Col AKA Turkish Jaws 1983

This is a Turkish produced film that is considered Turksploitation, which were unauthorized Turkish film adaptations often using American copyrighted characters, movies, and television series. These films would often use soundtracks from the original films, and various clips from the films.

It is referred to as Turkish Jaws because of a scene involving the main character being attacked by a shark at sea, with the Jaws them playing. The story, what little there is, involves a contract killer that assassinates his old boss as payback for some kind of torture he did to him in the past. We see this in a series of super crazy, quick shots of him being tortured and then what looks like a group of zombies attacking him. It is super strange, but that’s just the flashback. So the organization he was involved in has put a contract out on his life and they capture him and throw him tied to some boards into the ocean. That’s where he has the epic and super memorable shark battle. He survives that and returns to kick some ass in the end. There’s also a sidekick and a pair of chicks in bikinis in the subplot that are supposed to serve as love interests.

The film stars Cuneyt Arkin and was directed by Cetin Inanc, who were both involved in making Turkish Star Wars AKA Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam 1982 and Turkish First Blood AKA Vahsi Kan 1983. Arkin is credited with starring in almost three hundred films, and was primarily known for his distinctive looks and use of martial arts. Inanc has directed close to 90 films, and is known for a mix of erotica and action films. They were both involved in many movies that in some form or other ripped off some other popular film material. This film was no different, fuck copyrights!

That is part of what makes these Turkish films so great, the fact that they blatantly use of borrowed material. The other part that is so great is the low budget feel and total insanity of most of these films. If you love low budget, drive-in, sleaze, and exploitative films, then these are worth watching. There is more than enough in this to keep you entertained; including Led Zeppelin songs, some disco song, the Rocky theme used for when he enters a room, a car chase, several martial arts fight scenes, women in bikinis dancing to music for no reason, the battle with Jaws to the Jaws theme song, plus tons of quick cuts and hyper editing to keep your head spinning.

The epic shark battle is the ultimate payoff and if anything else the main thing you need to witness. The actual scene is pretty short, but at the same time so memorable. The shark looks like it’s made out of cardboard or paper mache and in one sequence it has our leading characters arm in its mouth, chomping down on it. Well he is super badass because it just caused a flesh wound and e was able to kill it.  For us normal human beings, we would have been left minus one of our appendages.

The film might not be as hilarious as some of the other Turkish rip off films, but it is still very amusing. If you’ve never seen any of these Turkish films before, then you might want to start out with Turkish Star Wars or 3 Dev Adam first. Then if you enjoy those, move onto some of the others.