is always tight and brisk, with rousing action scenes cropping up at dependable intervals. Nader shows a game commitment to the physical aspects of his role and, despite many of his stunt sequences being accomplished by way of some pretty rinky-dink studio trickery, always seems to be up for crawling around on the top of a moving train, or clinging to the side of a careening truck -- both being the kind of set pieces that came to be trademarks of the series. Providing a further highlight is the musical score by Peter Thomas -- a man whose work I've already praised in my review of the German sci-fi series Raumpatrouille Orion -- which serves to coat the sometimes homely, Saturday matinee aspects of the onscreen action with a sheen of sleek sixties style.

All in all, I found the two Jerry Cotton films I watched to be very satisfying, and am looking forward to delving further into the series. Not only is their star a fascinating figure, but the films themselves are quite an interesting hybrid: combining the distinctive Eurospy style with the spirit of classic Hollywood studio programmers like the Mike Shane and Mr. Moto series, capped off with an endearing oddness that is uniquely their own. Nader would move on from the series, of course, and would later retire from acting to pursue writing, eventually penning a sci-fi novel, Chrome, that was revolutionary for its gay themes. That, however, is a subject for someone else's blog. Our beat here at 4DK, after all, is the outlands of world pop cinema. And with his onscreen personification of Jerry Cotton, the German G-Man, Mr. Nader has already provided us with plenty to consider.

Manhattan Night of Murder, aka Mordnacht in Manhattan (W. Germany/France, 1965)

Back in the halcyon days of 2009, I wrote a primer on the career of Robot Monster star George Nader and his role in the Jerry Cotton films. In brief, Nader left the U.S. for Germany as work became scarce for him stateside -- perhaps as a result of him being outed by Confidential magazine publisher Robert Harris -- leading to him landing the plum role of FBI agent Jerry Cotton, subject of a series of German pulp novels that were then being brought to the screen by Allianz Filmproduktion. The rest is invisible film history.

Manhattan Night of Murder is the first of the Jerry Cotton films and as such provides a fine showcase for that series' peculiarities. Chief among those is an insistence on making the Manhattan milieu an integral element of the films while at the same time shooting them on a tight budget in Hamburg. Hence the abundant stock footage and photo backdrops of Times Square tell one story, while the hilly, cobbled streets on which much of the action takes place tell another. For me, the resulting blurring of urban geography is more of an asset than a flaw, as it places the films in a suspended sort of movie reality that makes immersion in them even more of a decisive break from regular old reality. In fact, so much of the movie takes place in front of rear projected backdrops that it's easy to imagine the actors themselves losing track of their whereabouts.

As the Jerry Cotton series went on, it would increasingly show the influence of the James Bond films, positioning Cotton as an unflappable and invincible super agent at the expense of his colleagues and organization. In Manhattan Night of Murder, however, the influence of noir procedurals like Naked City and He Walked by Night is every bit as pronounced. In keeping with that, we open with a stentorian narrator marveling at the Big Apple's overwhelming scale and pace while at the same time singling it out as a hotbed of crime and depravity. Then it's on to stock footage of technicians in lab coats looking through microscopes as that narrator lauds the FBI as "the most efficient police force in the world". And then we're introduced to Jerry, the only FBI grunt whose salary affords him a Jaguar E-Type.

Manhattan Night of Murder starts Jerry off small, pitting him and his partner Phil Dekker (Heinz Weiss) against a protection racket known as the Hundred Dollar Gang. True to their name, this outfit strong arms small shopkeepers and business owners into paying a monthly fee of a hundred bucks in exchange for leaving them unmolested. In this, the movie suggests, the hoods benefit more from complacence than intimidation, for, as far as their marks are concerned, hey, it's only a hundred bucks. Hardly the "world for ransom" type of plot we're used to seeing our suave super agents up against, but in keeping with the gritty street's eye view of New York's underbelly that the movie seems to aspire to. In any case, things soon escalate when an Italian restaurant owner named Giussepe (Dirk Dautzenberg) is gunned down and killed during one of the gang's shakedowns.

Of course, the film can't resist introducing some elements of Euro-genre wackiness for long, and that starts with femme fatale Wilma de Loy (Danger!! Death Ray's Sylvia Solar), who parades around in a sparkly cat suit with a camel toe unignorable to even the most determined gentleman. Wilma owns a nightspot called the Goldfish Club which serves as a hideout to the gang when they aren't just all piled into one car together, which is most of the time. The centerpiece of the club is a massive aquarium in which comely female dancers in scuba gear do a mermaid act. Though the film is directed by Harald Philipp, it's a touch that would make Jess Franco proud.

