PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
The collaboration of Italy and Hong Kong for 1973's SUPERMEN AGAINST THE ORIENT wasn't quite bad enough, so the Italians took their property to Turkey, to see if the Turks could make an even worse movie. They succeeded.
This incoherent mess starts off with a scientist inventing a time-machine and briefly jaunting back to Byzantine times. But that's the last time-traveling you see, as the rest of the film is all about a Mafia "godfather" who sends his goons to steal the machine. He's being challenged for power by his daughter and her lover, who steal some of his drugs, and I think the godfather wants the time-machine to... find the drugs? Anyway, this time there's a new agent in charge (Turkish actor Cuneyt Arkin), but he acts like he's been around for other entries. He complains that he's always getting crossed up by his two partners (Sal Borghese and Aldo Canti, the latter returning to the franchise for the first time since the first film).
After the set-up, it's just one boring slapstick scene after another, in which the heroes' bulletproof costumes never get a work out, since none of the alleged gangsters ever shoot at them. There are a lot of scenes in a hospital, where I think the scientist is a patient for some reason, but those scenes merely exist so that a sexy nurse can get pursued by both heroes and gangsters. The only reasons to watch this, if you're not an insane superhero completist like me, would be to see an English-language superhero flick from Turkey (famous for its unlicensed adaptation of various franchises) or to watch Spanish actor Aldo Sambrell trying to do something with the nothing role of the Godfather.
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