Turkish Star Wars - A Terrible Hope

In life, one will occasionally stumble upon a few bad movies that either has a lousy stinking storyline, campy special-effects, or extremely wooden acting. They are a pain in the ass to watch, and simply a waste of my life just to endure that 2 hours. Despite knowing all this, nothing can seriously prepare you for the sheer insanity that is Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves The World), more popularly referred to as "Turkish Star Wars" due to the excessive bootlegging of space dogfight scenes from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, particularly those of the Death Star trench run. Watching the movie was akin to smoking yourself silly with shisha while high on alcohol. It's that bad, but hilarious, nonetheless.

Curiously, the Turks seem to have a penchant for recycling Hollywood blockbuster films to their own version, usually on a shoestring budget most of the time. Other notable "copycat" movies include Turkish Star Trek, Turkish E.T., Turkish Wizard Of Oz and of course, Turkish Superman. But Dunyayi still holds the number one spot for the masterpiece crass that is pirated Star Wars.

Produced in 1982 during the politically-upheaving times in Turkey meant that access to American-made movies were simply next to impossible. Thus almost no one then back in the country had heard of Jaws, Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones, to name a few. So director Cetin Inanc decided to make his legendary movie based on, well, Star Wars, for the Turkish cinema. Normally I would steer clear of bad, B-Grade movies, but not this one, which has been officially named as one of the worst movies ever made. It's so bad that it's surprisingly good to watch, and is essentially THE ultimate flick for lonely Saturday nights. Need to unwind? Watch Dunyayi. Had a bad day at work today? Pop Dunyayi into the DVD player.

Therefore, without further ado, let's buckle ourselves into the seat of the Kurtaran, I mean err, Millennium Falcon and grab your popcorn as you sit back and let the plot unravel slowly below (not that there's much spoilers to give away anyway - it's just basically a hack and slash plot) :-

CHAPTER 01: IT IS A TIME OF CIVIL WAR
A long time ago in a Turkish-speaking galaxy far, far away, there lived this badass megalomaniac in a colorful Mardi Gras-like costume (let's call him Turkish Vader) who had this evil intention of invading and conquering Earth (what else if not that?). Helping him in his nefarious scheme is a slutty princess, an evil blue robot with a trashcan for a head and an ambulance light on top of it (I swear), his personal gay-looking sidekick with a generous helping of afro hair, and a few more generic-looking henchmen. The opening credits of the film is, thankfully, devoid of the infamous Star Wars text crawl and theme song, so I guess credit must be given here for the creativity of the Dunyayi crew for using their own theme music. Then a few clips of planets are mashed together, including shots of the Death Star, broken in between by occasional shots of NASA rockets blasting off into space, and images of planets being blown to smithereens by the Death Star itself. Random segments of TIE fighters and X-Wings also make their debut in this scene.

CHAPTER 02: THE MEN WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD
The scene then cuts to both of our heroes whose mission is to oppose Turkish Vader and his band of merry villains and save the world from their clutches of evil. Unlike other heroes, both the protagonists in this film are essentially potbellied, middle-aged men - Murat (the one with his head full of grey hair) and Ali (a horny womanizer) - wearing the typical kapcai motorcycle helmet with the visor removed. A pair of old-style walkman headphones are attached to the helmet, either because they think it looks cool or just simply a case of not wanting to let it go to waste. Director Cetin Inanc wanted the first 8 minutes of the movie to feature the heroes engaging the enemy starfighters, but no budget was present. The solution? Rip off scenes from the space dogfight sequences in Star Wars. In what appears to be a bizarre twist of the heroic duo piloting TIE fighters (minus the TIE pilot costume) battling waves of evil X-Wing fighters apparently sent by Turkish Vader himself, the close-up shots of the heroes have them to be pretending to fly while grainy footage of the fore mentioned dogfight plays on a rear projection screen just behind them. But this is only a quarter of the madness so far, as you will see.

CHAPTER 03: ONLY SILVER STORMTROOPERS CAN BE SO IMPRECISE
A bright bolt of lightning soon brings both of our heroes crash-landing onto an alien desert planet. Unfortunately there was also no planned budget for this scene so what you get is short segment of auroras while the heroes dig out of the rubble and dust themselves. At first, the surrounding area is reminiscent to the planet Tatooine of the 1977 classic. The next shot reveals pyramids and the Sphinx, so it doesn't take a smart individual to realize it's Egypt after all. No sooner than that, a horde of Skeleton Knights on horses in red flowing capes appear to terminate the duo, but are easily dispatched off with a flurry of karate chops and throws, even though Murat and Ali's punches constantly miss the bad guys by as much as five good inches. In what you will witness to be probably one of the worst ever display of fighting skills and combat choreography, the evil horsemen just seem to be standing around or waiting patiently for the heroes to throw and judo them off the horses. And all this while the soundtrack from "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" plays in the background over and over again. One can't help but wonder if director Cetin Inanc is either out of ideas or out of his mind, or both. Nevertheless, this movie follows the "Cliched Rules Of Close-Quarter Combat" very closely in the sense that ten well-trained and heavily-armed villains in full armor and riding atop horses can be so easily defeated by two unarmed and dazed heroes. It's amazing.

