Turkish Mad Max Is The Best (& Least Accurate) Rip-off Ever Made

screenrant.com:

While the so-called “Turkish Mad Max” bears almost no resemblance to its supposed inspiration, this only makes 1983's obscure cult classic Last Step To Death a more unpredictable—and ingenious—classic B-movie. Blockbuster rip-offs are nothing new. While the Asylum’s infamous “mockbusters” have made a fine art of ripping off recent releases, movies that aped the style and content of popular releases have been around since the beginning of blockbuster cinema around the mid-70s.

For every Jaws, there were numerous releases that piggybacked off the success of a sleeper hit original, like Orca and Piranha. For every acclaimed success like Gremlins, there were a whole host of cheap knock-offs like Ghoulies, Hobgoblins, and Munchies. Perhaps most infamously, for every Halloween, there was a slasher franchise like Friday the 13th, a series that came into existence when producer Sean Cunningham called screenwriter Victor Miller, noted how much money John Carpenter’s sleeper hit was earning, and explicitly suggested ripping off Halloween’s formula. However, blockbuster knock-offs are not quite the same as Turkish mockbusters.

Related: Should Furiosa Tell Immortan Joe’s Mad Max Backstory?

Thanks to the difficulty that Turkish distributors had with accessing Hollywood titles, the robust production apparatus of Turkey’s filmmaking industry, and the country’s lax laws surrounding copyright, Turkish cinemas played host to a unique form of mockbuster in the '70s and '80s. Unlike more “subtle” efforts like the Asylum’s titles, Turkey’s mockbusters simply took the titles of Hollywood movies and advertised themselves as direct remakes of the original movies. While the upcoming Furiosa will be Mad Max’s first official spinoff, «TurkishMad