Turkish filmmakers have had no qualms about including earthy themes or meaty cinematic scenes in their movies since the 1950s. That’s when street hookers, drug-addled harem girls, topless damsels in distress, half-naked soaped-up women, sexually provocative belly dancers and uninvited love-makers began to appear in mainstream Turkish movies.
The ‘intensity’ of erotic action in mainstream Turkish films increased in the 1960s as ‘light’ erotic scenes of the opposite sex began to heat up. And in the conventional of Atif Yilmaz Iki Gemi Yanyana (Two boats side by side), the first scene of a Turkish lesbian film, a searing film for its time, in which Suzan Avci and Sevda Nur tongue-kissed in front of the camera, shocked Turkish moviegoers when it was first shown in 1963.
Female film sex symbols during the ‘Turkish Vampire Era’ (1950s and 1960s) included Neriman Köksal (who made 177 films between 1950 and 1995), Funda Yanar [pictured on our website as a topless dancer in Büyük Sehrin Kanunu (Big City Law, 1965] and Leyla Sayar, who, in 1960, performed a memorably audacious striptease act (we are told) in Atif Yilmaz’s film. Ölum Perdesi (curtain of death)… But Leyla Hanim drew the line in 1972, when she realized the direction in which seks filmleri furyasi (erotic cinema boom) would drive it. And after a brief stint as a nightclub dancer, she quits the entertainment business altogether…opting instead for a simple and pious life.
But it was not until 1972 that Parcali Behcet (starring action actor Behçet Nacar), which was made in a desperate attempt by filmmakers to lure audiences away from their newly purchased home televisions and back to nearly empty seats in movie theaters, became the first Turkish film produced. exclusively for erotic purposes.
And when Parcali Behcet it drew an overflow crowd of 7,000 people on opening day to its initial screening in Konya (the ‘hometown’ of Mevlana, in the heart of Turkish religious conservatism) and Turkish filmmakers took notice (and wholeheartedly). Subsequently, when the film enjoyed a 6-month run, in two theaters next to each other right in the middle of that beautiful city, right, the filmmakers believed they had found the holy grail. And from that time until 1979, the production of eroticism Turkish films proliferated.
The three most popular genres for legally produced Turkish eroticism The films between 1972 and 1978 were Comedy, Adventure and Murder Mystery. And they all had a not-so-well-kept secret about them in common. The secret was that Turkish actors and actresses did not perform the actual sexual act. They just simulated it… The men wore underwear (briefs) and camera angles were chosen to cover up the fact, sometimes without much success. There are many flashes of white men’s briefs in Turkish. eroticism movies made between 1972 and 1978!
Any real sex that appeared in these movies was performed by foreigners in park (movie clips) that were inserted at predictable intervals from the Turkish film. sometimes these park they were made specifically for the Turkish film in which they appeared, but in most cases they were just raw cuts from foreign films, often completely inappropriate (in focus or colour) for the Turkish film.
that kind of eroticism The cinematic subterfuge came to an abrupt halt in 1979, when the first all-Turkish cast was filmed in the first legally produced and distributed cinema. take off gloves turkish pornographic film, Öyle Bir Kadin Ki (such a woman) — directed by Naki Yurter, starring Zerrin Dogan and Levent Günsel in the lead male and female roles.
Öyle Bir Kadin Ki set fire to the Turkish film industry, having an even greater influence on the immediate directions of Turkish film making than Deep Throat had in making American movies in 1972.’kadin‘removed financial padding from its soft core eroticism rival (and mainstream), and had a profound effect (for a while) on the production of almost all Turkish films (erotic or mainstream) that followed, opening a new chapter in the ‘History of Turkish Cinema’…
Next: A guide for lovers of erotic cinema Öyle Bir Kadin Ki (such a woman)
[Click following to access a picture-laden HTML-version of The First All-Turkish No-Holds-Barred ‘Erotik’ Film —
A Woman Like That.]