Post by Heineken Skywalker on Mar 9, 2006 11:28:04 GMT -5
Yeah, you read that right. 
I was given this DVD as a gag gift a while ago, but due to not being able to play it on my old dvd player, I didn't get around to watching it until last night.
Have you ever wondered what a film written and directed by Ed Wood would've been like in color and with a slightly higher budget? Okay, now imagine that, only take away all of Ed's finesse and talent.
I'm serious.
This has got to be the most insane, eye-bugging, jaw-droppingly bad piece of "cinema", I have ever sat through.
It's one part, STAR WARS, one part Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning live-action series, ie: H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, Dr. Shrinker, etc., one part martial-arts film, one part religious parable and finally, one part stock footage & stolen soundtracks.
It's almost as if a group of nine year olds who had seen about a dozen movies, got a hold of a movie camera, a videotape copy of STAR WARS, a few soundtrack cd's and access to a local theater company's costume & makeup departments.
The inneptness that went into this project is just astounding.
Now, it's not an actual remake of STAR WARS, meaning it's not telling the exact same story as the original classic, but rather, it "borrows" ideas from it, as well as about a dozen other movies. The real audacity is that they sometimes take actual footage from the original and edit it into the Turkish version, so that the filmmakers wouldn't have to worry about constructing their own spacecraft models and creating good special effects. In some scenes, the two heroes, think psuedo-Han Solo & psuedo-Luke Skywalker, wearing motorcycle helmets, are supposed to be flying their ships in some kind of space battle. Instead of building actual cockpits for these 'actors' to sit in, they are shot in extreme close-up so we don't need to see what the cockpit looks like. And they literally are sitting in front of either a rear projection screen or maybe even just an actual tv set, where space battle footage from the original STAR WARS is played behind them, "Hey look! There's the Millennium Falcon! And X-Wing fighters and TIE-Fighters, and even the Death Star!". Has Lucas seen this? He was probably too busy laughing his ass off to bother calling his attorneys.
As near as I could follow the story, did I mention that the subtitles are in broken English and don't always make sense, psuedo-Han & psuedo-Luke are shot down after a space battle with the evil villains. They crashland on some kind of desert planet (aka Tatooine in some other space saga). I'm assuming this isn't Earth, but for some reason we see stock footage of the pyramids & the Sphinx, as our heroes take in the sights.
After a few minutes of "witty banter" between our heroes, regarding their own good looks and the hope of scoring with space babes, they are attacked by guys in rubber skeleton costumes and red capes on horseback. And here's where the movie becomes a Kung Fu free-for-all! Psuedo-Han & psuedo-Luke karate chop & kick the villains into submission, in some of the most ridiculous martial-arts choreography ever put on film.
And then there's the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK soundtrack.
Did I mention the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK soundtrack? Yes, because Turkish cinema apparently has no film composers of their own, at various points throughout the film, the main theme from RAIDERS, as well as bits of music from FLASH GORDON, PLANET OF THE APES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and who knows what else, are heard on the soundtrack.
My favorite scene in the whole movie though has to be the "training montage". Yes, even Turkish cinema knows about the musical training montage. Our heroes "training" consists of punching and kicking boulders, aerobics, doing amazing trampoline somersaults and running with giant boulders strapped to their legs. That's for leg strength training I guess because you never know when you'll have to karate kick some evildoer's ass. And in this movie, that's quite often.
Along the way, the movie also includes some scenes set in a gladiator arena, a mute bleached blonde space babe in a Roman toga type costume and 80's style headband right out of Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical" music video, mummies that rise from the dead and do the bidding of the villains, henchmen in furry red Muppet-like costumes, and all kinds of other things that just come out of nowhere and leave the viewer scratching their heads and wondering, "What the hell were the filmmakers smoking and where can I score some?."
There's a scene that takes place in a bar, amazingly just like the cantina scene in STAR WARS. Quick shots of the actual cantina footage is cut in with this movie's paper mache and store bought rubber masked creatures. Of course a fight breaks out and our heroes use their massive Kung Fu skills to take out a dozen more villains.
