Badi (aka Turkish E.T.) (1983)

"Sorry kid, Reese's Pieces give me gas."

I'm going to be honest here. I don't really like E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial all that much. Yeah, I know it's really well made and that all the kids give amazing, naturalistic performances and one of them says "penis breath" (at least until Spielberg's guns-to-walkie-talkies wussification). My parents took me to see it at the drive-in when I was a kid but I promptly fell asleep, so I don't have any fond childhood memories of seeing the film. I guess I came into it too late. Still, if something were to ever make me appreciate the craft of Spielberg's original it would a low-budget Turkish remake. What's that? There is a Turkish remake? And I've already seen it and I'm writing a review of it right now? Huh. Weird.

Rather than focusing on a single boy's relationship with E.T., Badi ups the ante by including two boys. One is a fair-haired kid named Bülent and the other is a dark-haired kid named Ali (thanks imdb). Bülent is an outgoing kid with several siblings who is busy performing science experiments in the attic when he isn't being chased around by his Super-Mario-esque father under the threat of hilarious child abuse. Ali, on the other hand, is a shy only child with a single mother (I think) and a love for animals. So great is his love for the animal kingdom that he is able to communicate with his pet bird using a series of chirps and whistles.

Unfortunately, Ali's friendship with animals takes a rather tragic turn at the beginning of the film. He befriends a stray dog and tries to take it to his school, without success, but the next day he discovers that the dog has been shot by a local policeman. As the corpse was unceremoniously dumped into the back of a truck it became apparent to me that it really was a dead dog, and what's more that it was the same dog as before. I wondered if maybe the dog was just sedated, but that seems unlikely considering the film appears to be shot in a slum with a budget of 67 cents. Nope, they genuinely killed the dog to make this film. I expect this shit from Italian cannibal films, but not copyright-flaunting Turkish kid flicks. For shame.

With his canine chum out of the picture, the scene is set for Ali's heartwarming intergalactic friendship, but first we are introduced to a few other characters. In Spielberg's film the adult characters are largely absent and/or evil, but here a trio of alien-hunting scientists play a much larger role. There is a woman, who befriends a local electronics repairman, some other guy and an old man. Sorry I can't get more specific than that, but the only Turkish I know are the swears and they aren't likely to show up in a kids' flick so I'm out of luck. Judging by the coloured lighting and shocked expressions, they manage to detect Badi's spacecraft when it lands, although they and a mob of pitchfork-wielding townsfolk all fail to find Badi himself.

In the original movie, E.T. was sent to Earth to collect living specimens for research, but before he could get back to the mother ship and fire up the anal probe it left without him. It's an effective scene that taps into a universal childhood fear of abandonment. In this version, however, Badi just waddles off the smoke-and-disco-lights spaceship and the ship takes off. There's no explanation as to what he's doing there, although one look at him suggets they were dumping his ugly ass like a chihuahua the day after Christmas. Sure, E.T. may resemble a freshly laid turd, but Badi looks like something fished out of a dumpster behind a Ferengi abortion clinic. He's a midget in a cheap rubber suit that looks like a dildo with stumpy legs, rubbery gorilla arms and a face that's both ridiculous and a little bit too human. Terrifying.

Of course, following this there's the scene where Ali meets Badi for the first time. In the original it's a great suspenseful scene that's comically defused when E.T. is just as scared of Elliot as Elliot is of him. It's a pretty pathetic recreation here, with Ali turning and running for his life and Badi, lacking any sort of mobility or articulation, performing an awkward about-face and stumbling off in the other direction. They must have liked this scene though, because they do it again later when he is introduced to Bülent.

The next day Badi visits Ali at home while he is feigning illness to stay home from school. Once he's alone Badi telekinetically opens the front door and, I'm not kidding here, shoots a blast of smoke out of his dick. I'm not sure what they were going for but it was a pretty hilarious misfire. Following this there's the obligatory bonding scene. Ali shows Badi his family photo album, while Badi makes a couple of apples levitate and heals Ali's ankle. It differs a little from the original (I'm pretty sure that E.T. never fondled one of Elliot's nudie mags for instance, although I could be wrong) but they do have an analog to the scene where E.T. eats Reece's Pieces. Badi's mask lacks any sort of articulation though, so he instead feeds Ali some sort of Turkish treat (Turkish delight, perhaps?) and in a shot almost as digusting as Badi himself, Ali starts laughing with his mouth full. A few hours on Earth and Badi is already learning bad habits.

