The film is named Tarzan the Mighty Man, which is partly based upon the first few Tarzan talkie films and was hastily written by the king of Turkish Mockbusters, Kunt Tulgar. Released in the Summer of 1974, it was a Mockbuster which preceded Dingo Pictures’ own, equally so bad it’s good, Lord of the Jungle by about 25 years.
The film’s main stars are the late handsome wrestler Yavuz Selekman as the definitive Turkish Tarzan and Gülgün Erdem as a Jane Parker expy named Ayşe. Guest starring unofficially are a bunch of hurtfully messed up lizards playing dinosaurs from the first 1 Million BC movie.
Is it a ripoff? Although it stole many scenes from both the first Tarzan the Apeman and Tarzan’s Revenge, it isn’t a full on ripoff, but rather an unofficial ashcan copy package film. Was it partly filmed in an orchard near Istanbul? Definitely!
As with the Hollywood source materials, the story began with a team making an expedition into a mysterious escarpment, which was where a wild man made friends with the jungle’s various animals, after likely being shipwrecked as a baby. Professor Farouk and his gang unexpectedly bumped into the Turkish Tarzan and his stock friend Turkish Cheeta, thus the fun would begin.
The Professor’s daughter Ayşe steadily fell in love with the mop haired wild man, but was regularly kidnapped by a terribly corrupt chief, who also wreaked havoc on his own fellow villagers. Meanwhile, Turkish Tarzan had to face some of the team’s more unscrupulous members and a bunch of mean creatures before rescuing her. Then they finally made a future marriage bargain by living together in the jungle, once and for all.
The film is a crowning glory of badness for non-English Tarzan movies, which is definitely an achievement even by 1970s standards, so it’s fair to say that the film would inspire more foreign mockbusters to come from the 1980s to the 2010s.
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