REVIEW: DUNYAYI KURTARAN ADAM: TURKISH STAR WARS
REVIEW: TURKISH STAR WARS
REVIEW: ÇETIN INANÇ [ 1982 ] 90'
REVIEW: KUNT FILM / ANIT FILM
CAST: CUNEYT ARKIN, AYTEKIN AKKAYA,
CAST: FUSUN UÇAR, HUSEYIN PEYDA
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING: - | +
WTF-FILMOMETER: MORE FLEECY BEASTIES THAN THE HUMAN
WTF-FILMOMETER: MIND CAN COMPREHEND

To begin with, TURKISH STAR WARS is probably the worst movie ever made.

Probably.

It's certainly the worst example of film-making I've seen to date.

This entertaining waste of celluloid was produced - I use the term loosely - at a time when the Turkish film industry was in something of a slump. Political and cultural troubles made it difficult to finance a production and, even if money was to be found, supplies of various film elements necessary for a production were in high demand. To make matters worse, the Turkish public at large had a hankering for Western films of the time - films that were almost impossible to import on a large scale due to the same issues mentioned above. What were Turkish film makers to do?

Why, they'd make their own blockbusters based on the Western films their audiences so desperately wanted to see. This sort of scheme is certainly nothing new to the world of movie-making - India, Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, and the former Soviet Union have all been guilty of it to some extent and the United States itself has become recently notorious for its spate of remakes of foreign films. But it's difficult to say whether or not anyone on Earth has been so derivative so badly as the underbelly of the Turkish cinema movement. To quote the online entertainment mag THE WAVE, "Turkish cinema has proven time and time again that whatever we can do, they can do much, much worse." That quote is in reference to the awful TURKISH WIZARD OF OZ (AYSECIK VE SIHIRLIB CUCLER RUYALAR ULKESINDE [1971], also to be reviewed here shortly), but it suits TURKISH STAR WARS perfectly as well.

Amusingly enough, TURKISH STAR WARS isn't really much of a remake of the original STAR WARS [1977] - what story there is to be found here is more akin to the plot for a Japanese super-action TV show than to the George Lucas spectacle. The only real connection between the two is a bar scene that the two share in common. . .

And then there's the stolen footage. . .

Obviously bereft of a special effects budget themselves, the makers of the film opted, instead, to recycle footage from the real STAR WARS wholesale - what's worse, the footage has been cheaply reprinted from a 35mm anamorphic print with no effort whatsoever having been made to present it in any sort of aspect ratio other than, perhaps, horizontally squished. Footage from SODOM AND GOMORRAH [1962] is also bandying about - this seems to have been taken from an awful red-hued hard-matted 16mm print of the film and shows up at an aspect ratio of roughly 1.85:1.

And then there's the stolen soundtrack. . .

I was able to pick out stolen musical cues from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK [1981], THE BLACK HOLE [1979], SILENT RUNNING [1972], and PLANET OF THE APES [1968] as I watched this film for the first time - there are additional tracks that I can't place but other online sources say that cues from MOONRAKER [1979], FLASH GORDON [1980], and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA [1978] are present as well. I'm not familiar with any of those scores but, given the nature of the film, it's entirely possible that they are represented as well.

One almost has to admire the testicular fortitude required for the filmmakers to commit such blatant examples of cinematic thievery.

Almost.

One also has to wonder where all of the world's lawyers were when this was being made. . .

At least the makers of TURKISH STAR WARS can take pride in the fact that they were not alone, for whatever that's worth. . . The unfortunately-nomered Kunt Film (named after founder Kunt Tulgar) produced two films akin to this one - the loveably abysmal SUPERMEN DONUYOR (TURKISH SUPERMAN [1979]) and TARZAN KORKUSUZ ADAM [1974]. Both of these two films further the trend of stealing footage and soundtrack cues wholesale from Western films in an attempt to create the illusion that there was, at some point, a budget for the project - whether or not these attempts are succesful should be more than obvious. Other companies were in on the action as well, of course, creating such bizarre copy-cats as SEYTAN (literally THE DEVIL but most commonly referred to in the USA as THE TURKISH EXORCIST [1974]) and the aforementioned TURKISH WIZARD OF OZ. All of them have the same sort of poverty-soaked charm and ambition, often resulting in the Turkish films being more enjoyable (if not nearly as well made) as their Western counterparts.

