International supervillain Fantomas comes to Istanbul to get hold of a
certain professor and some microfilms in his possession, to which end he
even cooperates with the local Mafia, an organisation he secretly deplores
and that tries to trick him. But Fantomas has one big enemy, Iron Claw
(Demir Karahan), who together with his female sidekick Mine and interpol
agent Yilmaz makes sure that the deal not only falls through but also
manages to break the professor free - even if it costs Yilmaz' life.
Enter Yildirim (Yildirim Gencer), Yilmaz' brother, who is intent to
avenge Yilmaz and who soon joins forces with Iron Claw to track down
Fantomas. Fantomas in the meantime gets hold of the professor again as
well as his daughter, and he now tortures the girl until the professor
agrees to hand over the microfilms ... after which he is killed in cold
blood. But Fantomas knows that Iron Claw will be a threat to his
organisation, so he time and again tries to get rid of him, once even by
having him seduced by a belly dancer - which falls through when instead of
the belly dancer seducing Iron Claw, he seduces her.
Finally, Iron Claw, Mine, Yildirim and comedy relief uncle Malik close
in on Fantomas and his gang, pretty much take apart the organisation and
ultimately, Iron Claw manages to capture Fantomas, but doesn't kill him
but hand him over to the authorities.
Of course, on one hand, Iron Claw the Pirate is a trashy, campy
superhero-tale shot on the cheap and reminiscent of American serials of
the 1930's and 40's - actually just like quite a few Turkish superhero
films of the time. However, accepting that, Iron Claw the Pirate is
also amazing fun, it's fast paced and full of well-staged action, full of
scantily clad girls and full of (rather mild) torture scenes, it has a
masked hero and his female sidekicks looking incredibly cool on
motorbikes, and it features a swift direction and at times even inventive
camerawork - in other words, if you're into slightly trashy and campy
superhero films, this is one hell of a ride.
Recommended.
After having spent an eternity in lost movie-limbo, this film has been
made available to the film-loving public (in a limited edition) by the
good folks from
Onar Films
.
Besides the movie with English or Greek subtitles and the obligatory
photo gallery and trailers, their DVD also includes biographies
and filmographies of leads Demir Karahan and Yildirim Gencer as well as a documentary on (cult-)director Cetin Inanc.
To put it short: This DVD's a must-have !
[Click
here to buy it directly from Onar Films]
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