The Art of Turkish Star Wars

Just watched Indiana Jones save the Earth and return home to the Death Star. No shit! #TurkishStarWars

2:41 AM May 3rd from TwitterFon

I saw this last week. “The Turkish Star Wars”, as it’s often called, thanks largely to the copious use of bootlegged footage. It is, I think it fair to say, one of the most singularly bat-shit insane movies ever made. Its inspirations come from far more than just Star Wars – Indiana Jones soundtrack is pilfered, as is Battlestar Galactica’s – and its martial arts training montage is bizarre homage to Bruce Lee. At least I think. This is a film where you can never really know!

Something I quite liked was the way Flash Gordon and Battlestar Galactica were raided for ideas. As, to put it mildly: this film makes no sense. It seems very likely that the makers were perplexed by the original Star Wars they had raided for shots and backdrops, and decided their resulting home-made Sci-Fi stew could use another few flavours.

Even the concept of space is confused in this story. Sometimes the Earth is just a planet, but sometimes it’s The World and the entire extent of the universe. The evil wizard – Emperor? no: wizard – decides to destroy it, while standing on it, making no clear sign of intention to leave. That’s pretty fucked up right there. Though if it’s not enough for you, did I mention his army of cookie monster minions?

I bet the people who went to see this on its theatrical release in Turkey in the early 1980’s must have been in for a treat. Especially as the real Star Wars was not originally shown there. No, this was it.

If you’ve an evening in need of the surreal, which to be fair was made with a few laughs clearly in mind, I can commend the freely available Turkish Star Wars as a suitably freaky feast. Watch it if you dare.

On an almost appropriately far-fetched tangent of a link, also have a few seconds for this. The clouds were my idea.