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Utilizing scholarship on transnational film, cultural exchange and Turkish film history, this article situates Turkish cinema’s Yeşilçam era of high genre cinema (1950s–80s) as both inventive and resistive to hegemonic western film representation. While often discussed pejoratively, Kristin Thompson’s theory of cinematic excess is applied to discuss how these films achieve a level of ingenuity beyond orientalist notions of quality and good taste. This article also examines how western aid to Turkey in the post-war era and the establishment of national governing film bodies in the early 1950s contributed to a robust, if financially limited, mode of film production specifically designed for Turkish audiences. Two exploitation films of this era, Şeytan (1974) and Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (1982), will be closely examined to discuss the subversive and culturally specific strategies of the Yeşilçam era despite, or even because of, its perceived economic and aesthetic limitations.