This film begins with an opening credits sequence that feels excruciatingly long - all of the prints of the film I've seen seem to have replaced whatever music may have played here with a relaxed electronic theme whose fidelity is a considerable improvement over the audio present in the rest of the film. I'm not sure why this is but I'll waste no more time on it. CUNEYT ARKIN, who also happens to have been the writer of the film and, if rumors are correct, also created the ridiculous monster costumes seen throughout, gets the top billing here. The credits honestly appear to be painted on black bits of cardboard and either hurled towards or pulled up and out of the camera's field of vision. One credit, in particular, stands out - it's for someone named Aslan Tektas - and is, for whatever reason, in a completely different style from the rest of the film and appears to have been spliced in after the rest of the credits were completed.

The credits end roughly two minutes into the film and we are thrust into the voice over narration to end all voice over narrations. As endless special effects footage from STAR WARS plays on we are told by the narrator that, after man landed on the moon we entered the space age. After a few thousand years of that we entered the galaxy age and then decided to put all of our differences aside and turn the Earth into a singular entity. Nice, eh? Apparently not - even in the galaxy age we are threatened by self-extinction at the hands of our own "crazy nuclear armament". Things start to make a little less sense when the narration kicks over to letting us know that the Earth was blown into little meteoric bits, then blown into dust, then apparently brought back together by human willpower alone and turned into the Death Star - the metal plating seen on it is supposed to be a protective crust made out of compressed human brain molecules (!!!) - that only a weapon combined with the power of a brain could destroy.

Luckily for us and as the narrator so happily tells us, the enemies of the Earth have no brains.

In response to the enemy-that-has-no-brains trying to attack the Earth, Turkey's two greatest pilots (and a slew of other random unidentified people) are sent into space to do battle. The evil enemy-with-no-brain is a guy in a ridiculous mask who is referred to in the subtitles for the film only as "the Wizard" - he's determined to attack the Earth and capture for himself a human brain so that he can make the ultimate weapon-brain combo and destroy the planet (which, according to the narration, is becoming a cloud of dust with every attack) properly. The narration dispensed with, the Wizard sends X-Wings to do battle with the "Earth". Luckily Turkey's two greatest pilots are flying Tie Fighters in hot pursuit of the evil doers. What follows is a hysterical battle scene in which absolutely nothing makes sense. The best thing about it is that Turkey's two greatest pilots are incorporated into the scene through the worst rear screen projection ever to grace a motion picture screen - even better, the footage playing behind them cuts from scene to scene to scene while they act in front of it. It's the first of many examples of the film's monumental effects work. Making things all the more confusing are a few shots that are printed so that it looks like you're viewing the action through the eye-holes of the Wizard's mask.

Something weird happens during the battle - I'm not really sure what - and Turkey's two greatest pilots explode. The Wizard screams something about the Earth escaping his clutches again just before more stock footage starts - Sodom and Gomorrah explode and Turkey's two greatest pilots (Murat and Ali) dig themselves out of the rubble while footage of the Northern Lights cuts in and out. After a bit of hysterical dialogue about how the planet might be populated only by women testing the two of them to see which one is more courageous the two happen upon the Egyptian pyramids and, according to the narrator, documents showing that Earth had faced some terrible foe in the past. The narrator postulates some more and comes to the conclusion that the ancient civilization might have ". . . got extinct by atomic war." Murat and Ali hop around on some big rocks and the former tells the latter that he should whistle (apparently it's irresistible to Earth women). He does and, instead of women, a band of skeletons (or men dressed in puffy outfits made to look like skeletons. . . kind of) on horseback rushes up from out of nowhere to attack them.

MURAT: You whistled wrong.

ALI: Why?

MURAT: Instead of women skeletons came.

Turkey's two greatest pilots waste no time in plucking all of the skeleton dudes from their horses and thoroughly beating the crap out of them. As will happen many times throughout the rest of the film, the action here is sped up at times in an attempt to make it look more exciting - it comes off more as a silent film played back at an improper frame rate and scored with butchered John Williams tracks. Our two main characters can't help but hop over a few horses and otherwise display their crazy skillZ before stealing two of the skeletons' horses and riding off to a theme for Indiana Jones. The shots of the two of them escaping on horseback are bizarrely intercut with closeups of men growling in masks that wouldn't pass as Halloween costumes for six year olds.