After they pull the gag where Ali's mother wanders around the kitchen with Badi hiding in plain sight, Ali introduces Badi to Bülent and the other kids. In E.T. there's a famously improvised line where, upon meeting the alien, Drew Barrymore says "I don't like his feet." If E.T. looked anything like Badi I can only imagine what she might have said, but I'm sure her distaste would have extended well beyond his lower extremities. Indeed, upon meeting him Bülent's younger brother bursts into tears. Later, when Ali goes to sleep, he has a pretty weird dream where he takes Badi to school and everyone starts doing the chicken dance, including the teacher. Yeah sure, whatever.

Eventually Badi gets bored at home and decides to visit Ali and Bülent at their school, surprising a janitor who falls down in shock and cracks his head on the concrete steps. Once Badi enters the classroom they once again pull the gag where the geriatric teacher wanders around, oblivious to Badi's presence, until he finally spots him and keels over from a heart attack. In fact, Badi leaves quite a sizable trail of psychological trauma and busted heart valves in his wake. When Bülent's father spots Badi wandering the halls (he mistakes him for one of his kids and hilariously threatens to beat him) Badi hits him with another blast of dick-smoke, inspiring a Scooby Doo chase sequence and turning Bülent's father into a gibbering basket-case. Even Ali's mother doesn't escape unscathed, spotting Badi and having yet another heart attack.

While the scientists fart about with oscilloscopes and soldering irons, the blonde kid uses his scientific skills to build a communication device for Badi, constructed primarily from an umbrella covered with aluminium foil, a big silver ball and a circular saw blade. They bring it to the local funfair so they can use the ferris wheel to get a good location to transmit. They also bring along all the kids in town, for some reason, so Badi uses his telekinetic powers to activate all the rides in the park. Way to keep a low profile. The film then takes on a weird Lord of the Flies vibe when Ali gives a rousing, fist-pumping speech to all the kids while perched atop a ride car, but soon the kids hear sirens and scatter.

The next day Ali is totally depressed because Badi has gone missing. Luckily, and I could be wrong here, Ali's pet bird tells him that Badi is lying in the boot of their car. How did the bird know this? Why didn't he say so earlier? Why was Badi in here? I have no idea, but Badi is looking pretty ill after his ordeal and to make things worse a squad of riot police and a garden-tool wielding mob come marching down the street looking for him. Luckily all of the neighbourhood kids cause a distraction (read: riot) by donning masks and running through the streets with smoke grenades, dumping marbles all over the ground and shooting toy guns at the police. Not particularly sensible behaviour, especially with police that regularly gun down harmless stray dogs, but it masks their escape long enough for Bülent and Ali to steal a scrap cart from an old man (who appears to be having a stroke) and recreate the famous flying sequence from the original film. It's truly magical, if by magical you mean a cheap green-screen effect.

Thus we say our tearful goodbyes to Badi, the rubbery freak who waddled off his cheap, unconvincing spacecraft and into our hearts. This particular Turkish rip-off probably isn't as much fun as 3 Dev Adam or Turkish Star Wars, but it's worth a look, especially for Badi himself, who makes the protagonists of bottom-of-the-barrel E.T. rip-offs like Nukie look cute and cuddly by comparison. Most importantly of all, this film has filled my heart with childlike wonder. I may have watched this film in Turkish without subtitles, but truly the magical language of Badi is universal.

Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda (aka Turkish Star Trek) (1973)

Behold the creepy smile of Turkish Kirk

Blogging... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the blog Crustacean Hate. It's continuing mission: to explore strange new flea markets; to seek out rare films and bootleg VHS copies of Turkish movies; to boldly watch where no man has watched before...

With people wetting their collective pants of the new Star Trek reboot/prequel, I figured it was time to go back and revisit one of the all-time classic Star Trek movies. I speak, of course, of Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda, literally "Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek". You see, Star Trek was a very popular TV show in Turkey and Turist Ömer (played by Sadri Alisik) was a character from a series of hit 70s Turkish comedies. Some Turkish film producers concocted the brilliant of idea of combining these two hot properties along with the magic ingredient... a blatant disregard for copyright laws.

