Comme un lion

The Sword and the Claw (1975)

** (out of 4)

A King is brutally murdered so an assistant takes his young son and hides him in the woods. The young boy is raised by lions and when he reaches an adult (Cüneyt Arkin) he is thrown into battle against the man who murdered his father.

If you're unfamiliar with the world of Turkish cinema then sadly I'm not good enough of a writer to fully explain how bizarre and outrageous their movies are. If you thought Edward D. Wood, Jr. and Jerry Warren were bad filmmakers then the next time you view their work you might put them in the same league as Hitchcock and Kubrick. I say that because films from Turkey have gained a reputation for being some of the worst ever made and that certainly fits THE SWORD AND THE CLAW.

Technically speaking, this movie deserves a BOMB rating unlike any other. There's honestly not a single good thing to be found here. The performances are beyond awful. The dubbing makes those old Godzilla movies seem like masterpieces. The music score is embarrassingly horrific and doesn't fit anything in the movie. There's a really awful screenplay and even worse is the editing, which is perhaps the worst I've seen from any movie. All of these things makes this one of the worst movies ever made but.... We're talking Turkish cinema and this stuff helps make it entertaining.

Yes, this film certainly fits into the "so bad it's good" category because there are some major laughs to be had here. All of the stuff I mentioned will make you laugh as long as you enjoy these types of bad movies but where the film really comes to life is in the final ten-minutes when it's an all out assault as the "lionman" goes full vengeance and takes out dozens of bad guys. The lion claws put on his hands are just priceless and adds a lot of entertainment value.