Suddenly, reject Cylons from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA pop out of the woodwork and start attacking Murat and Ali with print damage that doubles for optical effects - our two heroes give up and allow themselves to be thrown into a randomly placed game of death by a big blue rubber robot with a spinning yellow light on the top of his head. As Murat so poetically puts it, "I am afraid they are taking us to a place where they put us into eternal sleep without lullaby." Guys in shiny hats start fighting each other with swords and clubs and things while the big blue rubber robot randomly squishes a very noisy child's head. This is all meant to be horrible, of course, and is intercut with crash zooms of our two heroes' disgusted (they're supposed to be disgusted I think) faces. Murat announces that they have to fight against injustice and, in no time flat, Turkey's two greatest pilots are kung fu'ing the bad guys like there's no tomorrow.

The two of them get a bit cut up in the process and the Wizard goes a little crazy and starts screaming, "The humans!" and ordering that they be captured - again. The minions fail and the two humans are taken in by a bunch of non-human humans who, while completely unprotected, apparently also don't have the brains the Wizard needs. A relationship develops between Murat and a random blond woman who doesn't talk - we know that a relationship has developed because we see closeup after closeup after closeup of the two looking and smiling at each other like middle school flirts. Murat and Ali have a conversation about how atomic war is caused by people being too serious, followed by a man who describes himself only as old and faithful and wise pops out of a corner and starts talking about how his planet (obviously an Earth but not the Earth that the Wizard is trying to get at) came under the dark rule of the Wizard. There's also something about the 13th tribe that seems important at the time but never goes anywhere.

The Wizard appears again, apparently flying in the Millennium Falcon, and starts talking to the Earth (Death Star) even though it can't hear him and ends up repeating, "You'll be destroyed!" over and over again. Back in the caves of the non-human humans who are on Earth but not the Earth, everyone is asleep except for the paper mache mummies with big hands. They come creeping out of their tombs along with a motley collection of red and black fleece monsters and start randomly laying waste to the sleeping people in the cave. Murat and Ali fight with them a bit before the old and faithfully wise man leads them into a chamber that's safe from the monsters. Another beastie appears, this one covered in furs and with paper streamers dangling from its fingertips, and murders absolutely everyone that was left behind.

Murat, Ali, the random blond woman, and her kid wander around the Turkish countryside while the Wizard, having magically appeared on the Earth that isn't the Earth, drinks the blood of the dead people from the mother of all twisty straws. This causes really bad special effects editing to happen and the dead people turn into paper mache mummies with big hands. This segues into my absolute favorite scene in the entire film - the overly long training scene in which Murat and Ali, both shirtless, get their fu off on a bunch of helpless rocks. Some highlights include Ali going to war with a mound of dirt and Murat tying big rocks to his legs and hopping around. This training allows Murat to hop around as though there were trampolines just off screen (snicker) and kick big rocks around and make them explode - it probably allows Ali to do something too, but we don't get to see it. Meanwhile, the Wizard is pissed and turning random people into zombies (stock footage from Bert I. Gordon's THE MAGIC SWORD, no less!) that subsequently turn into red fleecy monsters.

Murat and Ali head out on their own for whatever reason and end up at a bar full of stock footage from the Cantina scene from STAR WARS. It isn't long before that scene is repeating itself here and both our heroes are beating yet more crap out of yet more poorly costumed monster dudes - this gives Murat a chance to show off his new kung fu moves. The Wizard suddenly materializes in the bar and shows us that he can do cool in-camera tricks with himself and says things like, "Since thousands years no one could escape from my infinite power." Apparently he wants our two heroes because they're human (unlike the other humans we've seen) and from the Earth that is the Earth. The Wizard "invites" Murat and Ali to his palace and, under the watchful eye of two of the defunct Cylons from earlier, they accept - the trip to the palace is accompanied by cues from SILENT RUNNING and still more stock footage.

The Wizard, after giving both of the guys cool new flamboyant duds, separates them so that he can break their will power - Murat is led to the Wizard himself while Ali is tempted by the Wizard's queen lady. The Wizard shows Murat all his ancestors' power, which is apparently encapsulated in a crudely painted gold brain, and taunts hims some more before disappearing. Another fight breaks out between the minions of darkness and infinity and Murat, who uses his new kung fu moves to hack off a fleece monster's arms (!) and stab him in the neck with them (!!). Meanwhile, Ali is temporarily captured by still more monsters after he caves and kisses the queen lady - he soon makes his way to the palace room, where Murat is showing off by putting swords in his mouth and hacking of their ends with his hands. The fight ends when a random guy screams, "Warp them!" - the defunct Cylons shoot our two heroes with print damage and music from SILENT RUNNING starts playing while the Wizard says stuff that doesn't make sense.