As for Nader's performance, he portrays his hero with a lot of charm and self effacing playfulness, which is in keeping with the low stakes nature of much of the film's action. There's never much doubt as to whether Jerry will best these small time hoods, and it's a testament to Nader's likeability that his resultant confidence and swagger don't make him unbearable. Meanwhile, most of the action set pieces are resolutely old school, involving swinging from ropes, dangling from ledges, climbing along scaffolds and the like, all of which appear to have involved Nader himself to one extent or  another (and not surprisingly, judging from the low budget that was obviously being worked with). Finally, to raise the stakes for the climax, a child is imperiled, and Jerry and his Jag mush race to save a young boy taken hostage by the gang's fat cat leader.

As with all the Jerry Cotton films, one of Manhattan Night of Murder's inarguable high points is it's musical score by Peter Thomas. Combining swinging beat group guitars with brassy, spy movie horn riffs and effusive, wordless vocals, Thomas's compositions propel us through a nocturnal 1960s world filled with excitements both deadly and decadent. In contrast to this is the jaunty, whistled theme that heralds Jerry himself, one that suggests him as an especially relaxed breed of secret agent hero. He may not, like other movie spies, bare down on his prey with gritted teeth and revel in their violent demise, but he will, through a sort of affable doggedness, get them in the end -- and all within 90 brisk minutes.

Der Fluch Des Schwarzen Ruben, aka Thirteen Days To Die (Germany/France/Spain, 1965)

To my knowledge, Thirteen Days to Die is the only cinematic attempt to modernize Rolf Torring, the adventuring hero of a series of German pulp novels that rose to popularity during the years leading up to World War II. It seems the idea was to present Torring as a sort of James Bond figure, and that’s not an improbable fit. Both Bond and Torring put a dashing face on the privileges of empire, each treating the exotic lands of the developing world as mere theaters for their ever more destructive antics (and, in Bond’s case, procuring grounds for his harem.) Of course, each man was the face of a different empire in a different time, which might account for why one of them had a lot more holding power than the other.

One need only look at the cover illustration of one of the Torring novels from the 30s to see why the character has aged badly: In each, he is presented as the great white hunter, charged with taming a savage land with the assistance of his loyal companion, a muscle bound and perpetually shirtless black brute who is often depicted wrestling an alligator or tossing opponents overhead like ragdolls. This is Pongo (you heard me) and he looks as if he could have been one of the “noble savages” so notoriously fetishized by Leni Riefenstahl in her later years. He is also likely to be one of the reasons that the Rolf Torring novels are less well remembered (and have less cross-cultural appeal) today than other, less potentially controversial German pulp series, like, say, Perry Rodan or Jerry Cotton.

Fans who are well versed in the Eurospy genre will find much that is familiar within Thirteen Days to Die, and for good reason. The film’s director, Manfred R. Kohler, had his hand in a number of Eurospy efforts, including the Kommissar X entry Three Golden Serpents, which he wrote. 13 Days bears a lot of similarities to the Kommissar X films, from its snappy, lighthearted tone to its shrewd use of an exotic Asian location (Thailand, in this case.) Like them, it plays out as a series of well-staged and mildly farcical fight scenes punctuated by well-shot tourist footage of local landmarks and customs.

What Thirteen Days to Die lacks that the Kommissar X movies had is a magnetic central presence of the caliber of Tony Kendall, or even Brad Harris. As Torring, who is rechristened “Ralph Tracy” for the English dub, Bavarian actor Thomas Alder doesn’t leave much of a footprint. This may be because he delegates so much of the action to one of his two associates, who, thankfully, are a lot more entertaining to watch. One of these if a hulking Swede by the name of Warren (“Hans” in the original, “Hank” in the English dub) who is played by Euro-genre stalwart Peter Carsten (Dark of the Sun, And God Said to Cain) with a lot of good natured bravado.

