Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (1982)

It's not very often that my love for old sci-fi films and my dedication to my project to work my way through all of the movies considered to be the worst ever made cross over. It does happen, see: Robot Monster, Fire Maidens from Outer Space and The Creeping Terror - a movie which is incredibly close to being one of the worst things I've ever watched... but for the most part the Worst Movies Ever Made is quite a nice genre spanning selection and I wouldn't say a whole chunk of them are exclusive to a single genre. At least not yet. But case in point, this week I'm moving on to: Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, or "The Man Who Saves The World" in English. A Turkish language film endearingly referred to on the internet as "Turkish Star Wars" although it has little if anything to do with the Lucasfilm franchise storyline wise, it does heavily and cheekily borrow footage from the original Star Wars amongst other movies. This is not my first rodeo with a Turkish mockbuster. At the beginning of the year I covered Badi / Turkish E.T and it was objectively one of the worst things I've ever watched... but not necessarily unenjoyable... and I'm genuinely actually quite looking forward to going into this one. I have quite high expectations that it's going to be a completely over-the-top, ridiculous affair with a completely nonsensical plot. In much the same vein at Badi to be honest. So uh... yeah let's see how we get on!

So... after some, frankly bat shit insane exposition set over footage of the Death Star and Tie-Fighters... the movie tells the story of how the Earth, millions of years in the future, is now protected from alien attacks from space by a massive shield built out of brain molecules... no really... and that it - the Earth is now constantly under attack from some unknown space entity. The races of Earth decide that the only way to stop these attacks is to confront the enemy head on. No pun intended. And send 2 Turkish "warriors" into space to find and defeat this enemy. What follows is then some more 'lifted' footage from the Rebel assault on the Death Star with some Turkish bits spliced in... and to be honest I'm not quite sure what is going on but it ends with Tayfun 2 getting shot down - I think - and we then cut to the surface of a planet where our heroes Murat (Cüneyt Arkın) and Ali (Aytekin Akkaya) emerge from the ground, dust themselves off and come to terms with the fact that they have been marooned on an alien world. They opine that maybe they have been shot down on a world inhabited entirely by women and whilst exploring what looks very recognizably like the Giza desert of Egypt, the movie just suddenly cuts to the pair being under attack by skeleton men on horseback? They kill the skeleton men and steal 2 horses riding away as the Indiana Jones theme music plays before another jerky transition cuts to them both being held captive by what I assume is this movies big bad? Seriously what did they use to edit this thing? A paper shredder? Murat and Ali are forced to watch as a bunch of what look like Roman soldiers go about massacring an entire village of humans, until they decide they can't take any more and fight their way free, taking out everyone in their way as they do. Murat and Ali presumably fight enough of the space-romans away because we abruptly jump to the next scene where they are in a cave surrounded by orphan children and a pretty blonde lady is tending to their wounds. A Wiseman appears and explains to the pair that the planet is home to their human ancestors: the 13th tribe, and that it is a part of Earth that arrived here following the first great Atomic war. It's... look just go with it... The Wiseman explains that someone called The Wizard owns the planet and that he is about to conquer the Earth and is very interested in Murat and Ali now that he knows they are on the surface of his planet (some of this, honestly, is conjecture. I'm trying my best here...!). Then there is a short scene that I think implies that The Wizard survives by intravenously drinking the blood of humans? Then there is a training montage as Murat and Ali punch some rocks topless whilst the blonde lady looks on adoringly. I think. The Wizard appears and he turns 2 people into "Dead Alive" but that seemingly goes nowhere because then we cut to Murat and Ali saying goodbye to the blonde lady, Murat and her apparently developing something of a romance. They then go to a bar that is suspiciously like the Cantina Bar on Mos Eisley... complete with hostile aliens and proceed to get into a fight with characters dressed like football mascots, before they are interrupted when The Wizard who after boasting about how powerful he is and how he controls everything, shows Murat and Ali that he controls the pretty blonde lady and her baby brother as well. He invites the heroes to his palace where he hopes they can end their relationship with friendship rather than hatred... The pair proceed to then be "escorted" by two very persuasive tinmen from Wizard of Oz with guns to the palace. At the palace, Murat gets taken away by a robot to meet The Wizard, whilst The Wizard; wanting the brains