“Turkish Star Wars”, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, The Man Who Saved the World, whatever you call it, the crap remains the same. Wikipedia says “many have considered it to be one of the worst films ever made” and they didn’t even put “[citation needed]” after that claim. It’s just that bad. (In other news, Wikipedia has a “List of films considered the worst” so there goes my weekend.)
The 1982 film has been notoriously hard to find because it filled the gaps in its budget by illegally using footage from Star Wars and newsreel clips from the U.S. and Soviet space programs, as well as stealing music from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, and Moonraker. Due to the rampant theft, low budget, and general ham-handedness of the production, full copies of the film were believed to be lost to the great sarlacc pit of history. But a full 35mm print has just been recovered.
Back in 1982, a projectionist took home the film reels after the theatrical run in Turkey ended, telling the production company the reels had been damaged. That copy has now been found, and film historian Ed Glaser tells Neon Harbor he plans to scan and preserve it. He’d even like to screen it in a theater, but that could definitely raise some legal issues. Man, that would be fun to heckle with a crowd, though.
And despite using bootleg Star Wars and space program footage, the convoluted plot (if you can call it a plot) starts out with a couple of guys crashing their spaceship in a desert on a planet they think may be populated only by women. To test their theory, one of them does a wolf whistle (women can’t resist that), which summons angry skeletons on horseback because sure, why not?
Ugh, I hate when that happens.
That’s just the very beginning of the movie, by the way. The unfettered insanity continues throughout, as seen in the highlight reel above. Man, a lot of people lose their limbs in this. Another way it’s just like the real Star Wars.
(Via Screen Rant and Neon Harbor)