Over the last several decades the foreign knock-offs of Hollywood films have been almost an industry unto itself. In the late '70s and '80s we got a deluge of films that were inspired by Hollywood hits, but many were only that: "inspired by". Lucio Fulci's celebrated gorefest ZOMBI 2 (aka ZOMBIE, 1979) was intended by the producers to be a loose sequel to George Romero's undead classic DAWN OF THE DEAD (aka ZOMBI, 1978). Of course, as we all know, the only thing the producers really cared about was being able to advertise it as a sequel and left Fulci to do whatever the hell he wanted. It was great for the producers who cashed in on the title, it was great for Fulci who got to make a throwback to old school zombie movies (albeit with a staggering amount of gore for the time) and it was great for us, the anti-social deviants, who got to see something gruesomely spectacular that set trends in cinema that continue to this day. The trend of rip-offs have become even bigger in scope with major Hollywood studios using a film's built-in name recognition to sell a new film. Of course, now we euphemistically call them "reboots".


For some reason the Italians saw this film as a springboard to sexually sleazy films frequently featured a demon possessing a nubile girl who would develop a bad attitude and an extreme aversion to clothing, such as Franco Lo Cascio and Angelo Pannacciò's CRIES AND SHADOWS (aka EXORCIST III, 1975). Italy also used concepts from THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) as a springboard to utterly strange, almost surreal films like Ovidio G. Assonitis' BEYOND THE DOOR (1974). Spain was in the game with the fan favorite, Amando de Ossorio's THE POSSESSED (aka DEMON WITCH CHILD, 1975). There are many other interesting ripple effects through global cinema as well, but then there is Turkey.
Sometimes these remakes offer up an engaging alternate version, such as the DEATH WISH (1974) remake EXECUTIONER (aka CELLAT, 1975), which still features an architect with some serious family drama, but allows it to play out in a way that doesn't feel like a shot-for-shot remake. On the other end of the spectrum we have SEYTAN. Turkey's quick and dirty EXORCIST clone that makes absolutely no bones about remaking the original almost scene for scene.
In short order we meet Ayten (Meral Taygun), a single mother who lives in an upscale two story house with a conveniently long staircase leading up to it. While she plays a lot of tennis, like all white Americans do, her pre-teen daughter Gul (Canan Perver), who apparently spends most of her time in bed, has been playing with a new game that allows her to communicate with the spirit world. The game is basically a Ouija board that looks handmade, but not in artisanal way. Kevin Tenney would spin in his grave. Well, he would if he were dead, anyway. Of course when mom wants to play the game, nothing happens, which Gul cheerfully explains is because "Captain Lersen" (who?) wouldn't like it.
Sort of like a cover band butchering all the classics, SEYTAN is happy to simply rehash many memorable scenes from the original, some of them verbatim. There is a potential boyfriend, Ekrem (Ekrem Gökkaya), who ends up pretending to be the baby carriage in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925), just as the character Burke Dennings did in the original. We have a scene where Regan - err, I mean Gul walks down the stairs during a party and pees green gunk all over her feet. There is a scene where Gul's top is up and we see "help me" written (in Turkish) on her stomach in what appears to be street make-up. Of course there is the head-turning sequence, but since there is no Turkish Dick Smith, it is done simply by having the actress moving her head inside a false body. There is also a police inspector, originally played by Lee J. Cobb, who is convinced that Ekrem's death was not a freak accident, but of course he doesn't have a shred of proof, nor does he really have much to do with the movie other than show up once or twice, smoke some cigarettes, ask a few questions and exit stage left. If you felt like it, you could criticize THE EXORCIST of reducing the part down to an almost inconsequential figure, from the character in Blatty's novel. Even so, it's clearly a part included in SEYTAN in order to ape the original. Even the scene where Ellen Burstyn's character is hysterically trying to get through to her ex-husband in Rome on the phone is recreated, though it could have easily been tossed out or replaced with something else.
SEYTAN is almost a proto Jan Debont exercise, shuffling around a few story elements, but largely keeping the movie a condensed version of the original made on a budget so minuscule that it would cause Al Adamson to throw his hands up in despair. Even the theme is a re-edit of Mike Oldfield's iconic work, though this should surprise absolutely no one. Directed by Metin Erksan, who made films in Turkey in a six decade long career since the mid '50s, apparently felt that artistic expression doesn't put the kebab on the table. This is particularly ironic as Erksan, who passed away in 2012, was also, and I'm not making this up, a formally educated art historian. Yep, the guy who pounded out this ultra-cheap and blatant ripoff not only knew his art, but was once an award-winning director who specialized in character dramas that detailed the hardships of life in Turkey. That must have been one expensive swimming pool.

Amusingly the IMDb states that SEYTAN is a "version" of William Girdler's EXORCIST knock-off ABBY (1974). Both released in the same year, Girdler's black cast film filches plenty of moments from Friedkin's classic, but manages to make plenty of deviations as well. For one, the main character is an adult female marriage counselor instead of a privileged white child allowing for crazy scenes in places like a disco. Honestly when you think "demonic possession", who doesn't think "disco"? Girdler's film, like many other films that capitalized on the unmitigated success of THE EXORCIST, doesn't feel the need to follow the original step by step and is all the better for it. If SEYTAN had gone to crazy town a bit more often and relied less on coloring between the lines, it could have been a cult classic in the truest sense of the phrase. I feel kind of bad comparing a multi-million dollar, iconic Hollywood film to a poverty-stricken foreign remake, but as it stands, it is a pretty weak facsimile of the original with a few fun moments.
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