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A surreal and dreamlike tale of vampires and conspiracies.

Touted as the best Turkish horror film by many international reviewers, Karanlik Sular (The Serpent’s Tale) is a very interesting watch.  Directed by Kutlug Ataman, it’s ostensibly a vampire tale with hints of conspiracy and betrayals, but the storytelling is so surreal that it’s more like a David Lynch film.

After a pan through a theater in which a rapt, weeping audience takes in a film, we follow three men into the lobby after a young girl.  Two of the men engage in a conversation. The first one is then killed by the young girl while the other two are distracted.  Haldun (Metin Ugyun) warns Richie (Daniel Chase) away from the girl. He reveals her to be an 800 year old Byzantine princess, and implores him to take a little package to a woman at a certain address.  Richie agrees, and meets the woman at her home. The woman turns out to be Haldun’s mother. She tells him that her son drowned years earlier.

Richie works for an American company doing research in Istanbul, but is in pursuit of a set of scrolls owned by Lamia. However, another shadowy cult has their sights set on them.  They steal the scrolls and makes copies of them for a mysterious man who spends his time painting scenes from Lamia’s life as if he possesses the gift of seeing the future.  Richie is eventually turned into a vampire and in another encounter with the possibly dead Haldun, he finds out that he’s supposedly the person who turned Haldun into a vampire all those years ago.

Confused?

Karanlik Sular (The Serpent’s Tale) is a confusing film to take in, but is still surprisingly watchable simply because you wonder where it’s going next.  The film exists in that same world of dream logic that so many of David Lynch’s film are set in. The bright colors and dreamy narrative suggest nods to Argento specifically and Giallo films in general as the film unfolds.

Everything I’ve read online suggests that there’s very little interest in preserving film in Turkey, so this disc is understandably murky at times, as it was taken from a VHS master.  Onar Films has done a great job in the packaging of the film, including a 20 minute interview with director Kutlug Ataman, extensive press reviews both foreign and domestic, biographies, filmographies, and a photo gallery.  A selection of six trailers rounds out the DVD extras and paints an even more intriguing picture of the company’s catalog: Turkish Zorro? What’s not to love?

The film is from 1993, but as I said earlier, the picture quality is somewhat degraded and actually reminded me of a lot of 70’s cinema, and the crumbling gothic surroundings make for a beautiful setting for a film so dreamlike and strange. 

Well worth a look for fans of Euro-Cinema and horror, the DVD is a region 0 PAL formatted disc, so be sure you have a region-free player when you pick this up, as the PAL format doesn’t play nice with players outside of Europe.  I watched this on my PC with no problems, and would recommend it highly.

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