of the pair, commands his Queen (Necia Fide) to seduce Ali... Whilst Ali is busy with her, The Wizard offers Murat the chance to join him, boasting that together they will own the Earth and the stars, but Murat refuses. Claiming that with the power of his ancestors they can defeat him. The Wizard shows Murat that he has taken the girl and her brother prisoner and when Murat begins to lose his cool a fight breaks out with Murat attacking anyone and everyone that tries to take him on! It appears The Wizard even recruited some of the football mascots from earlier as there is a reasonably cool scene where Murat chops the arm off a big red fluffy guy with his bare hand and uses the arms claws to kill the thing. Ali ends up joining Murat in the melee when, after almost falling for Queen's seduction, finds himself with some furry hands around his neck and has to battle his way free. Murat opines on how he managed to break himself away from the women and join him... but then The Wizard uses some kind of weapon (?) and it appears the pair are defeated. The Wizard then tries to bury the pair alive, claiming it is the ultimate torture, but that seemingly doesn't work. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish to be honest... so instead they are sent to the arena with hope that when they lose, they will submit their will to The Wizard. The Wizard then destroys Queen for failing him. Murat is forced to fight a big creature thing in the arena which he defeats after jumping over it and somersaulting alot. After defeating it he somehow now has the pretty blonde lady and her brother with him and escapes from the arena with them, leaving Ali behind, still held captive. Back at the village, the Wiseman from earlier explains to Murat that there is a sword and brain forged from the melted golden mountain of the 13th tribe that is the only weapon that can stop The Wizard (there is some references to Islam that I won't pretend to fully understand...). He also explains that his daughter, presumably the blonde lady has been mute since the day they were hidden which does explain why all she keeps doing is smiling at Murat all the time... The blonde lady takes Murat to a cave guarded by what I can only describe as men dressed like Canadian Mounties wearing gold helmets... Murat easily dispatches them. Inside the cave there is lots of symbolism and stuff about Jesus Christ for... some reason... and Murat has to deal with 2 men dressed entirely from head to toe in gold jumpsuits, but once he takes care of them, he takes possession of a massive gold sword that... resembles more of a lighting bolt to be honest. And a gold brain in a box. There is also some exposition about how The Wizard is over 1000 years old, is the most powerful being in the universe and is immortal. They emerge from the cave with the sword and brain but waiting for them is Ali, who appears to have been brainwashed by The Wizard into retrieving the sword. He fights with Murat, but when Murat gets the best of him, it is revealed to be a trick of The Wizard and not the real Ali. Murat fights his way to The Wizard's palace, and after breaking inside he uses the sword to defeat everyone in his path until he finds and rescues Ali. As they make their escape, Ali becomes jealous of Murat's possession of the sword and the pair argue before a scuffle breaks out, but Ali easily overcomes Murat and knocks him unconscious. Seizing the sword and the gold brain after he does. The Wizard tricks Ali into giving him the sword and the brain, by posing as the Wiseman, and once in possession he becomes even more powerful, developing a power similar to the 'Force'. Murat arrives back on the scene, but The Wizard just vanishes. Accomplishing what he wanted. Presumably. We then suddenly cut to being in the cave and Murat, Ali, the blonde lady and her brother are standing over the dying figure of the Wiseman, not sure why, and he explains that The Wizard touched the sword giving him the power to destroy the world. And that they must stop him. The Wizard then announces that he has won and is trapping them all where they stand, and in a fit of rage Ali tries to dash out of the cave claiming that he will make up for his foolish actions before he is blown up by a powerful explosion. He dies in Murat's arms lamenting that he hasn't loved enough women. Grief-stricken by the death of his friend, Murat melts down the sword and the brain and uses them to create a pair of golden gauntlets and golden boots. He fights his way through literally hordes of enemies, ripping off their heads and putting his foot through their bodies all whilst The Wizard boasts about destroying the Earth as footage from Star Wars is interspliced into the action. Eventually The Wizard gets fed up of watching Murat work his way through every character that's appeared in this movie so far and appears to kill Murat himself. But Murat is able to withstand The Wizard's magic and after kicking some boulders at him to stun him, he finally gets his hands on The Wizard and karate chops him in half, causing everything everywhere to explode spectacularly. Murat then makes the decision to leave, flying away in the Millennium Falcon whilst the Indiana Jones theme plays.