The filmmakers shake their asses in the faces of the Paramount lawyers in the very first sequence, where they pinch the entire opening credits from the TV show, albeit tinted red with some surf guitar randomly inserted into the theme song. When we finally see the bridge of the Turkish Enterprise, it actually looks okay. They've done a decent job reproducing the uniforms and sets on what must have been a severely limited budget. Let's face it, the bridge of the Enterprise in the original series didn't look that hot either. They've taken a few liberties with womens' costumes in particular. Uhura's skirt is so short you can see her Klingons.

With the Turkish cast they seem to have done a pretty good job with all of the crew present and accounted for, but I'm not sure about Turkish Kirk. In the original series Captain Kirk was all man, punching and having sex with aliens in equal measure. This incarnation of Kirk seems, I don't know, a little swishy. Plus he's got this really creepy smile. Maybe it's a Turkish thing. The Turkish Spock is no Leonard Nimoy but he does a decent job.

The movie is basically a retelling of the original series episode The Man Trap. Like in the original episode, their mission is a routine visit to Dr Crater and his wife on planet Aurin 7. Nancy Crater, the professor's wife, was once romantically linked with Dr McCoy. However, once they arrive it is clear that something isn't quite right. Nancy seems to appear as a completely different woman to each member of the crew. She uses her hypnotic powers to lure away one of the redshirts (who, I might add, aren't wearing red shirts) and presumably kill him. When the crew discover his body she comes up with the ridiculous story that she saw him gulp down a poisonous alien plant, standard behaviour for any away team I'm sure.

Naturally Kirk and his crew are highly suspicious and it's here that the episode starts to veer from it's source material. For some reason the good doctor has a time machine, so he comes up with the unusual plan of transporting a scapegoat from the past that he can blame for the crew member's death. Naturally he chooses Turist Ömer, who is at that very moment involved in a shotgun wedding to the sister of some Turkish gangsters (or something). After some wacky comic sound effects and terrible special effects, Ömer finds himself on an alien planet. Well, actually I'm pretty sure it's Ephesus, one of Turkey's most popular tourist destinations, but here it's standing in for the ruins of an alien civilisation.

After he runs into some hot, gold-painted women in bikinis and a Tarzan-looking dude in a loincloth (who is a robot), he is taken to the Professor and subsequently palmed off to the crew of the Enterprise, who for some reason believe the Professor's ridiculous story. They place Ömer under arrest and take him back to the ship. Nancy, posing as a redshirt (who is lying in a ditch somewhere, drained of salt) also manages to sneak aboard.

By the time they get Ömer back on the Enterprise it's clear that stealing sound effects from the show has become too much work as people now make 'wssht' noises for doors manually. Once on board Ömer gets up to the usual stuff that passed for comedy back in the early 70s, such as sexually harrassing all of the female crew members. After a "comedy" medical examination they leave Ömer to his own devices and he gets up to all sort of wacky antics, such as using a "sound amplifier" (clearly a torch) to amplify the sound of his gut, causing a red alert. He also continually teases Spock with the Turkish equivalent of "down low, too slow" and when Spock asks the computer to clarify the joke it goes fucking nuts, laughing and blowing smoke. Well, you know what they say about dissecting comedy.

Like in the original episode, it's eventually revealed that Nancy is in fact a salt-vampire, a race of shapeshifting aliens that can hypnotise people and drain their bodies of precious sodium chlorine. Standard fear of female sexuality stuff. By this stage of the film, Nancy has already seduced several crew members and drained the salt out of their bodies, although rather than use her suckers like in the original episode she just rubs her hands all their face and then licks her fingers. Not a very efficient method, to be honest. Eventually they make their way back onto the alien planet to confront the doctor, with Nancy stowing away with them. The doctor escapes, but Spock uses his "seventh sense" (whuh?) to open up the hidden escape passage.

