After The Ultimate Ninja, I feared I had soared too close to the sun. I had stared into the void, and the void had roundhouse-kicked me in the disbelieving cheeks, and snatched away my Black Ninja Warrior. That dark idol vanished into a night as black as videotape, but I frantically scrambled after it.
Long and hard have I searched, I travelled to So-Cal, and overcame the dweller on the threshold: Gene Simmons, where he was masquerading as a Hermaphroditic super-villain.
From there I sought refuge in the promised land of sleepy suburbia, only to be assailed by a screaming, nasal, closeted, homicidal Paperboy.
“Hey, isn’t that ‘Boss Nigger’ Fred Williamson?
And Robert ‘The Exterminator’ Ginty… is that you? What are you guys doing here?!”
This new place was like a house from a dream; architecturally sound, everything in its right place, but disobeying logic in a subtle-sort of way, a way that evades all attempts at a finger put upon it. And amongst all this, my prize was becoming ever clearer, growing from an intermittent spark, to a dancing flame, only now I realised it was not Black at all, but a brilliant, WHITE! A White Fire, too beautiful to resist, but far too dangerous to hold. I was no longer facing the black of the videotape void, but all colours at once. The black carbon, compressed into the WHITE FIRE!
The ‘White Fire’…that rarest of gems. What secret does its slow-metamorphosed, primordial mass hold?
Behold; a diamond, both supernatural and Turkish, oft-told in legend, but heretofore unseen, save for in the mind’s eye of those pants-shittingly insane enough to dare dream it. A hulking mass of unspeakable riches, that shines enticing-white, and burns the touch of those foolish enough to suppose they can possess it.
This Turkish delight…
What mad, craven lengths will its draw drive men to go?
In the beginning, there was Bo (Robert Ginty), and sister Ingrid (Has tits, is willing to show them, so it doesn’t matter), left orphaned, and immediately fostered by Turkish beach Gypsies, after losing their father and mother to flamethrown immolation and machinegun fire respectively, at the hands of soldiers of debatable allegiance.
Growing up on the mean streets of ‘IstaMbul’ (on-screen [sic]!), Bo and Ingrid survived the only way they knew how, making ends meet as lowly diamond thieves, until one fateful day, when a solo quarry worker uncovers the dormant ‘White Fire’. After reporting his discovery to the mine owner, he is swiftly thanked with a pick-axe to the back. Having also been witness to its discovery as an employee of said mine, Ingrid too is now in mortal danger.
Spying the ultimate prize, and a surefire retirement ticket, Bo and Ingrid decide to procure the White Fire for themselves and, after a hard day’s diamond smuggling, and dockside mutilation of the Italian terrorists that tried to rob them, Bo and Ingrid settle-in to their Foster parents’ mansion for the evening, to finalise plans for it’s clandestine removal.
Wait a minute, let me rephrase that!
The way I retold it there sounds somewhat dubious!
Let me start again…
So, Bo goes out of the house to inform his sister that dinner is almost ready. He skeedaddles down the steps, to the pool, where his naked sister is towelling off, and (its completely innocent, and almost beautiful in its way), says: “You sure don’t look like anyone’s kid sister anymore, do ya?!” before snatching the towel off her, to reveal her naked body, after wresting the towel back, he clarifies his original intent by stating: “You know, it’s a pity you’re my sister”…
Who exactly is meant to be titillated by this, is unclear to me.
Perhaps this is some sort of Muslim justice reached by Turkish backers with western investors; Nudity allowed under the proviso that one is meant to feel suitably awkward enough to abstain from the fourteen knuckled-shuffle?
I for one couldn’t abstain, and instead stained my abs.
Just kidding.
Shortly after this scrotum-shrinking scene, Ingrid is swiftly murdered by a blow-dart to the forehead by those damned Italian terrorists, thankfully sparing us the repercussive aftermath of Bo’s playful advances…ON HIS FRICKING SISTER!
Understandably, a little bit upset, he heads to the nearest bar, to immediately drink conservative amounts of hard liquor. As fate would have it, a bleach-blonde named Olga lends a sympathetic ear, and offers him back to hers for the pube-encircled violet love-plunge. After igniting a bar fight Bo is taken home by the charitable barfly, whereupon his Gypsy Stepfather spots her Ingrid similarity, and together they decide that the theft can and must go ahead immediately (to ease the grieving process, obviously), following the simple formality of having this new filly decked-out with his dead sister’s face, naturally.
The re-construction of the cum-glued house of cards begins in earnest.
It is now clear that this Turkish diamond heist movie HAS to be far more of a weighty intellectual undertaking than the red paint-sprayed violence, and gratuitous tit and muff shots have led us to believe. I mean, why else the brother/sister incest subtext? Please God, why?
This continental director is some sort of arthouse genius, surely. The eponymous White Fire is emblematic of…Wait! Yes! The White Fire represents the fires of lust, burning so wrong and hot, that they are maximum intensity-white. You want so badly to possess this beauty (familial beaver), yet the ramifications for doing so are the flames of society’s ire, and the very heat of damnation and hell.
Bo’s new beau is instructed in the ways of Ingrid approximation, given that she had access to the diamond mine owner who laid his homicidal and spurious claim to the ‘White Fire’, So that, when resplendent with his dead sister’s face, she can infiltrate the mine that houses the physical embodiment of his weeping cock’s desire to ‘bonsai’ his family tree.
..which, following his dead sister’s face being cosmetically recreated on her decidedly legal body, will give his incestuous proclivities some breathing room.The battle for the ‘White Fire’, against those recurrent Italian Terrorists, and Fred Williamson’s rogue interloper is largely uneventful. All of which leads this reviewer to believe that the battle, and ultimate destruction of the much sought after stone, is simply battle candy for the eye, and, if one were being charitable, or sarcastic, the mimetic quashing, and subsequent justification of his fuck-lust for his sister.
‘White Fire’ is available on Region 1 DVD, and second hand videocassette NOW!
Cult Movie Compendium 