HAHAHA WOW. This was something else. I mean, I would by lying if I said it wasn't at least a bit enjoyable. Even if half the time I hadn't got a clue what the hell was going on. This movie explained nothing. It introduced no-one. There wasn't any time for that. Just sandwich in as much low quality fighting with men in big fluffy costumes as possible. It was at least semi-coherent though, which is more than I can say for some of the bollocks that I've watched. And I at least grasped some semblance of a storyline. But there was this weird kind of underlying theme about the human brain being the most powerfulest thing in the universe? And some vague, swiping references to religion I couldn't fully understand. This was just a very, very odd little movie. And some of the worst pacing and editing I think I've ever watched.

Kind of a bit difficult really for me to comment on the acting. Not only is there the whole language barrier thing but with this being Turkish it's kind of unfair to compare it to more Western productions, but from what I can tell Cüneyt Arkın and Aytekin Akkaya were pretty convincing enough? I mean, by sheer virtue of their performances I mostly understood what emotions they were going through and what they were supposed to be conveying. And the fight scenes, although fairly primitive and amateur were fairly convincing enough. They did border on looking a little bit ridiculous at times but I think it didn't help that all the footage of the fight scenes all seemed to be a little bit sped up? So that probably wasn't working in their favour, but yeah, I think they did ok?

And in terms of the storyline, whilst nothing original there was a least a complete and - to a degree - detailed plot knitted throughout the whole thing; 2 humans crash land on a planet ruled over by The Wizard. They rebel against him and fight back and end up defeating him. So yeah, can't really criticise it for that. Even if in the finer details things started to get massively unrealistic and it went off on this weird tangent about the planet being a chunk of the Earth, and artifacts forged out of love for religion was the only weapon against evil. Or something. It got difficult to keep on top of and understand the finer details to be honest. But there was almost enough for this to be at the least entertaining?

Unfortunately it's kind of everything else where the movie just completely falls apart. It was so sloppily edited and cobbled together that there was a good 7 or 8 transitions that were so jarring and inconsistent that it was borderline uncomfortable. There was so many shots of Murat jumping over a camera and / or somersaulting that it descended into being comedic. And the cinematography had that awful, low budget, unprofessional vibe where they just zoom massively in to far when framing a shot and cut off the chin of the person they are framing. I hate it. The costume design was terrible, Ok, I'll admit; I thought The Wizard's outfit was kind of cool. He looked a bit like one of the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings only more jazzier, more gold. But your heroes are fighting and ripping the heads off of people in mascot costumes? Big, fuzzy red monsters and men in halloween masks. It was dreadful.

And one of the two biggest elephants in the room; the liberal and continued use of the Indiana Jones music! You know which one I mean, it's the first one that comes to your head when you think Indiana Jones. And it played alot in this movie. Practically all the time. And that wasn't it. It borrowed music scores from a bunch of other movies as well! They didn't even care! Fuck copyright! And on the same tangent, liberal and generous amounts of footage from the Star Wars movie. X-Wings, Tie-Fighters, the Death Star, Stormtroppers, they all rock up at some point in this movie. Any scenes involving any 'action' being depicted in space were portrayed using stolen footage from Star Wars. Even most of the sound effects were ripped straight from the movie. It was shameless! They didn't even try to mask it! Just straight up using them to form part of their film.

I can't, in good conscience score this with anything greater than a 0. Scene after scene of poor fighting action, Murat jumping around like he was in some kind of trampoline contest, liberal usage of other copyrighted material, some of the worst and abrupt scene transitions I have ever witnessed and some of the stupidest costumes I think that have ever been portrayed in a movie. Yeah it was entertaining enough and I have watched far worse movies than this one. But I can't score something this low effort and low quality with any actual points. Sorry. 0 out 5.