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| From http://i56.photobucket.com/albums/g190/beedubelhue/blog/DUNYAYI-KURTARAN-ADAM-TURKISH-STAR-WARS.jpg |
Dir. Çetin Inanç
Turkey
Film #14 of The ‘Worst’ of Film
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| From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi37YYTgRvg2CKnT9Ar4_NiaFS0iJgzxbcD_2eB1KQLgb5ePXjPSGi36FUC1Smpu1of_EiDWXbEx-JI2O085jfDmobr9KKkuOxio-KS_vLQKdUIXecGGUrzXD5E6XkDL8nzuiG4-DFrAck/s1600/starwars_1.jpg |
I considered films through a
black and white viewpoint when I was younger. They had to have clear narratives
and be well made, something which made Turkish
Star Wars one of the worst films I had ever saw when I viewed it at sixteen
or so in a bender of Google Video
viewings. Now my views have changed, where films of immense quality become
greater but I can appreciate something trashy and badly made as well,
especially when I realised clear narratives can be part of tedious films and
far more experimental, or haphazard, filmmaking engages me more. Unpredictability, to take an idea from
the podcast Damaged Viewing brought
up when reviewing the film – still available to download [here] – is one of
greatest virtues a film can have; even if I know how the plot will end, a great
film, or something special, will make the journey unpredictable in how it gets there. A film as deranged
as Turkish Star Wars is something
for me to admire than to hastily dismiss now.
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| From http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2008/02/turkishclimax_io9.flv.jpg |
After centuries of change where
atomic wars have decimated most of it and pieces of the continents have drifted
off into space, Earth (which suspiciously looks like squashed Death Star) is
under attack by an immortal wizard. With the planet protected by a force field
created from human brainwaves, the wizard needs human brains to destroy it and
attack Earth, forcing two Turkish space pilots onto his own planet where they
must face his bizarre hordes of monsters and stop his plans of galactic
destruction. Turkish Star Wars is infamous,
as a low budget Turksploitation film, for taking footage from Star Wars and using music from
everything from that film to Flash
Gordon (1980). The montage of attractions theory created by Sergei E. Eisenstein, brought up in my
first review for this season blasphemously with Ninja Terminator (1985), is decimated by the slapdash editing of
this, where even the use of music and sound clips is as hastily put together as
the visuals, and yet has a drastic effect on the viewer when viewed together in
this narrative. The difference is that, while Eisenstein wanted to elicit certain emotions from the viewer, this
film causes stupefied amazement instead.
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| From http://www.randomdistribution.com/wp-content/uploads/jump.jpg |
Turkish Star Wars, revisiting it, is a glorious mess, the plot
synopsis my attempt to comprehend a film which can suddenly lunge forward, even
into the middle of a fight, without warning you, where monsters suddenly appear
out of nowhere and the theme from Indiana
Jones, used behind the main hero, suddenly battles with the villain’s Flash Gordon synth. It is some of the
worst filmmaking I have ever seen, but it still manages to be far greater in
quality to shot-on-digital-camera-films of now at their worst, and is
incredible to see, throwing you like a paper bag in the wind and dropping you
off by the end confused and alarmed. It’s as much pre-existing science fiction
and fantasy works, including things that weren’t directly included in the film
but evoked for me during the re-viewing accidentally, as the creators of the
film could cram into a single movie and made into a cabinet of baffling
curiosities. With our main hero who bounces around like Taylor Kitsch in John Carter
(of Mars) (2012), and his womanising friend whose famous whistle to attract
women accidentally conjures up skeletal horsemen to his annoyance, as the good
guys, we see them fight everything from TV headed robots, cybermen, toilet
paper mummies, and to paraphrase a description my younger self used when he
viewed this the first time, the bastard, feral children of Elmo from Sesame Street. It’s a film that, even
when it drags occasionally, is always startling and hilarious, imaginative even
when it’s stealing from everything else, and effectively a long, continuous
fight where anti-war philosophy is matched with a beast having its head karate
chopped off.
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| From http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2008/02/medium_turkishbarfight_io9.flv.jpg |
The philosophy and mythology in
the film adds the cherry to the top of its cake, from the first few minutes in and
the feverishly garbled narration trying to explain the world it is setting up. The
subtitles did not help, or made it even more demented, but the film is a stream
of consciousness of unconventional ideas and erratic science fiction ideas that
adds to the incomprehensible but delightfully creative mass you see (and hear
and read) onscreen. That it includes religion, with an Islamic subtext, adds to
the sincerity of the film that makes it impossible to laugh at it nastily, as
well as a cultural texture not viewable in Western films just as ramshackle. It
is comparable to dreams I’ve actually had where all the anime and genre films I’ve
viewed have become a constantly shifting, yet strangely logical, stream of
images and plot points at rapid fire pacing. My dreams, not to blow my own ego
trumpet or insult the creators of this film, are better made than Turkish Star Wars, but it is able to
leave you in a joyful stupor just as powerful. It’s as if you’ve just watched a barmier
episode of Power Rangers within your
brain that also spliced TIE Fighters in there too without George Lucas looking.
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| From http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2xt0I7GrJKw/0.jpg |
Regardless of whether it’s
technically shoddy, this is the kind of junky splutterings that would be a
breath of fresh air if they were made more often. The vividness of Turkish Star Wars and its own unpredictability
is worth cherishing even if we all admit that would never win any technical
awards for quality. And this was enforced before I watched this film again too
within this season of reviews. The original choice for this slot was Kevin Smith’s Cop Out (2010) with Bruce
Willis and Tracey Morgan which I
turned off after only a quarter of its length, the sense of wasting my life
viewing it all too much to sit through it. For someone whose golden rule is always finish a film, any film, to do
this, and vow never to watch Cop Out
again unless I’m forced to, says so much about how lifeless it was, while even
something as bad as Frozen Scream (1975),
which I reviewed, never felt like a waste of time despite my detestment of it. Turkish Star Wars is far more rewarding
and inspired in its utter travesty of a genre. It’s a film from this season you
need to see once, even if you hate it, and now that my tastes have changed and
I can see its virtues, I look back at my younger self who found it unbearable
and ponder how much of a naive sourpuss he was.
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| From http://images.dead-donkey.com/images/bscap0475mv.jpg |
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