The Man Who Saved the World (1982)

This is, without a doubt, the worst thing ever committed to film. Compared to this , Manos is Citizen Kane, Monster a Go-Go is Casablanca, and Leonard Part Six is... still dire, but not Turkish Star Wars. Most bad films have something to redeem them. Manos has bad writing acting and cinematography, but is so darn quirky and at least looks like they made an effort, given that almost nobody in the production had major film experience. Plan Nine from Outer Space has flashes of competence and a cameo by Bela Lugosi.Turkish Star Wars has none of that. It was written by and starred a man described as one of the leading actors of his time in Turkey. Makes me wonder if the Turkish film industry association played a recording of Ed Wood talking about how to make films backwards so they could find the secret message or something. Everything about this "movie" is incompetent, bad or incompetently bad. They took a theatrical print of Star Wars, cannibalized it, threw the resulting film clips in the air and randomly spliced them in as special effects. Our "Heroes" in their space ship are pretty obviously sitting in front of a rear-projection screen as said random clips (some of which include ground-based scenes!!!) are screened behind them.The original footage is no better. The editing is so choppy as to make what we're watching incomprehensible, the story is inscrutable, with dialogue that is clunky and anvilicious when it's not trying and failing to be funny. Twice, the entire plot (or unreasonable facsimile) drops away to give us minutes-long ads for Islam and Christianity. (As a Catholic, I'm usually gratified to find snippets of faith in a film, but this had no subtlety, basically coming out and saying "Islam is good -- why aren't you Muslim?" and "Christians are great people" with zero attempt to weave it in with the story.) Much of the film's runtime consists of our two "heroes" engaging in "Bruce Lame", "Jackie Chump", "Chow-yun Fail" and "Toshiro Miserable"-style martial arts antics punctuated by special effects that would make even an amateur cringe -- the villain is killed at the end by our "hero" chopping him in two with a karate chop. Their idea of a convincing special effect to show the bifurcated corpse was to film his face while covering up half the lens, blacking out half the screen.Nothing is explained. They're chasing a golden brain for some reason. They need to save the Earth (which the opening spiel claims has already been destroyed) from destruction. The Magician (our villain for this evening) wants the heroes' human brains (since this is Turkish Star Wars, he'd probably be better off not bothering...) to defeat the Death Star for some unclear reason. Entire ancient Christian churches and medieval Islamic mosques survived millennia in space and re-entry to land on Planet Whogivsadam. Luke Skydorker gets the universe's most ridiculously-shaped wooden sword and said brain, melts them down, places his bare hands in the resulting goop and comes out with golden gloves which deflect laser beams or something. And somehow also gets golden boots (even though he didn't stick his feet into the gilded slop). The love interest just stares at him mutely throughout the movie until he finds the brain at which time she can suddenly talk. TIE Fighters fly backwards. Satan and guys wearing racist caricature masks of Chinese and Africans are villains. Cylons appear. John Williams, John Barry and Queen are hideously abused. Battles use the TARDIS noise. Mobs of people -- good guys? Bad guys? Random spectators? People who want to gawk at a hideous train wreck? Take your pick -- appear and disappear from scenes at random. Bert I Gordon is also ripped off. And none of it makes any $%^&#@$^*& sense. Turkish Star Wars is not a movie. It is not a film. It is a sequence of random events committed to celluloid with the veneer of a narrative cobbled on to it to try to make it seem legit. It's like a 12-year old made a move... only with fewer "fart" jokes.After watching this horrid piece of sludge, I had to cleanse my shattered psyche by watching a certified cinema classic. I watched Plan Nine from Outer Space. Ah, the competence, tight story telling and spectacular special effects of Ed Wood -- just the antidote for Turkish Star Wars!

This world saving makes Al Adamson and Ed Wood look like choirboys in comparison! And surely this is nothing for squeamish Indiana-Jones or Star-Wars-buffs or even Flash-Gordon-fans. Instead you can expect salvos of unintended laughs, especially because of daring cheekiness concerning copyrights. Therefore "The Man who saves the world" has supposedly never been shown outside Turkey for understandable reasons. "Great" and totally weird costumes as well as unorthodox acrobatics will put you over the edge. Maximum trash galore, but lots of redundant and recurring scenes makes this a total bore after a while. Don't watch this alone or without alcohol!

"Dünyayi kurtaran adam" (The Man Who Saved the Earth) is the story of "strongest and greatest two Turkish warriors" who save planet Earth from the forces of Evil. It takes place during the so-called Galaxy Era, an era when the Earth (already shattered to pieces) is on its way to total destruction, barely held together by a protective shield made out of powdered human brains.The movie is inspired by the cult movie "Star Wars", made by George Lucas a few years before its Turkish counterpart was released. The American version was an ambitious effort: Lucas sought to show not only that Good can triumph over Evil, even in Outer Space, but also that it's possible to sell action figures of characters that receive less than ten seconds of screen time, and in doing so, become one of the richest people on Earth. "Dünyayi kurtaran adam" builds upon these ideas, yet does not forget to acknowledge Lucas' influence. If you look closely, you might notice that director Çetin Inanç has cleverly interwoven random footage from the original, yet given it a new context (and aspect ratio) that provides a unique and compelling insight into the Human Condition.It should not go without saying that Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam was made in a time when government restrictions in Turkey prohibited the viewing of films from abroad. In that light, one can only imagine the joy that the Turkish people must have felt when blessed by this release, and the gratitude they must have felt toward their otherwise oppressive government.

Dünyayi kurtaran adam (Turkish Star Wars) (1982) BOMB (out of 4)Turkish film that is pretty much a scene for scene remake of Star Wars. Unlike most Turkish films, apparently this one was meant to be a serious movie but the budget is so low and everything is so poorly done that you can help but roll your eyes. I'm not a big fan of the film being "copied" so perhaps that's why I didn't enjoy this one as much but I hard a really hard time trying to sit through it. The special effects are being bad and sometimes the film resorts to using scenes from the actual Star Wars. The music score from that film is also used here but what's most shocking is that there are special effects in the film, which appear to be from an Atari game. If you're a fan of the original Star Wars then you might get more entertainment out of this than I did. There's no question this is a horrible movie but some might find it so bad it's good.