Under the Wizard's orders, Murat and Ali are both first smashed with big square rocks and then buried alive in hopes that their will power will be broken. They bare both tortures pretty well, it seems. The Wizard gets angry at the queen lady and turns her into stock footage from a movie I can't place and sends the two heroes to "the arena" to be "disgraced" - this apparently means that Murat will have to fight against the furry monster with paper streamers dangling from his fingers. He does, by running up and kicking him and then jumping over the monsters head time after time after time. Murat eventually decides that jumping on the monster is a more effective tactic than jumping over the monster, defeats him, and runs off with the random blond woman and her kid. Ali is still captured, apparently, and is taken back to the Wizard's place so that he can have his brain removed.

There's some lovey stuff between Murat and the random blond woman before the former is led off into the wilderness by the old and faithfully wise man. There, he is taught about Islam. Murat and the blond woman go running around the countryside together after that while random immortal red fleece monsters pop up out of everywhere. Eventually a big bunch of ninjas surround the two and force Murat into battle yet again - he beats them all, not unexpectedly. Back in the Wizard's pad, Ali has been strapped to a weird machine with a fat telephone cord and the Wizard and his minions are trying to take out his brain. After that, Murat learns about Christianity and the cities that the Christians built way underground. Inside the old Christian temple he finds a big pointy plywood sword and a box with the crudely painted gold brain in it (guarded by what I guess are supposed to be statues - they're just two guys covered in flashy fabric). After he beats up both of the statue fabric people he takes the brain and the sword and gets a lesson about the Aztecs and about how he has to combine the brain and the Sword to create the ultimate weapon to defeat the wizard.

On their way out of the temple they see Ali - only something isn't quite right. It probably has something to do with the fact that this Ali is really an ugly giant who growls for a few moments before being stabbed to death. I can only assume that the giant parts of this scene are stock footage as well, as the scenery in them doesn't match up with the temple location at all. Having defeated the stock footage giant, Murat heads off to see the Wizard, the wonderful wizard of. . . to still more cues from SILENT RUNNING and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. More ninjas interrupt him, but he's lucky enough to have the pointy plywood sword and makes short work of all of them - back at the palace they find out they can't take Ali's brain because it is not free, whatever that means. Murat kills pretty much everything he comes into contact with - including a bunch of furry fleece monsters - on his way to the palace, which he finally reaches. He then frees his friend from the evil telephone cord brain sucking machine to the tune of still more music from SILENT RUNNING. Ali demands that Murat give him the sword so that he can tear all the monsters to pieces - Murat responds with the one logical piece of dialogue in the entire film: "They're all puppets."

This isn't good enough for Ali, who punches out Murat and steals the sword and the brain and takes them back to the old and faithful wise man. Or does he? As it turns out, the old and faithful wise man is the Wizard, who takes the sword and brain, shove them unkindly into Ali's face, and then uses his magical wizardy powers to throw the poor fool into a few rock walls over and over again. Murat comes hopping to the rescue and jumps on the Wizard, who does weird editing stuff and disappears in red smoke. Back somewhere else, the old and faithful wise man is dying and telling Murat and Ali to save the world. After the Wizard talks to them a bit and uses fancy red filters Ali runs out of the room and explodes to death. Murat takes revenge by melting down both the brain and the sword in a pot to the tune of John Barry's score for THE BLACK HOLE - he then dips his hands into the mess, which covers them with weird gold super glove things.

Murat wastes no time in punching through some rocks with the gloves and heading off to see the Wizard for the last time. This is an excellent fight scene in which a number of fleece monsters are decapitated, disarmed, de-legged, and otherwise horribly mutilated. The big blue rubber robot starts shooting print damage at our hero, who promptly decapitates him as well before making some of the paper mache mummies run into each other and explode. There's a lot of random stock footage here, both from the film at hand and STAR WARS that is supposed to show the Wizard finally enacting his scheme to blow up the Earth for what must be, according to the opening narration, the fifth or sixth time in its history. Newly shot fight scenes, stock of the Wizard screaming, and still more footage from STAR WARS and SODOM AND GOMORRAH is edited together totally at random. It all comes to an end when Marut finally gets to the Wizard and defeats him as only Marut can - by jumping through purple smoke, kicking big rocks at him, and eventually squishing his head. This is all before Marut rips the Wizard in half with his bare hands and causes a stock footage volcanic eruption, of course.

