1982 Turkish Star WarsRating: 2/20
Plot: A pair of kung-fu fightin' astronauts (or are the cosmonauts in Turkey? [or did Turkey not even have anything that even remotely resembled a space program?]) land on what must be Tatooine where a demonic wizard is doing a variety of things that he hopes will result in, I believe, the destruction of the world. They battle his evil minions and try to locate a magic sword while parts of the Raiders of the Lost Ark score plays in the background.
That might be the poster of the year. Always good to start with the positives.
Seriously, this just plagiarizes music from the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. Not only that, it plagiarizes space battle sequences from A New Hope. It's not just little snippets either. This is huge chunks of film. They look odd because they're squashed into a different aspect ratio, but I still think it counts as stealing. It's strange hearing the Indiana Jones theme while X-Wings fly around the Death Star.
Watching the credits, I noticed that Turkish people already have good Star Wars names, so that makes things easy. I also noticed that the company that produced this beast is named Kunt Films.
This actually looks like the type of movie that would be produced by Kunt Films. And no, I'm not really sure what that means. But wouldn't this thing be in a Kunt Films production:
That's the Darth Vader of Turkish Star Wars, an evil wizard. Of course, this differs from the Star Wars trilogy because the Turkish Star Wars Darth Vader dies which means he won't end up being anybody's father if there's ever a sequel to this thing. And that, dear readers, is how you spoil two movies in one sentence. Although I doubt anybody reading this hasn't seen the Star Wars films, I still should probably apologize. Hopefully this other image from The Man Who Saved the World will make up for it:
Yeah, that picture is random, but so is most of this movie. After the initial Star Wars space battle scenes, there's a lengthy scene where the hero and the other hero ride on horses to the Raiders theme. The horse-riding scenes are chopped up with shots of monsters. Now what I can't figure out is why the makers of this thing decided to show us close-ups of these growling beasts.
Toilet tissue mummies, obligatory tinfoil "stormtroopers, an absurdly-large and unwieldly magic sword, chaotic fight choreography, trampolining, the most maddening sound effects I've ever heard, metal hands, sliced furry things, exploding decapitated heads (Seriously, what the hell? A mummy thing is decapitated. The head is thrown at another mummy. Explosion. Does that make sense in Turkey?), blue robot lasers. It's all pretty brilliant. And this ends in what has to be the worst special effect I have ever seen. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's the evil wizard's head chopped in half vertically. If nothing else, this movie has inspired me to look for the Turkish Titanic movie. Oh, snap! These guys:
when you cut off a turks head it explodes. DUH!
ReplyDeleteBut that scene didn't take place in Turkey...it was a space mummy!
ReplyDeleteOf course I know Turks' heads have explosive tendencies. I remember that from 8th grade science class.
well i was refering to he nationality of the actor whos head exploded.
ReplyDeleteI would just like to boast that I saw this one in theatres. Not during the original run, of course.
ReplyDeleteCommentary on Once Upon a Time in the West forthcoming (Rebecca and I fell asleep watching it last night, but we're determined to do better tonight). And March pick for the club, too...
Nice!
ReplyDeleteI can just imagine walking past the theater doors and hearing the Indiana Jones music and thinking, "Awesome! I didn't know they were showing that in theaters again!" and then finding out that it was this.
Falling asleep during 'OUaTitW'? Sleepy or bored? I had to watch it on two consecutive nights because it would have kept me up well past my bedtime.