Kadin Düsmani (1967) User Reviews

A 60's Turkish proto-giallo, who would've thought?

[Red-Barracuda · 6/10 · 29 September 2012]

Well this one certainly qualifies as something of a curio. I haven't seen a lot of Turkish films so I really didn't know what to expect from this one. I guess its primary significance is that it's regarded as a Turkish giallo. And not only that but one that came out several years before that Italian sub-genre truly went into hyper-drive. So I am guessing you couldn't accuse this film of being too derivative of that genre. If you want to be more accurate you would label this as a Turkish take on the German Krimi. These German films influenced the giallo and while they were stylised they were a lot less menacing, more playful. And this film is no different, well that is as playful as a film about a necrophiliac rapist serial killer can be.

The story in a nutshell is about a psychopath who murders women. He wears a Halloween mask and monster gloves. His victim's first initials match the first letter of the district they are killed in.

I was surprised a little by the salacious plot line and the very westernised women in this one. I wrongly assumed that a film set in 60's Turkey would never allow this. Shows you what I know. The film itself is fun, if a little lacking in the thrills department. This makes it no different from Krimis in general. But I have to say that overall it's an entertaining enough cult item. If you are a keen student of left-field Euro cinema from the 60's you owe it to yourself to at least give this a try.

Tur-Krimini

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 14 September 2020]

With a name like Woman Despiser, you know that you're entering the world of the giallo. But you're not coming into it from Italy or Germany or even England, the home of Edgar Wallace, but instead, Turkey. The amazing thing is that this film comes from 1967, before Argento reinvented the form, so it really is closer to an Umberto Lenzi-style giallo or a German krimi.

A masked killer is murdering women one at a time, using the first letter of their first name and the initial letter of the district that he is in. He also wears different monster masks and has zombie hands and, well, there's no nice way to say it - he assaults the women after he's killed them.

I was shocked by that - and how Westernized the women were - which is way more than I expected from a late 60's Turkish movie. There aren't many on-screen kills, but the one - where we see the knife spray a young woman's blood out of her throat - is memorable enough.

So yeah - miniskirts were all the rage here in 1967, as was the rock and roll. And murder, it seems. It's hard to find a 100% original genre film out of this country, but darn it if writer and director Ilhan Engin didn't pull it off. It's no The Girl Who Knew Too Much, but it's not the worst black glove killer movie I've ever seen.