The Turkish Captain America
The Danish Godzilla
The Hollywood Original: Godzilla
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Reptilicus (1961)
Biggest Deviation From Canon: The beast wipes out a machine gun crew with glowing green acidic venom. Only, thanks to a continuity error, they are all seen moments later still shooting at him.
The Turkish James Bond
The Hollywood Original: Goldfinger (or, really, any early James Bond film)
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Altin Çocuk (1966), which translates as “Golden Boy”.
Biggest Deviation From Canon: It’s kind of a mash-up of lots of early Bond adventures, complete with a Blofeld-alike villain, but the 007 façade slips slightly when our Turkish James Bond goes to the bar and orders “A beer. A BIG one”.
The Turkish Laurel and Hardy
The Hollywood Original: Any film starring Laurel and Hardy
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Tosun ile Yosun (1963), which we imagine comes from the two central characters, Tosun and Yosun.
Biggest Deviation From Canon: It’s essentially two people who kind of look like Laurel and Hardy, acting like Laurel and Hardy, so there’s not much deviation from the formula. Although, the belly dancing is a little unusual, we suppose.
The Indian When Harry Met Sally
The Hollywood Original: When Harry Met Sally
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: The lovely sounding Hum Tum (2004)
Biggest Deviation From Canon: Everything is pretty much exactly the same, apart from the male lead is a comic-book writer and his two characters, Hum and Tum, have animated sequences throughout the film that represent the state of the characters’ relationship at that time. Basically, it’s filled with cartoons.
The Turkish Dirty Harry
The Hollywood Original: Dirty Harry
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Kelepçe (1982)
Biggest Deviation From Canon: This violent cop relies less on his .44 Magnum and more on his martial arts skills as he launches a one-man mission to defeat the drug smugglers terrorising his city. Sadly, he also finds out that his own son is a drug addict. (*sad trombone*).
The Turkish I Spit On Your Grave
The Hollywood Original: I Spit On Your Grave
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Intikam Kadini (1979) – “A Woman Like That”
Biggest Deviation From Canon: Well, there’s not an awful lot of material to deviate from, is there? A woman gets raped and takes her revenge on her attackers. The main difference here is that all of the sex scenes are presented as softcore porn, which really goes against the whole idea of the film.
The Indian Superman
The Hollywood Original: Superman
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Dariya Dil (1988)
Biggest Deviation From Canon: A popular YouTube clip from this film in which Indian Superman dances with indian Spiderwoman is bewildering enough, but not as much as the fact that this film is actually a family drama about tax evasion with that one bizarre sequence featuring superhero shenanigans.
The Turkish Jaws
The Hollywood Original: Jaws
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Çöl (1983) – “The Desert”
Biggest Deviation From Canon: In this case, our ‘Brody’ is somewhat of an action hero, fighting criminals and having high-speed car chases. It’s only really the last part of the film that resembles Jaws (even though John Williams’ theme is played throughout), during which our hero is captured and left out to sea, forced to fend for himself against a giant plastic shark.
The Turkish Star Trek
The Hollywood Original: Star Trek (technically the original series)
The Amazing Foreign Rip-Off: Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda (1973) - "Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek"
Biggest Deviation From Canon: The film is actually an almost word-for-word remake of original series episode The Man Trap , but with one added element: Ömer, a normal everyday hobo, has accidentally been beamed aboard the Enterprise and mistaken for a salt-vampire killer.