At last, men from all the various incarnations of Earth are free - Marut flies away in the Millennium Falcon and the narrator leaves us with these closing words: "Protect your future. Because future is in the peace." The End.

There really isn't much of anything original in the entire 90 minute running time of TURKISH STAR WARS (There are a lot of rocks, however, and an inordinate amount of hopping.) - indeed, I'd wager that only 75% or less of that 90 minute running time is actually comprised of new material at all. In this regard, the makers of the film have accomplished nothing short of a miracle in making it as entertaining a mess as it is. Cuneyt Arkin - Murat in the film - now has over 200 acting roles under his belt and is most famous for playing nearly invincible Turkish heroes. TURKISH STAR WARS certainly doesn't deviate from this (he reprises his role from this film as a cameo in 2006's utterly awful and genuinely un-amusing DUNYAYI KURTARAN ADAM'IN OGLU - SON OF THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD). Aytekin Akkaya - Ali - appears to not have been nearly so prolific an actor, though he did star in a few Antonio Margheriti after this one (including the mighty YOR: HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE in 1983). It's a safe bet to assume that he's probably best known for his role here.

While watching the film it's rather difficult to imagine that the production from which it resulted had anything in the way of funds at its disposal - the rear projection effects towards the beginning of the film are about the best this effort has to offer in the way of film trickery and are quite horrific in and of themselves. The only other optical effects to be seen are those representing the firing of lasers from the robots (mostly accomplished through random splicing of the scene and scratching up of the frame) and that which is meant to show that the Wizard has, indeed, been cut in half - the latter is an effect so ridiculous that it must be seen to be believed. The monster suits are just that in the most literal of senses - each comes with a fake head, fake arms, fake shirt, fake pants, and fake feet - and the majority of the set decorations and props seem to have been constructed from sheets of plywood. Things don't improve when one takes the sound mixing into consideration - the film appears to have been shot entirely without dialogue and the overdubbing is consistently out of sync with actor's lips. Even more embarrassing, the music cues played in the background stop dead whenever a sound effect or line of dialogue starts.

I had originally happened upon TURKISH STAR WARS while hunting for good Saturday night drinking fair for myself and my friends - what I found was considerably more. From the moment the credits concluded to the moment that last bit of STAR WARS footage cuts to the ending caption I was utterly transfixed - other reviewers online have admited to similar experiences. There's something about TURKISH STAR WARS that is compelling - addictive even - and, while I'm sure it won't have the same effect on everyone, I found the film itself to be more intoxicating than the alcohol I had intended to accompany it with. Incidentally, I never did have that Saturday night drink, but it's safe to say that I was in no condition to operate heavy machinery once the viewing was concluded.

The print I saw of the film was of about the quality you'd expect - only worse - due in no small part to both the cheapness and utter illegality of the production. Colors and contrast are all wildly inconsistent and not a scene goes by without some form of print damage popping up. What I honestly can't say is just how much worse this film looks now than it did in 1982 - I find it hard to believe that a movie of this nature was ever in pristine condition to begin with. TURKISH STAR WARS, while certainly not something you'll be able to pick up at the local video shop (unless your local video shop is way cool), is readily available through bootlegged DVD and VHS recordings, but I, personally, would recommend hunting it down for download instead - I plan on providing it for free viewing here in the relatively near future but am taking it upon myself to color correct the print before offering it up. In the meanwhile, I know that it is readily available on Google Video (with English subtitles, not that they help a lot) at no charge.

Equal parts colorful, unintelligible, and jaw-droppingly absurd, TURKISH STAR WARS is the kind of film that this site was created to celebrate - it's an entirely serious production that manages to be patently hysterical from start to finish and, from the stock footage to the stock music to the red fleecy monsters, ninjas, and print-damage shooting robots, is never anything less than a true WTF-Film. It's also inspired me to catch up with a few films that I haven't seen since I was a child - including the original (and unadulterated) STAR WARS trilogy and the undeniably awesome FLASH GORDON [1980].

Though critically inept and probably the worst film ever made, I can't recommend it enough.