On the cliffs outside, Kirk is attacked by a fire-breathing space monster, a guy in a baggy orange costume with over-sized rubber gloves and a crappy plastic mask. You know some poor extra was paid a few Turkish Lira a day to sit in that suit operating the flame thrower and breathing in toxic fumes. The real Kirk would probably have fought the monster with his bare hands, but this weak-sauce Kirk cowers behind some rocks (even though the flames are nowhere near him) and tosses some styrofoam boulders at it to no effect. Eventually Spock jumps out and saves his ass by zapping it with a phaser blast effect that is scratched into the film stock.

Once they run into Nancy she turns into a hot Vulcan chick, putting Spock under her spell. When Kirk tries to bring him to his senses, they each pick up those Shaolin-looking Vulcan weapons (there just happens to be pile of them lying nearby) , which are called Lirpa apparently, and get with the fighting in what is a clear homage to the fight scene in the original series episode Amok Time. Somehow the fight is even lamer, especially since it doesn't have the classic music. Come on, you weren't squeamish about the theme music, why start now?

Finally, Doctor Crater unleashes his secret weapon... a whole army of Tarzan robots. While they punch and kick at the crew with the grace and skill of a beginner Karate class, Doctor Crater and Nancy argue about killing the crew. Doctor Crater wants them dead so the two of them can be left alone, while Nancy wants them to live so they can call in the troops and supply her with an endless supply of salt. Eventually Nancy turns on the Doctor and kills him, while Ömer fiddles with a doohickey that makes the Tarzan robots turn on eachother.

The final confrontation with the salt-vampire takes place in some cave tunnels. Like in the original, it's McCoy who is forced to zap the monster with his phaser as it pleads with him in the shape of his former girlfriend. When Ömer rushes in with the intention of warning the crew about the monster (who up until now was posing as McCoy), he does a triple take at McCoy and then another triple take at the monster. That's a lot of takes. Clearly the Turks were pushing the boundaries of comic cinema.

For some reason it turns out that the transporter is also capable of sending people through time, so the crew gather around give Ömer a farewell. He kisses them all goodbye (kissing Spock an unprecented six times) and then they dump him right back in the middle of his shotgun wedding. Luckily for him some of Spock's skin flakes must have gotten mixed into the transporter because Ömer has been given Spock ears and the ability to perform the Vulcan nerve pinch. He's so happy to get out of the wedding that his shouted thanks travel through space-time and onto the bridge of the Enterprise. The crew exchange a few "oh-that-wacky-Ömer" expressions and head off on their next copyright-infringing adventure.

But what of the eternal question that has plagued nerds since time immemorial (or at least the late 70s)... Turkish Star Wars or Turkish Star Trek? Well, Turkish Star Wars is far more incompetent, but as a result far more entertaining. Turkish Star Trek also loses points for actually trying to be funny. Sorry Turkish Trekkies (Turkies?), going to have to give this one to the boulder-punching fabulousness of Turkish Star Wars.

3 Dev Adam (1973)

Oh, spidey! What have they done to you?

Spider-Man, Captain America and Santo? How could you go wrong? Oh, but you can. So very, very wrong. 3 Dev Adam (3 Mighty Men) was Turkey's response to the superhero craze. Throwing together a rudimentary knowledge of some popular superheroes with a blatant disregard for copyright laws, the result is an uncomfortable blend of superheroics and a straight crime film.

The film opens with our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man down at the beach with some friends. At least, I think it's him. His outfit has gone from red and blue to red and green, and there's nary a web to be seen. He's looking a bit paunchy too, and what's more, he has these big honkin' eyebrows protruding from his mask. He's none too friendly either. In fact, he buries a woman up to her neck in the sand and shreds her face with an outboard motor while cackling insanely. I'm beginning to think this movie isn't strictly canon.

It seems ol' webhead is the head of an international crime organisation, and the Turkish police have called in the services of Santo, Captain America (played by Aytekin Akkaya from Turkish Star Wars) and Cap's useless sidekick/girlfriend Julia. Santo explains that Spider-Man is stealing Turkish artifacts and then selling them in the USA for a pittance. Then he's buying them back for a huge amount, but paying with counterfeit money. This is a pretty stupid scheme, but it's worked well for him so far. It should be noted that these heroes really like a drink. In almost every scene where they're off the clock they've got a drink in their hand. Being in this film, I can't really blame them.

