The technical caliber of Onar's releases continues to climb surprisingly high with this release, a fast-paced, surprisingly accomplished spy outing that should please any fans of James Bond or his numerous contemporaries. The two leads do a fine job with their comic book-inspired portrayals, and the film doles out kinkiness and violence on a scale that would actually make Ian Fleming proud -- particularly a nasty bit involving a near-naked woman hanging in a noose on a fast-melting block of ice, a scenario later repeated more tastelessly with full nudity and piano wire in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. You also get the old spikes-through-the-celing bit and juicy lines like "I can imagine your screams like a melody," not to mention a few dozen shapely Turkish and European women in bikinis running around. What's not to love? The video transfer is taken from very clean and solid film elements, perhaps the best seen yet for a Turkish film, and apart from some motion blurring during of the action scenes, there's really nothing to quibble about here. The Turkish mono audio sounds fine and brassy, with a nonstop music score including a theme song for our hero and a few incidental bits that will sound more than a tad familiar to fans of Goldfinger's Fort Knox finale.
Along with the usual nifty insert poster, Onar's DVD contains the usual fun array of extras including a new interview with Günbay, an amiable guy who stayed bald through most of the hundred-plus movies he made over the years and whose contracts even included a "shaved head term." Apparently he wasn't a very good swimmer either. Also included are a filmogrpahy of Turkish spy films (including this film's two sequels, which would be great to see as well), a photo gallery, main cast bios, and some tasty Onar trailers both old and new including Casus Kiran, The Serpent's Tale, the Mancini-flavored Rongo Gestapo'ya Karsi, Kizil Tug Cengiz Han, and a fragment of a lost Kilink film without an onscreen title, featuring some more, ahem, "John Barry-esque" music. All in all, it's way up there with Cellat and Kadin Dusmani as proof that Onar just keeps getting better and better.
Directed by Memduh Un
Starring Goksel Arsoy, Altan Günbay, Sevda Nur, Reha Yurdakul
Onar (Greece R0 PAL)