Iron Claw The Pirate
Turkey
Turkish with English subtitles
Onar Films
This
is another wonderful fantasy from the early days of the Turkish film industry.
After World War II people wanted entertainment but there was very little homegrown Turkish product. Producer Cuneyt
Arkin was one who set out to fill this gap with
budget knockoffs of film genres that were popular around the rest of the world.
Accuracy was not important, attractive women and lots of action was. The films
were definitely B grade but had an appeal all their own and Onar
Films has been recovering the originals and re-releasing them.
The
plot is straightforward. The evil criminal mastermind Fantomas
wants a microfilm that the Professor has. He will stop at nothing to get
it. Against him is
Turkish Security and their secret weapon, Iron Claw. Iron Claw is not a pirate
regardless of the name of the film. Nor is he particularly secret since we see
him often without his trademark mask and cloak. Nor does he have anything
resembling an iron claw. He seems to possess some sort of psychic ability to
find Fantomas and his evil henchmen wherever they are
hiding. He and his attractive female sidekick will then go in, guns blazing, to
the rescue. They are helped in deciding who to shoot by the large letter F
conveniently placed on the baddies’ chests.
In
between we get rather plump young ladies (scantily clad, of course) doing a
sort of dance that consists of standing there wobbling. There is, of course,
the comic Uncle who will stuff things up at any chance. There are car and
motorbike chases galore although it must be said that Iron Claw seems to have a
lot of trouble riding his motorbike in a straight line.
In
its day this film must have been the height of action drama. Tastes are now a
little more sophisticated, but the film is still a lot of fun. Onar’s reissue has been cleaned up for this DVD. The
picture is still a little soft and the sound is not great but overall it’s a
great example of a brief period in Turkish film history.
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