Before long, Spider-Man is attacked by a couple of trenchcoated mafia types, but he foils them by hiding behind some wooden planks and then stabbing them with a switchblade. See, it could have been worse than organic webshooters. He emits a gravelly "Adios, mafia!" but I think "Arrivederci, Mafia!" would have worked better.

Upon discovering the bodies of the mafia goons, our heroes split up to try and gather some information. Captain America is out for a drive with the police chief when he asks why they wear costumes. Captain America responds "The Spider is a child-minded lunatic. When he sees someone else wearing a mask he wants to destroy them. My suit is bullet proof." "I see." responds the police chief. Well I'm glad he does.

Julia is sent to an international fashion show, which is being held in someone's living room for some reason. She is discovered by Spider-Man's girlfriend Nadja (not MJ) when she starts snooping around behind the scenes. Luckily, Cap is driving nearby, and the captive Julia is able to signal them with her high-tech watch. She is taken to a house in the countryside by some goons, tied to a column and slapped around. Soon Cap (in costume, finally) punches through the paper-thin door and starts a fistfight with the goons (unfortunately it looks like he couldn't get his shield through customs). At several points he hangs from a rope and executes the most awkward and embarrassing blows ever committed to film. Spider-Man shows up and they engage in a brief footchase, during which a drunken bum sees the costumed superheroes and blames his booze. Oh, my aching sides! Eventually Spider-Man leaps into his crappy old car and drives off. Cap clings to the side of the vehicle but is dislodged by repeated blows to the head.

Meanwhile, Santo stakes out Spider-Man's PO box. He follows the courier back to a gym, and that evening he dons his wrestling outfit (shiny silver mask, sequined cape... perfect for sneaking around unnoticed) and stalks around the main office, shoving various documents down the front of his lycra pants. He is discovered by the mafioso owner and engages in a punch up with him and a bunch of Karate dudes who arrive for some late night sparring. He also heroically helps himself to the contents of the gym owner's wallet.

After throttling a woman in her bathtub and stealing her precious artifact, Spidey calls a meeting with his henchmen. Remember the gym owner from earlier? Well it seems the papers Santo stole contained some sensitive material, and Spidey suspects the gym owner of being a spy. In a Richard Gere meets Bond villain type of punishment, he places one end of a plastic tube over his face and inserts a couple of ravenous guinea pigs. Death by guinea pig! Spidey's cackle goes into overdrive.

While the police chief takes in a striptease (with nipple tassels, this is a kid's show after all) at Spider-Man's private club, Cap and Santo storm the counterfeit operation and beat up the mafia goons. Spider-Man, meanwhile, stabs a couple while they're making out in the shower. That's the second time he's ambushed people in their bathrooms... what a pervert! Later he has sex with Nadja, where she hallucinates a bunch of freaky puppets during orgasm. Yeah, I don't know either, maybe it's a Turkish thing.

During another one of Spidey's robberies that night, he is ambushed by Santo and Captain America, and here is where it gets really weird. Spider-Man is fighting both Santo and Captain America in different rooms simultaneously. Santo and Cap pummel both Spideys, and that's when another Spider-Man pops up and runs away. What the hell? Well, as far as multiple Spider-Men go, it's no less stupid than that whole Clone Wars saga. Anyway, Spider-Man shouts "Goodnight Americanos!" to our heroes and drives off in his car.

The next day, Santos and Captain America head to Spider-Man's gentleman's club in eye-searing leisurewear. Julia is posing as a famous stripper, and their plan is to create a diversion so she can kidnap Spidey's courier. For some reason, their diversion consists of getting into a fight and then pretending to faint. Why the bad guys don't immediately beat them to death or shoot them I don't know, but it works, and Julia knocks the courier unconscious by clobbering her on the head with her shoe (luckily it's the 70s so she's got chunky platforms on).

The bad guys take Santo and Cap to an old warehouse. While Julia and the police chief attempt to extract info from the courier, the two heroes stage an escape by pretending to beat the crap out of each other. Captain America chases after Spider-Man and, after being hindered by some sort of super-powered floor fan, starts another lackluster fight. Eventually Cap crushes his head in some sort of hydraulic press, but suddenly another cackling Spider-Man pops up out of nowhere. Where are they all coming from, and who is going to clean up all these Spider-corpses? A few more Spideys are beaten and crushed by industrial equipment before they stop spawning. So I guess he's defeated then? Okay. Our heroes say their goodbyes, but not before some kid plays a trick on Cap by hiding in the taxi wearing a Spider-Man mask. Ha, ha, ha! What a joker!