Even though our heroes are the ultimate ass-kickers, somehow they manage to keep getting captured. At one point, psuedo-Han is taken prisoner and strapped down to a slab with, get this, telephone cords. I guess they looked futuristic and science-fiction-ey enough for the director.
Most archetype heroes have to recover or receive an item of some kind, usually some type of artifact, ie: Excalibur, the Lost Ark of the Covenant, ruby slippers, a magical ring, etc. In this movie, it's a bulky plywood sword shaped kind of like a lightning bolt. Oh, and a plastic green brain in a box. Folks, I couldn't make up this kind of stuff. They are guarded by two henchmen dressed in gold foil costumes which makes them look sort of like life-size Academy Awards.
The whole mess ends with psuedo-Luke taking on an army of pretty much every type of henchman that has appeared so far, and dispensing of them with many karate chops, kicks and more somersaults than the Summer Olympics. Villains literally have their arms, legs and heads karate chopped off and some are even cut right in half by his martial arts prowess.
I don't usually recommend blind-buying dvd's, but I have to make an exception in this case. Seek out one of the many bootleg copies of this. This really needs to be seen to be believed.
Unless you speak Turkish, make sure to pick up the English-subtitled version so you won't miss such gems as:
(After our heroes crashland on the desert planet.)
Han: Could what you have told be true?
Luke: What?
Han: A planet inhabited only by women.
Luke: Why not?
Han: If we had our music and a bottle of champagne besides?
Luke: Then start your famous whistle that no woman can resist.
(Han begins whistling.) ;D
And yes, that's exactly how that dialogue appears on screen.
After doing a little research, I discovered that Turkish cinema has a habit of "remaking" Hollywood films, only with really low budgets, so also available for your viewing "pleasure" are Turkish versions of SUPERMAN, E.T., STAR TREK & THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Could they possibly be worse? Better? It boggles the mind.
My score:
As a film it gets a 1/10.
However, if you're a fan of cult films, B-movies, film oddities or STAR WARS, this is a must-see. I haven't laughed this hard at a serious attempt at movie-making in a long, long time. 10/10
I was given this DVD as a gag gift a while ago, but due to not being able to play it on my old dvd player, I didn't get around to watching it until last night.
Have you ever wondered what a film written and directed by Ed Wood would've been like in color and with a slightly higher budget? Okay, now imagine that, only take away all of Ed's finesse and talent.
I'm serious.
This has got to be the most insane, eye-bugging, jaw-droppingly bad piece of "cinema", I have ever sat through.
It's one part, STAR WARS, one part Sid & Marty Krofft Saturday morning live-action series, ie: H.R. Pufnstuf, Land of the Lost, Dr. Shrinker, etc., one part martial-arts film, one part religious parable and finally, one part stock footage & stolen soundtracks.
It's almost as if a group of nine year olds who had seen about a dozen movies, got a hold of a movie camera, a videotape copy of STAR WARS, a few soundtrack cd's and access to a local theater company's costume & makeup departments.
The inneptness that went into this project is just astounding.
Now, it's not an actual remake of STAR WARS, meaning it's not telling the exact same story as the original classic, but rather, it "borrows" ideas from it, as well as about a dozen other movies. The real audacity is that they sometimes take actual footage from the original and edit it into the Turkish version, so that the filmmakers wouldn't have to worry about constructing their own spacecraft models and creating good special effects. In some scenes, the two heroes, think psuedo-Han Solo & psuedo-Luke Skywalker, wearing motorcycle helmets, are supposed to be flying their ships in some kind of space battle. Instead of building actual cockpits for these 'actors' to sit in, they are shot in extreme close-up so we don't need to see what the cockpit looks like. And they literally are sitting in front of either a rear projection screen or maybe even just an actual tv set, where space battle footage from the original STAR WARS is played behind them, "Hey look! There's the Millennium Falcon! And X-Wing fighters and TIE-Fighters, and even the Death Star!". Has Lucas seen this? He was probably too busy laughing his ass off to bother calling his attorneys.