And then, of course, there is Pongo, who is played by French body builder Serge Nubret. In this incarnation, Pongo is at least allowed to keep his shirt on for the most part—that is, until the final act, for the entirety of which Nubret wears nothing more than an abbreviated pair of cut-offs (which, to be fair, he looks amazing in.) While outshining his co-stars in terms of charisma, Nubret’s character is treated like a houseboy by his companions—making their drinks, fetching their mail—far too often for his performance to be enjoyed without a fair amount of cringing. That’s a shame, really, because Pongo is clearly the muscle of the group, the heavy lifter, and the energy and physical mastery Nubret brings to his action scenes make them the highlights of the picture.

The film’s action begins when Torring and his team arrive in Bangkok to investigate the theft of a necklace belonging to the Thai royal family. The perpetrator of the theft is a gang led by Perkins, whose portrayal by Euro villain extraordinaire Horst Frank is a master class in effete menace. Perkins answers to a mysterious number one who is none to pleased when it is found that the necklace is missing a section, the absence of which makes it impossible to decipher the code contained within its pattern of jewels. Thus begins a campaign of extortion against Thai Prince Gulah in an effort to get him to divulge the location of the missing piece.

Meanwhile, Torring and his crew are assisted by Barrington (Carlo Tamberlani, also seen in the Kommissar X films The Green Hounds/Death Trip and Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill), the director of the museum that the necklace was stolen from. Also lending a hand is his assistant, Chitra, who is played by Metta Rungrat. Rungrat is a Thai actress whose meager credits included a bit part in the ill-fated Jim Kelly vehicle Hot Potato. She also co-starred with Thai superstar Sombat Methanee in a Thai Krasue film called Krasue Sao. Her part here is fairly substantial, as her character turns out to have more to do with the affair of the necklace than even she imagined at the outset.

Of course, this being a Eurospy film, Rolf, Hans and Pongo are assailed by myriad assassins from the moment they set foot in Thailand. To the filmmakers credit, each of these attempts in pretty nutso, one involving a little girl throwing a pot full of acid into Hans’ face and another a poison-coated butterfly. Pongo, of course, gets to wrestle and alligator, and Rolf, a tiger. Unfortunately for Perkins, none of this manages to prevent Team Torring from getting closer to finding the missing piece of the necklace—and with it the solution to the code that will lead them into the stunt and explosion filled climax.

Oh, and there’s also a monkey. He’s named Kango.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, despite my deep reservations about its racial attitudes, I enjoyed Thirteen Days to Die. It’s resemblance to a missing Kommissar X movie pretty much guarantees that. It’s got everything that makes any competently made Eurospy movie cozily diverting. The score, by German sexploitation veteran Gert Wilden, is a jazzy spy movie delight, complete with a chugging, Peter Gunn-style theme tune. And then there are familiar faces like Horst Frank and Carlo Tamberlani, whose very presence lulls you into a sense of security, false or otherwise. Nonetheless, it’s hard to enjoy any of these old spy movies without acknowledging the extent to which their heroes are simply defending the status quo, rather than working from any innate sense of justice. I guess in the 60s, people thought that was cool—until they didn’t anymore.

Kommissar X Jagt Die Roten Tiger, aka FBI Operation Pakistan (Germany/Italy/France/Pakistan, 1971)

Die Roten Tiger, the seventh and final Kommissar X film, appears to be the most neglected and hard to find entry in the series. I’m not even sure if, like the other films, it was ever dubbed into English, but, if it was, I certainly couldn’t find evidence of it. This state of affairs left me, after a long period of resistance, at the mercy of the untranslated German language version most commonly found on the collector’s circuit.

Of course, it being a Kommissar X movie, language comprehension was fairly inessential to understanding Die Roten Tiger’s plot. As with previous installments, once its exotic location was established, events followed along a fairly rote trajectory. That location, in this instance, is Lahore, Pakistan, with a detour into Afghanistan for the film's action packed third act. The corresponding need to throw a sop to South Asian audiences sees Pakistani star Mohammed Ali cast in the role of a heroic police superintendent, along with a part for his wife Zeema, a star of equal luster who was often cast opposite him in Urdu language films. (In fact, there is a Pakistani cut of the film, under the title Tiger Gang, in which Ali and Zeema are given greater prominence, and which also features traditional Lollywood style musical numbers.) Of the series’ constants -- and in addition to stars Tony Kendall and Brad Harris -- we have German hyphenate Theo Maria Werner, a producer of the six previous Kommissar X movies who’s here credited as a writer. As for director Harald Reinl, he is new to the franchise but not the territory, having directed three of the Jerry Cotton Eurospy films and a fair share of Krimis.