Aysecik ve sihirli cüceler rüyalar ülkesinde (aka Turkish Wizard of Oz) (1971)

Our heroes take part in another clumsy, poorly choreographed dance routine

I suppose it's not really fair to call this film a rip-off of the 1939 MGM classic, since the US film was not the first nor the last attempt to adapt Frank L. Baum's classic novel to the big screen. However, this film does take borrow a great deal from the MGM film, and puts it's own bizarre and unmistakably Turkish stamp on the proceedings. It literally translates to "Aysecik and the Magic Dwarfs in the Land of Dreams", Aysecik referring to our Dorothy stand-in, a character who had already starred in a series of Turkish childrens' films. She is played by Zeynep Degirmencioglu, and seems a lot more... glamorous than in the MGM classic. There's no English subtitles, but I doubt they would have helped much anyway. This film is cuckoo-bananas.

Unfortunately, the trading of Kansas for Turkey has left Aysecik's guardians farming a mountainous wasteland, fit for cultivating naught but dust and rocks. Nevertheless, Aysecik lives a happy and carefree existence with her little dog Toto, er, I mean Banju. The arrival of the twister prompts a change to some shoddy cel animation, presumably since it's cheaper to animate than some real-life special effects. Once she wakes up, the film suddenly and inexplicably cuts to Aysecik in the middle of a dance with some Turkish munchkins. She retrieves the silver slippers from the flattened witch (they're silver in the original book and besides ruby is so last year) and with a kiss from the Good Witch she skips into the forest. There's no brick road in this version, yellow or otherwise, just acres of dull Turkish woodland.

Dorothy comes across the scarecrow in a field, in a scene that plays out similar to the MGM movie, except that for some reason the scarecrow is a mincing gay stereotype. Fabulous! After his rescue, Aysecik and the scarecrow engage in a song and dance routine that seemingly goes on forever, not helped by the fact that neither of them can sing or dance. They also find the tin woodsman rusted up in a clearing in another sequence much like the 1939 film, although I swear the scarecrow hits on the tin woodsman at one point. The cowardly lion suffers the worst from the reduced budget, wearing a baggy body suit with clumps of hair stapled to his groin.

After a run-in with some gropetastic trees, the three of them stumble across a miniature village of living dolls. Two of the creepy dolls have a chat with Aysecik, which ends with everyone in tears (the Tin Woodsman is unaffected, presumably due to his lack of a heart). Following a brief journey on a river raft, they receive another visit from the munchkins.

Now it should be noted that the munchkins are a little different in this film. There are seven of them, and they can perform magic and appear and disappear at will. They dress like Nutcrackers and tend to line up in height order and laugh their asses off at absolutely everything. Here they have a clumsy song and dance with Aysecik and company, and then send them on their way.

At an incredibly bad model of the Emerald Palace, they meet up with a frighteningly jolly fellow in a fez, who leads them to meet the Wizard of Oz. The magic dwarves also appear to slingshot pebbles at the portly fellow's ass and then disappear when he turns around. They must have thought this was particularly amusing because they proceed to repeat the sequence several times. They finally meet the Wizard who, rather unimpressively, turns out to be skull on a table next to a flaming oil drum. Presumably, the Wizard instructs them to kill the Wicked Witch and they leave.

This is followed by a bizarre scene, where the scarecrow is disemboweled and turned into a pile of hay in which to hide Aysecik and the cowardly lion. I presume were trying to hide from the gaze of the Wicked Witch (who in this version, has a face that appears to be covered in a horrible fungus), but it doesn't work because she watches all of this occur. She sends out her soldiers, who tear apart the scarecrow and bash the tin woodsman with oversized styrofoam boulders.

Aysecik is taken to see the Wicked Witch who puts her in a dungeon. After the Witch tricks her into giving up her silver slippers, Aysecik defeats the Wicked Witch by throwing some water on her. This causes her to writhe around in an orgiastic manner before disappearing off camera. The soldiers of the Wicked Witch are happy to be free of her, and Aysecik and her pals return to see the Wizard, who is revealed as a man in a cheap Merlin costume. He gives what I assume is the speech about their brains, heart and courage being inside them all along. He agrees to see her home in a hot air balloon, but thanks to Banju's antics, she misses the balloon and the Wizard (or at least a doll in a model hot air balloon) floats away alone.

