Turkish Star Wars: Raiders Of The Lost Rip-Off

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… uh, no. Actually, a thousand years in the future, in our galaxy, an evil magician plans to destroy the Earth by destroying its Death Star shield made of, um, human brain cells. However, to do so he needs a human brain of his own and so he teleports two X-Wing pilots to his own world to capture them. However, the heroes fight back his armies of zombies, living skeletons and fuzzy monsters by karate chopping their limbs off and jumping about on trampolines. They also kick boulders so hard that they become exploding projectile weapons. This, believe it or not, is the plot of Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam, or The Man Who Saves The World… but better known to many simply as “Turkish Star Wars”.

Why is it called that? Because this shockingly bad film inserted effects shots directly swiped from the original Star Wars: A New Hope. And we’re not talking about the occasional explosion here. We’re talking about entire space battle sequences of X-Wings, TIE Fighters, the Millennium Falcon, the Death Star and a whole lot more. Oh, and it stole some of the sound effects and music too. Not that you could pick those out as easily though, because most of the music has also been swiped from Flash Gordon and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Which, shockingly, is made worse by the lack of multi-layered audio work. Every time any sound effect plays or line of dialogue is spoken, the music jarringly halts so that it can happen, before restarting again few moments later. Throw in some haphazard editing which looks like it was done by Jack the Ripper with a pair of blunt garden shears and that should give you some idea of the quality of this film.

Turkish Star Wars is bad. Astonishingly bad. So bad, in fact, that you’ll question how such a creation can even exist without being swallowed up into the ground to burn in cinematic hell, dragging down The Room and Bloodrayne with it in the process. But it exists and is available to watch on YouTube even as we speak.

So why would anyone even want to watch it?

That’s been a hot topic of debate here at Fortress Towers. Is Turkish Star Wars simply bad, an unwatchable piece of tripe with no redeeming features, or is it so bad that it’s laughably good, the sort of film you can watch with friends while having a few drinks and mock mercilessly like an MST3K classic? Personally, I say the latter, but others feel differently. However, four things are an absolute certainty:

• It’s so bad it has to be seen to be believed.
• Anyone who can kick a boulder so hard that it explodes is not to be messed with.
• A “handsome” hero in a cave who laughs to bring joy to the world, only to stop when realising it isn’t actually helping, is
• A Death Star made of brain cells still makes more sense than Midichlorians.