Die Roten Tiger (which includes among its known aliases FBI Operation Pakistan and The Red Tiger Gang) sees heroes Joe Walker and Tom Rowland on the trail of the titular Red Tiger, a ruthless gang of heroin smugglers lead by a mysterious, unseen Mr. Big. Harris’s Rowland arrives in Lahore after the assassination of an Interpol agent, only to find Kendall’s Walker already there investigating another murder that appears to be related to the case (I think). The usual “meet cute” follows, with the two characters’ jokey antagonism toward one another being broad enough to transcend any language barrier. The two then set about finding the murdered agent’s secretary, Jackie Clay, who, being played by Kommissar X series veteran Gisela Hahn, is key to this operation for being leggy and blonde at the very least.

As is so often the case, whatever it is that Walker and Rowland are looking for, we soon know that they are on the right track from the fact that everyone is trying to kill both them and anyone who talks to them virtually all of the time. A helpful morgue attendant is blow-gunned by a hit man masquerading as a corpse, a gift is made of an exploding book, a cobra is hidden in Joe Walker’s bathrobe, and Walker later has a narrow scrape with a truck loaded with barrels of Explodium. All of which is to say that this movie is as gleefully dedicated to nonstop action at the expense of plausibility as any other Kommissar X film. The only downside to this is that director Reinl consistently chooses to speed that action up, giving the finished product a sort of unwelcome Keystone Cops vibe. Thankfully, he compensates for that by providing a generous showcase for Brad Harris’s ample skills as a stuntman and screen fighter, staging a series of extended and particularly bone crunching brawls in which the actor gets to show his stuff.

Stylistically, Die Roten Tiger is unmistakably a film made in the 1970s. Kendall and Harris are both modishly shaggy haired and look like they stepped out of a period Van Huesen catalog. Series mainstay Francesco De Masi’s score, though still swinging, has an undeniable “me” decade, easy listening vibe to it. Still, as much as I miss the mid-century trappings of the earlier films, I can’t say that this one’s aesthetic really clashes with the sensibility of the series overall. The caddish Joe Walker, in particular, seems like a character made for the 70s -- a man whom, had society condoned it, would have been flaunting it in loudly patterned shirts unbuttoned to the navel long prior. I also have to say that it was refreshing to see the Kommissar X series’ colorful, swinging style set against the backdrop of the Muslim world, as, were it a Western film made today, it would undoubtedly have been shot through a yellow filter that made everything look sun bleached and set to a score of mournful Arabic wailing.

Given its apparent stepchild status, I was a little surprised by how much Die Roten Tiger conformed in spirit to the other Kommissar X entries. True, like Three Golden Serpents before it, it does venture a bit farther than its predecessors into hard exploitation territory, especially in terms of gore and violence. A couple of documentary style sequences depicting the horrors of drug addiction --  including some very graphic and realistic shots of needle injection --  in particular clashed jarringly with the surrounding, more lighthearted material. Even so, the franchise’s trademark self parodying humor and sense of absurd fun was enough in evidence to establish the dominant tone, leaving the viewer with an impression of the film being far more of a care free romp than a stone cold bummer.

Sadly, due to reported rights issues, Die Roten Tiger won’t be among the excellent series of Kommissar X DVDs currently being issued by Koch Media. This fact does not, however, quell my hope of one day finding an English friendly version. When that day comes, I’ll be sure to amend this review for inclusion in Teleport City’s comprehensive survey of all things Joe Walker and Tom Rowland related. Until then, consider this a place holder.

UPDATE (4/8/16):  An English dubbed version of this film has indeed turned up and is, as of this writing, available on YouTube under the title The Tiger Gang. Thank you to the anonymous commenter who pointed this out.

Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (Turkey, 1970)

In my review of Casus Kiran, Turkish director Yilmaz Atadeniz’s remake of the 1942 Republic serial Spy Smasher, I described that film as being “in constant, rapid motion from beginning to end, presenting more of a continuous event than an actual story”. I further went on to opine –- quite pithily, if I do say so myself -- that “trying to impose the strictures of plot upon it is sort of like trying to identify the conflicts and character arcs within a hurricane or brush fire”. With that in mind, you’d have to think that any sequel to such a film would have no choice but to pick up where the former left off -- to just keep rolling out that one continuous event to the point when all allotted time and resources were exhausted.

