Your Daily Dracula – Yildirim Gencer, Malkoçoğlu Krallara Karşı (1967)
One of a series of swashbuckling adventures in which Turkish action star Cüneyt Arkın plays Malkoçoğlu – a historical hero of the Ottoman Empire, but more importantly the lead of a comic book. In this entry, Malkoçoğlu’s job is to rescue the frequently-imperilled Princess Yolanda (Sezer Güvenirgil) – who keeps being sold into slavery, attacked while bathing, imprisoned in the clifftop castle of Vladimir Tepes (Yildirim Gencer), leched over by all and sundry, and traipsing off in a huff to get into more trouble every time the hero thinks she’s good and properly rescued.
Though made in 1967, only a tiny discreet bit of nudity suggests changing times – in all other respects, this black and white quickie has the feel of the second-rank historical action pics Hollywood cranked out in the 1940s and ‘50s with extras from cowboy films stuffed in cardboard armour and not sure which end of a sword to hold in the many melees. Its take on Vlad Tepes, whose symbol here is a crab, has more in common with Ming the Merciless than the historical figure or the myth version of Dracula – he’s scarfaced, bearded, is either scowling evilly or laughing maniacally, and is micro-focused on getting together with Yolanda to the annoyance of his dark-haired, driven-to-treachery girlfriend. A typical fiendish plot involves some sort of mind-control process, which includes being branded with the crab logo, and we get a scene – come to think of it, exactly like one in the 1935 Flash Gordon serial – in which Vlad pits Malkoçoğlu against a masked swordsman only for the hero to recognise that he’s being forced to fight to the death against a Tony Curtis lookalike who could be his friend, brother or boyfriend (my Turkish isn’t good enough to determine which) only for the hero’s sheer charisma and the sight of a bloody slash on his bare chest to bring the poor sap to his senses.
Arkin’s Malkoçoğlu owes a lot to the kind of acrobatic daredevils Douglas Fairbanks Sr and in particular Burt Lancaster played – he does a lot of tumbles, leaps, stunts and rapid wall-climbs. He even has a Nick Cravat-like moustached comedy sidekick (Yilmaz Köksal) to bop surplus evil guards on the head. The interior sets are cramped – Vlad’s throne-room looks like the palace from Fire Maidens From Outer Space – but we get some nice castles, cliffs and countryside, though NB: Vlad the Impaler did not live by the seaside and certainly didn’t die falling off a cliff after a one-on-one with our hero … but, hey, the versions of, say, Richard the Lionheart, you find in Western quickie adventure films are as far from historical veracity as this is. It’s fast, silly and fun. Directed by Malkoçoğlu and Süreyya Duru.
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