As near as I could follow the story, did I mention that the subtitles are in broken English and don't always make sense, psuedo-Han & psuedo-Luke are shot down after a space battle with the evil villains. They crashland on some kind of desert planet (aka Tatooine in some other space saga). I'm assuming this isn't Earth, but for some reason we see stock footage of the pyramids & the Sphinx, as our heroes take in the sights.
After a few minutes of "witty banter" between our heroes, regarding their own good looks and the hope of scoring with space babes, they are attacked by guys in rubber skeleton costumes and red capes on horseback. And here's where the movie becomes a Kung Fu free-for-all! Psuedo-Han & psuedo-Luke karate chop & kick the villains into submission, in some of the most ridiculous martial-arts choreography ever put on film.
And then there's the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK soundtrack.
Did I mention the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK soundtrack? Yes, because Turkish cinema apparently has no film composers of their own, at various points throughout the film, the main theme from RAIDERS, as well as bits of music from FLASH GORDON, PLANET OF THE APES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and who knows what else, are heard on the soundtrack.
My favorite scene in the whole movie though has to be the "training montage". Yes, even Turkish cinema knows about the musical training montage. Our heroes "training" consists of punching and kicking boulders, aerobics, doing amazing trampoline somersaults and running with giant boulders strapped to their legs. That's for leg strength training I guess because you never know when you'll have to karate kick some evildoer's ass. And in this movie, that's quite often.
Along the way, the movie also includes some scenes set in a gladiator arena, a mute bleached blonde space babe in a Roman toga type costume and 80's style headband right out of Olivia Newton-John's "Let's Get Physical" music video, mummies that rise from the dead and do the bidding of the villains, henchmen in furry red Muppet-like costumes, and all kinds of other things that just come out of nowhere and leave the viewer scratching their heads and wondering, "What the hell were the filmmakers smoking and where can I score some?."
There's a scene that takes place in a bar, amazingly just like the cantina scene in STAR WARS. Quick shots of the actual cantina footage is cut in with this movie's paper mache and store bought rubber masked creatures. Of course a fight breaks out and our heroes use their massive Kung Fu skills to take out a dozen more villains.
Even though our heroes are the ultimate ass-kickers, somehow they manage to keep getting captured. At one point, psuedo-Han is taken prisoner and strapped down to a slab with, get this, telephone cords. I guess they looked futuristic and science-fiction-ey enough for the director.
Most archetype heroes have to recover or receive an item of some kind, usually some type of artifact, ie: Excalibur, the Lost Ark of the Covenant, ruby slippers, a magical ring, etc. In this movie, it's a bulky plywood sword shaped kind of like a lightning bolt. Oh, and a plastic green brain in a box. Folks, I couldn't make up this kind of stuff. They are guarded by two henchmen dressed in gold foil costumes which makes them look sort of like life-size Academy Awards.
The whole mess ends with psuedo-Luke taking on an army of pretty much every type of henchman that has appeared so far, and dispensing of them with many karate chops, kicks and more somersaults than the Summer Olympics. Villains literally have their arms, legs and heads karate chopped off and some are even cut right in half by his martial arts prowess.
I don't usually recommend blind-buying dvd's, but I have to make an exception in this case. Seek out one of the many bootleg copies of this. This really needs to be seen to be believed.
Unless you speak Turkish, make sure to pick up the English-subtitled version so you won't miss such gems as:
(After our heroes crashland on the desert planet.)
Han: Could what you have told be true?
Luke: What?
Han: A planet inhabited only by women.
Luke: Why not?
Han: If we had our music and a bottle of champagne besides?
Luke: Then start your famous whistle that no woman can resist.
(Han begins whistling.) ;D
And yes, that's exactly how that dialogue appears on screen.
After doing a little research, I discovered that Turkish cinema has a habit of "remaking" Hollywood films, only with really low budgets, so also available for your viewing "pleasure" are Turkish versions of SUPERMAN, E.T., STAR TREK & THE WIZARD OF OZ.
Could they possibly be worse? Better? It boggles the mind.
My score:
As a film it gets a 1/10.
However, if you're a fan of cult films, B-movies, film oddities or STAR WARS, this is a must-see. I haven't laughed this hard at a serious attempt at movie-making in a long, long time. 10/10