Add to this the fact that all Turkish pulp superhero films of Casus Kiran’s ilk, when taken as a whole, are themselves something of a blur and a picture like Casus Kiran: Yedi Canli Adam (“Spy Smasher: The Man With Seven Lives”) comes across as being more intended to further obscure such distinctions than it does to expand upon any particular previously existing property.

Of course, simply picking up where Casus Kiran left off is not an option for Yedi Canli Adam, because seemingly much has changed in the intervening years. Producer-and-distributor-turned-star Irfan Atasoy indeed returns in the lead role, but is mostly surrounded by new faces. And even the costume he wears as Spy Smasher has been changed, now more closely resembling the getup worn by the hero of Atadeniz protégé Cetin Inanc’s earlier Iron Claw the Pirate, a film that was already tough enough to distinguish from Casus Kiran as is.

Also subject to the old switcheroo is Spy Smasher’s sexy lady sidekick, played in the original by Sevda Ferdag and here by Feri Cansel -- playing a character who, in accordance with Turkish pulp movie naming conventions, appears to also be named Feri. Happily, what has not changed is the fact that Spy Smasher and his sexy lady sidekick have just about the best marriage in all of superhero-dom. They just really enjoy beating up and killing their enemies together, and often trade admiring glances and laugh lustily while doing so. You get the sense that they have really amazing sex afterward. Furthermore, while she is twice more likely to end up picturesquely tied to a post, Feri is the Smash-meister’s equal in both dishing out and taking punishment, and is also no slouch when it comes to talking some vicious smack (something that, even in an unsubtitled Turkish film, needs no translation).

One lamentable way in which Yedi Canli Adam does maintain the status quo, I’m sorry to say, is in its inclusion of an in-name-only comic relief sidekick for our heroes. That character, Bitik, is this time, however, kitted out in a Sherlock Holmes outfit. Atadeniz apparently really liked this idea of a gibbering comic foil named Bitik annoying his superheroic betters by bumbling around in a deerstalker and cape, because he also included that character in his subsequent film The Deathless Devil. There, however, the character was portrayed by Erol Gunaydin, a different actor from the one who plays him here, although Erol Gunaydin is, in fact, in Yedi Canli Adam, only playing an entirely different role. Yilmaz Atadeniz, you have officially blown my mind.

And then there are our villains. While Casus Kiran made one of its rare concessions to the actual plot of the film it was ostensibly remaking by featuring a mysterious hooded villain in the grand 1940s movie serial tradition, Yedi Canli Adam’s choice of heavy is more indicative of its time. Here the bad guy is a foppish, floppy haired libertine in ascot and shades, with a crew who are a bit scruffier than the generic black hats seen in the first film, some of them even having the beardy look of student radicals. In keeping with that, the gang conducts much of their business surrounded by blissed out hippies in a psychedelic nightclub, a setting that provides for such indelible musical moments as a group frug to the Standell’s “Riot on Sunset Strip”, as well as other timely favorites.

Together this motley collective goes about the general business of being enemies of Turkey, which here mainly involves carrying out assassinations and the kidnapping of a prominent scientist and his young daughter. This, naturally, means that it won’t be long before Spy Smasher and Feri are roaring down the highway after them, burning rubber on their twin motorcycles as a surf cover of the In Like Flint theme plays on the soundtrack. (A healthy chunk or John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service score and Peter Thomas’ jaunty Jerry Cotton theme also get quite a workout.) This sets in motion the usual cycle of our heroes repeatedly chasing and then engaging in frenetic tussles with the baddies, leading to each having multiple opportunities to both be captured and to rescue the other from capture. Throughout this, it must be said that Irfan Atasoy pulls off some deeply impressive acrobatics and stunts, although they do require one to willfully ignore the very many times the villains could potentially have shot him while he was executing all of those show-offy serial back-flips and handstands.

While the enjoyment I took in Yedi Canli Adam derived in great part from happy associations with every other pulp Turkish superhero film I’ve seen, I regret that watching it has placed even further from recall any of those other films’ specifics. I mean, how many nominally unrelated Turkish superhero films featuring comic relief characters named Bitik who dress like Sherlock Holmes is one man expected to keep track of? Or how many featuring pairs of motorcycle riding his-and-hers heroes, especially given that their costumes are virtually indistinguishable from one another? The answer may be that the whole of Turkish pulp cinema is really meant to be experienced as one big intoxicating morass, rather than as a collection of discrete works. I’m beginning to suspect that Yilmaz Atadeniz saw it that way, at least.