CHAPTER 04: WOT, NO LIGHTSABERS?
Fleeing by horse, the two then arrive at a small village, where they are subsequently taken captive by Turkish Vader's army, comprised of skinny gladiators, red furry monsters and silver Stormtroopers. The same skinny muscle-free gladiators in modified pots as helmets soon begin hacking and killing skinny muscle-free slaves. In the chaos, Murat devises a plan to escape with Ali, albeit a ridiculous one that involves spinning their captors around and round. The plan works, and soon the duo retreat into the caves with a sexy, Cleopetra-like lady with a scruffy-looking boy in need of a good bath. All's good until one of the protagonists accidentally stumble upon a room containing... mummies in fake toilet paper wrapping! As if on cue, the zombies come alive and break into the rooms, killing all the children (except for one) with their dirty fingernails. More walls come crashing down, but this time red and black variants of furry red monsters emerge. They too, assist in the massacre. Escaping into another room filled with a handful of survivors, both Murat and Ali block the doorway by means of a rolling stone, and without warning a six-foot tall brown Chewbacca-esque walking carpet emerges from nowhere and starts beating the remaining refugees to a bloody pulp with its shoestring whips! To add confusion to this whole movie, nothing is mentioned about the two heroes along with the nameless blonde and her bastard son; they seem to have vanished into thin air. To further emphasize the horror of the killings, Cutin Inanc decided to display the children's blood-splattered corpses on screen, whereby they subsequently turn into mummies after Turkish Vader is finished with drinking their blood. The heroic duo, along with the foxy lady and the remaining child are next seen retreating further into the mountains to prepare for the big battle, which means that a total workout and kungfu training will be needed. This is where the fun starts.

CHAPTER 05: USE THE KEBAB, LUKE
To begin, both the heroes level up their kungfu skills by chopping endlessly at cardboard rocks, scratch their fingers on the ground, and attain the ability to jump great distances by securing cardboard boulders onto their ankles and leap around like an astronaut on marijuana. Both of them do these incredible feats shirtless. I don't mind it if they have the body sculpture of Bruce Lee, Schwarzenegger or even Stallone, but sadly both Murat and Ali are blessed with the body shapes that somewhat resemble Jabba The Hutt. Next, Murat shows us that the same boulders are amazingly explosive if you kick them towards a cliff. The finale of the training dawns with Murat trying his best to look pissed-off towards the camera as he chops yet another cardboard boulder, but this time in half, leaving his hands bloodied.

CHAPTER 06: LUKE, I AM YOUR TURKISH FATHER
The duo then bid their farewell to the girl (did I mention that she's mute too?) and head towards a small-time town and invariably end up inside a bar, also roughly fleshed out as the Lucas original. The patrons in the bar comprise of men in ugly rubber masks, skinny muscle-free gladiators, and a few unintelligible ones (it doesn't matter since it's a mindless flick anyway). Murat and Ali order drinks but a fight suddenly breaks out, leaving them no choice but to beat everyone silly. Enter Kung Fu Joe, a Shaolin warrior wannabe donning a stereotype Asian rubber mask complete with a Fu Manchu moustache. A few more bad guys join the fight, but they are no match for our heroes' fighting prowess. Suddenly, with the help of bad video editing effects and cheesy camera trickery, Turkish Vader appears and stands on top of a table, of all the places to stand! With cheapskate transition effects that involve moving a red filter across the lens (presumably to simulate, erm, a red transition effect), Turkish Vader tells Murat that he has both the blonde and her bastard son with him and threatens to harm them should he disobey him right there and then. Our heroes have no choice but to submit, and they have God to thank that Turkish Vader isn't a gay asshole who decides to sexually probe them before whisking them both back to his lair (or did he?).

CHAPTER 07:
Back at their terrifying headquarters, our heroes are forced to change into painfully stupid glossy clothes - Murat's shirt comes with two red circles in position where his nipples should be. Must be a fetish or something, but soon we learn that Turkish Vader is actually merciful and kind. He proposes to them that should they join him (because it's their destiny and crap like that), the three will rule the Turkish galaxy together as good friends. Naturally, buffed-up Murat declines, and this angers Vader a lot. And I mean a hell lot. So angry is he for wasting his saliva with Murat that he orders the Skeleton Knights and furry monsters (which seem to be abundant in this movie) to destroy them. Thus and so begins yet another round of senseless beatings, karate-chops and dismemberments of bodily parts. At this point, it's tempting to just fast-forward and get to the next part, but I must insist that you stay for the cheesy actions. About halfway into the fight, and in what would probably be Murat's most defining moment of the whole film, he blocks a sword thrust with his palms, puts the cutting edge of the weapon into his mouth and freaking karate chops it into pieces! Now I would seriously pay ten bucks to see these kind of insane movies at the cinema, I kid you not.

CHAPTER 08:


CHAPTER 09:


CHAPTER 10:


To be continued