When Dracula and Batman visited Turkish cinema

The upcoming ‘Fantasturka? Turkish-Style Fantastic Films Festival' will offer a rare glimpse into the era of Turkish B-movie cinema, which showcased home-made special effects and bizarre storylines, featuring Superman, Batman, Dracula, Tarzan and more Lucky Luke, Belgian cartoonist Morris's famous cowboy who can "shoot faster than his shadow"; Count Dracula, the father of all vampires; Mandrake the Magician, the hero of Lee Falk's comic strip who has been a fan favorite in Turkish pop culture for half a century… The movie adaptations of these legendary pop culture names are set to meet audiences in an upcoming film festival in Istanbul and Ankara - but the festival will have a twist.

"Fantasturka, Turkish Style Fantastic Films Festival," will run between Dec. 12-14 in İstanbul, and Dec. 18-21 in Ankara. The festival program will mostly feature films that have defined, for lack of a better word, a fantastical era in Turkish cinema, when superheroes and comic book adaptations graced theaters.

With their beginning in the 1950s, and maintaining their popularity well into 1980s, these "B-movies," with home-made special effects and bizarre storylines, have become a treasure for pop culture aficionados both in Turkey and abroad. You can learn about the era in detail in the anthology "Fantastik Türk Sinemasi" (Fantastic Turkish Cinema), written by Turkish pop culture guru Giovanni Scognamillo and Metin Demirhan.

The book reveals that the first ever Western fictional hero to grace Turkish cinema was "Tarzan Istanbul'da" (Tarzan in Istanbul) back in 1952. Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic, a favorite in Hollywood for almost a century, proved to be a favorite with Turkish audiences too, opening the way for superheroes and...