So, Aysecik and her three friends are on the road again in an attempt to find the Good Witch. They stop in for a song and dance number with the doll village, before coming across some caves filled with hammer-wielding cavemen. Thankfully, the munchkins appear and blast the cavemen with a cannon. The munchkins, of course, find their acts of violence hilarious. After several more awful dance sequences, she finally meets up with the Good Witch, and after a tearful goodbye, Aysecik clicks her heels three times and she's back on her dirt farm.

In some ways, this film is more faithful to Frank L. Baum's book than the 1939 film, but the pacing and editing make it seem like a random sequence of unconnected events. Frequent song and dance sequences are hampered by a cast who are obviously not up to the task. It doesn't have the manic energy and abstract craziness of Turkish Star Wars, but it's certainly strange, especially for someone who grew up with the MGM classic.

Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (1982)

Just one example of this film's flagrant boulder abuse.

The Italians may know how to suck at a genre's teat until it's a shrivelled, black husk, but when it comes down to pure, copyright-infringing cojones, you can't go past the Turks. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Turkey plundered a lot of Hollywood films to make their own low-budget localised versions. Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) aka "Turkish Star Wars" is probably the most well known of them. That's not to say it's a scene for remake of Star Wars. It's an utterly bizarre tale of magical brains, exploding boulders and big red muppets, but it liberally salts the proceedings with stolen material from Star Wars and other films. The pilfered soundtrack is particularly egregious... the score from Raiders of the Lost Ark is used extensively, as well as sections of Flash Gordon and Moonraker.

The film starts with some random clips from Star Wars spliced with some stock footage of rocket launches, while a monologue explains how the Earth is being broken into pieces by evil space lasers and protected by a shield made of compacted brain molecules. Or something.

The best two Turkish pilots the planet has to offer, Murat and Ali (Cuneyt Arkin and Aytekin Akkaya, both major Turkish film stars at the time) are taking part in a thrilling space battle. This scene was filmed by thriftily rear-projecting Star Wars space battle footage behind the two actors as they wear motorcycle helmets with mouthpieces attached. This is made even less convincing by the fact that the Star Wars footage is in the wrong aspect ratio and little effort has been made to edit it appropriately.

The villain trying to destroy the Earth is the "magician", a beardo in a spiky cardboard helmet who is equal parts Darth Vader and Ming the Merciless. Murat and Ali manage to save the Earth, but crash land on a strange desert planet. Eventually they come across some stock footage of Egyptian ruins (the Sphinx, pyramids, etc), set to the spooky sounds of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D-minor. It should also be noted that the desert planet scenes are filmed in Cappadocia, and the idea that a Turkish audience would buy such a well known tourist destination as an alien landscape is optimistic at best.

Soon, about half a dozen soldiers on horseback arrive and start fighting with our heroes. It is here that we are introduced to the first of many fight scenes, which are played out with the skill and grace of a drunken bar fight at SpazzCon '08 (which was great, by the way). Their Turk Fu is so strong, enemies are wounded by punches that miss by at least a meter. Also, each enemy spear thrust is punctuated by someone going "wshhhk" into a microphone.

Eventually they defeat the soldiers and escape on horseback, while actors in cheap masks randomly roar into the camera. Your guess is as good as mine. Soon they are attacked again, this time by Cylon knock-offs, and captured. They are taken to an outdoor arena, where a bunch of gladiators engage in battles to the death. This is overseen by a knock-off Robby the Robot. Murat and Ali watch while the robot chokes a kid to death (Robby never did that) before leaping into the fray and mopping the floor with the alien thugs.

In the heat of battle they sustain a few wounds, and the subsequent gush of blood reveals to magician that they are human beings. This is important because he needs a human brain in order to break through the forcefield surrounding Earth. Murat and Ali manage to escape into a cave thanks to the help of a mute blonde woman. Murat starts making googly eyes with her while some sort of Turkish Obi-Wan Kenobi starts going on about the 13th tribe, and advanced technology, I don't know, it's all very confusing and stupid.

