Another week, another opportunity to use this lacuna to push back the boundaries of movie obscurity. If we're going to head off the beaten track, cinematically speaking, there are lots of weird and startling films out there in the world, as I discovered at quite a young age – you can imagine the astonishment which resulted when I first encountered masked Mexican wrestling horror movies, for instance. The problem, such as it is, is that some of these foreign treasures are just a bit too strange to be really accessible to a western viewer. Striking some kind of balance between being recognisable and having the sheer utter capacity to smack gobs is the twilight world of Turksploitation movies.

You what? is a perfectly reasonable response. I speak of the charming Turkish habit, in years gone by, of taking popular American blockbusters and doing a local remake, without bothering with trivial little things like the legal rights to characters and stories. Needless to say, these films were often cobbled together on tiny budgets, using performers highly unlikely to ever get the call from Hollywood. And yet they sometimes have an exuberant charm of their own, as well as a entertainment value born of their sheer crudeness.

As a case in point, let us consider Süpermen Dönüyor (aka The Return of Superman), a fairly representative Turksploitation movie, made in 1979 by (stop sniggering at the back) Kvnt Tulgar¹. I suppose the closest thing to this kind of film being made today are the 'mockbusters' plopped out by The Asylum, the crucial difference being that Asylum movies are carefully tweaked to avoid lawsuits – I speak here of the likes of Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, and Sunday School Musical – whereas the Turkish films just totally ignore the dubious legalities involved.

We open in deep space, which is realised using a selection of Christmas tree ornaments on a black blanket, while a voice-over fills us in the history of planet Krypton (which closely resembles one of those shiny bauble thingies). The title card with the Superman S-shield on it appears (apparently painted by an eight-year-old), while John Williams' famous fanfare plays. Then abruptly the music changes to something with more of the flavour of the souk about it while the rest of the credits roll.

With all this out of the way, we meet Tayfun (Tayfun Demir), a young man in a pair of Elton John's old specs, who is just about to start making his way in the world when he receives a shocking revelation from his parents – he is adopted! Apparently they found a 'rocket-like machine' in the garden one day, with him inside, along with a sort of greeny-grey rock. Tayfun takes this extraordinary news with superhuman stoicism (either that or he's a terrible actor) and sets off to follow his destiny. This turns out to be to go into a cave, where he is confronted by the ghost of his father, Superman, leader of the planet Krypton, a world of supremely advanced science in all areas but dentistry (judging from the state of Superman's mouth, anyway). Tayfun is to carry on the legacy of Krypton by being the new Superman of Earth, using his special superhuman powers in a surprisingly low-key and cost-effective manner.

Having learned all this, and adopted the traditional red-and-blue uniform (possibly the most impressive and expensive-looking thing in the movie), Superman flies off in search of adventure, and also to get a job. The scenes of our hero in flight are realised by – well, not to put too fine a point on it, sticking a doll in front of back-projected helicopter shots of famous Turkish landmarks. The results are breathtaking, one way or another.

Tayfun lands a job at what seems to be an extremely small Turkish newspaper (there only appear to be three other people on the staff), just in time for the plot proper to kick in – The Return of Superman is a (some would say blessedly) brief 68 minutes long, so there's less of the hanging about you get in the Richard Donner version. Scientists have discovered the mystical 'Krypton stone', which will either provide an unlimited supply of cheap, clean energy (seriously, given this is a maguffin in so many superhero movies nowadays, The Return of Superman was way ahead of the curve here), or allow unscrupulous types to transform base substances into gold and get rich quick.

Any tiny remnants of credulity left in the audience will be cruelly squished when it turns out that that the professor in charge of investigating the Krypton stone is the father of Alev (Gungor Bayrak), Tayfun's co-worker and love interest. Cue many opportunities for Alev to be menaced and repeatedly kidnapped by the mob as they attempt to get their hands on the Krypton stone, and for Superman to race to her rescue in his understated Turkish way (faced with a runaway truck, for instance, Turkish Superman does not plant himself in its path or grab it and bring it to a halt, he climbs in through the cab door and steps on the brakes – not exactly spectacular, but it saves on special effects).

In the end the villains are defeated, Tayfun has revealed his secret identity to the smitten Alev, and everyone asks if Superman will stick around to fight for truth, justice, and the Turkish way. No, he announces: he's off to look for Krypton, which he lost 'seven light years ago' (according to the English subtitled version, anyway). The End – and it certainly feels like it.

As an unauthorised foreign language rip-off, I expect it goes without saying that The Return of Superman is a terrible, terrible movie by any rational standard – the acting is awful, the subtitled dialogue is awful, the direction and editing are awful, and the special effects are awful. Normally I might even have some strong words to say about the dubious ethicality of this kind of undertaking, but given that DC Comics' own treatment of Superman's creators was hardly exemplary, I'm inclined to give them a pass. But seriously – is there any reason to spend an hour of your life actually watching this?

Well, for the first few minutes at least, the sheer primitive incompetence of The Return of Superman makes it utterly hilarious to watch, but one becomes habituated to this with surprising speed, and only particularly striking moments really register: for instance, Superman's suggestion to the professor upon rescuing him is 'There's a car outside – run away with it!' There's also a wholly tonally wrong sequence in which Tayfun uses his x-ray vision to check out a passing woman's underwear – although I should say that, on the whole, this movie's depiction of Superman is at least as authentic as that of the average Zach Snyder movie – while Superman does appear to kill a guy at one point, the actor reappears five minutes later, but this may just be down to the awful continuity. It's not like he goes around wantonly snapping necks or allowing himself to be manipulated into picking stupid fights with people, anyway.

Probably the most fun to be had while watching The Return of Superman comes from playing Name that Tune. The makers of this movie clearly realised the importance of music to a proper cinematic experience, but couldn't afford an original soundtrack for their film. So (and you may be ahead of me here) they went away and nicked bits from various popular American and British films and TV series. Quite apart from the 1978 Superman (of course), unwitting donors to this movie's (un)original soundtrack include From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Westworld, and Space: 1999.

It is frequently laughable, especially when the music is slapped on randomly over a wholly inappropriate moment (one of John Williams' more up-tempo action cues accompanies a bafflingly long and entirely dialogue-free scene depicting Tayfun packing his suitcase). But in other places you are reminded of just how important a good soundtrack can be to the success of a movie – moments which should be absurd actually acquire a vestige of emotional or dramatic value when the film-makers get their act together and dub the right piece of music over the top of their tosh.

For this reason, if no other, I find it a little hard to dismiss Turkish Superman quite as comprehensively as it probably deserves: the people who made it may have been an underfunded bunch of pirates, but they do appear to have had a genuine affection for and understanding of both Superman and cinema, and that makes up for a lot. Not enough to make this film any more than a bizarre and deservedly obscure oddity (it's currently available to view on YouTube, if you really must), but if it teaches us anything, it's that sometimes you just have to make do with what you've got – and that's a valuable lesson at the moment.

Awix

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