Soon enough, one of the magician's henchman, an alien made entirely of carpet samples, busts in and start murdering everyone in sight, including about half a dozen children, but by this stage Murat and Ali have escaped with the blonde woman and her son. The magician drinks some blood through a novelty straw, which turns the bodies of the kids into paper mache mummies wrapped in toilet paper. I swear I'm not making this up.

Now it's obvious that our heroes are no match for the magician in their current state, so Murat and Ali engage in the most hardcore rock-based training montage I've ever seen. Rocks are mercilessly punched, slapped, kicked and bench-pressed. Murat also ties some boulders to his legs and starts bouncing around as if there were trampolines hidden just out of frame. By the end of it they are punching boulders in half and kicking rocks into cliff-faces so hard that they explode. Such is the power of Turk Fu.

After Murat and the blonde woman engage in the most brief and dispassionate kiss I've ever seen, he and Ali head off to the local cantina to mete out fist-based justice. Scenes of the cantina are intercut with footage from the corresponding scene in Star Wars, which only brings the cheap Turkish costumes into sharp relief. Soon Murat and Ali are beating on all manner of alien beasts, including a hilarious fuzzy red alien. Eventually they are interrupted by the magician, who captures them and takes them back to his palace.

The magician tries to convince Murat to join him, while the magician's wife tries to seduce Ali. They refuse, and within a minute or two both are fighting some more aliens. Murat uses his unstoppable Turk Fu to chop off a alien's arms with his bare hands, and stab it with it's own severed limbs. They continue to cause mayhem until some budget Cylons appear and zap them with lasers.

The magician then renders unto them a horrific act of torture, which consists of putting them in some tombs and dumping a small amount of dirt on their faces. They defeat the magician's evil plan by sitting up. Probably embarrassed by this development, the magician then punishes his wife for her failure to seduce Ali by turning her into a monster from a completely different film. Then into a spider. I think.

Despite the fact that the two heroes have stomped the guts out of every henchman so far, the magician feels it would be a good idea to put them into yet another arena battle. This time the foe is the carpet-sample monster, which Murat defeats with the awesome trampoline jumping power of Turk Fu. Aliens subsequently swarm the arena and Ali is captured.

After some instruction from Obi-Wan, Murat and the girl are sent to find a magical golden brain and sword which they can use to defeat the magician. After some more fights Murat finds the two mystical artifacts. The sword is cleverly disguised as a cheap balsa wood prop. He tears up some alien shit and heads back to the palace to save his friend.

Once he has been rescued, Ali gives the artifacts to Obi-Wan, who turns out to be the magician in disguise. Then he is fatally injured in a random explosion. Following a tearful death scene, Murat melts down the sword and brain and dips his hands and feet in the resulting goop, which surprisingly results in a matching pair of golden gauntlets and boots and not deep tissue burns.

He then proceeds to bust a wide variety of alien heads, chopping them in half and punching them so hard that they explode. Meanwhile, it is shown (via some more stolen Star Wars footage) that the magician is about to blow up the Earth. Murat uses his jumping powers to dodge the magician's attacks and his explosive boulder-kicking abilities to disorient him. Eventually Murat is victorious, smacking the magician in the face a few times before karate chopping him in half.

A job well done, he says goodbye to the blonde woman, giving her a fairly apathetic kiss on the forehead. Thus ends the story of Murat, the man who saved the world through the power of rock-punching.

The confusing and disjointed nature of this plot review only barely manages to capture that of the movie. I think the script was taken in dictation from a hyperactive 10 year old breathlessly describing the best movie EVAR. Why does the magician need Murat or Ali's brain when the desert planet is filled with people? What's up with that golden brain? Who cares, let's punch some more aliens.

Turk Fu is pretty fun to watch the first few times, but the fun of watching a man awkwardly pummel a fuzzy red Chewbacca gets old the fifth time around. The film is about an hour and a half, but it seems like at least two due to the interminable fight scenes. If you're going to watch this film, then keep one hand on the fast forward button. Or just watch clips on youtube.

There's also a sequel, but before you start punching boulders with excitement, it was released in 2006, it's a comedy (intentionally) and it's currently number 7 on imdb's bottom 100 movies.