The Man Who Saved the World
The Man Who Saved the World
NR | 04 November 1982 (USA)
The Man Who Saved the World Trailers

Two space cadets crash-land on a desert planet, where an evil wizard seeks the ultimate power to take over the world. Although the movie borrows some background footage from Star Wars, the plot is mostly unrelated.

Reviews
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.
Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Leofwine_draca It's laugh-a-minute time with this unintentionally hilarious Turkish classic which shows just how much fun can be had on a (very) low budget. Although I saw the movie in its original undubbed Turkish, you don't really need to understand the dialogue to know what's going on, as the film is taken up with pure action. There's a bad guy with lots of followers and monsters under his control, and a pair of heroes have to stop them. Yes, you've seen the plot a zillion times, but I can assure you that you've never quite seen it like THIS before. You see, they don't have any copyright laws in Turkey which means that the producers didn't need to fork out any money for special effects or a composer - instead, the music is ripped off from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (the stirring bit that everybody remembers too) and every single frame of the outer-space footage is openly stolen from STAR WARS, which gives the film its bootleg title Turkish STAR WARS.To make matters more amusing, the footage is edited together in a very frenetic way and constantly repeated, so we get to see the same shot of a planet exploding about six different times during the course of the movie and the same piece of music over and over again in the poorly-filmed action scenes, which are plentiful throughout the film's running time. Shots of the two Turkish "heroes" of this film flying through space were achieved by donning the actors with motorbike helmets and sitting them in front of a screen again showing clips from STAR WARS. The effect is awful and terribly unrealistic with it, but for bad movie lovers it's a must. The non-existent production values of this film are a riot, from the exceptionally cheesy costumes to the sub standard effects, but these are the things that make this a classic for all the wrong reasons. THE MAN WHO SAVES THE WORLD - one of the best worst films you'll ever witness! From the opening credits - painted on a black cloth and waved shoddily in front of the camera - you just know that no expense was made in the creation of this movie masterpiece. Two of Turkey's finest actors - Aytekin Akkaya and Cuneyt Arkin - portray the film's dashing heroes with more than a touch of Han Solo about them, and the brightly coloured silk shirts they occasionally wear are most fetching. And even if they can't act to save their lives, at least they can run around and do athletic things without getting tired. Much of the new footage has been filmed in a Turkish desert somewhere, inhabited by villagers, Muslims and the Sphinx! So now you know what an alien planet looks like...Highlights include an evil wizard Darth Vader rip-off in a brightly-coloured mask who gets split in two at the film's conclusion and a giant cardboard robot which goes around and squashes small children to death! I certainly didn't see that in George Lucas' kiddie-friendly film. The evil minions include furry red and black monsters, a giant growling Chewbacca-type creature with no discernible head, mummies, zombies, robot soldiers, and old-fashioned skeleton horsemen. Elsewhere we have a blonde Princess Leia clone who keeps on smiling inanely, unexplained hieroglyphics and corpses which magically transform into mummies. The fun doesn't end there either: guys tie rocks to their legs and practice running and jumping to the Indiana Jones theme, rocks are kicked through the air like in a cheesy GODZILLA film and they even occasionally explode too. There's a bar-room brawl which rips off the canteen scene in STAR WARS yet again and a gang of guys in rubber monster masks who run around and leer at the camera.Arkin finds a mysterious golden temple and a gold sword and heart (!). After beating two golden guards he uses the spiked sword to kick backside against some tin-helmeted kung fu warriors in the desert (yes, kung fu too: no stone is left unturned in this all-out crazy style movie). Later on, in the film's coolest and most imaginative moment, he melts down the sword and dips his hand into the molten gold to form powerful golden gloves. This leads to the fantastic action-packed finale with a full fifteen minutes of incredible fighting prowess as Arkin takes on the forces of evil, single-handed, and wins; monsters are ruthlessly chopped in half, have their arms and legs and heads torn off with the power of Arkin's gloves. A mummy's head explodes, robots attack using laser beams which are scratched onto the film itself, and a series of cheap explosions enliven the action-spectacular.Arkin also seems to be auditioning for the world trampolining championship as endless shots of him jumping up and down through the desert (while people occasionally throw sand (!) and cardboard discs at him) in a heroic manner. All this topped off by a brief smattering of gore too. Action, stunts, fights, romance, tragedy, and a heroic good vs. evil plot, THE MAN WHO SAVES THE WORLD has it all in spades. One of the most insane, bizarre, and just plain off beat (not to mention incredibly tacky) adventure yarns you'll ever see, this is startling entertainment from start to finish, an enthusiastic B-movie which is impossible not to love and gets the big (golden) thumbs up from me.
l_rawjalaurence Edward D. Wood Jr., is perhaps the best-known director of grade Z movies. Classics such as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) have entered popular folklore as legendarily bad films, which are so terrible in terms of script, filming and performances that they are almost good. But nothing compares to THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD (1982), Cetin Inanc's Yesilcam answer to STAR WARS. Shot on a shoestring budget with sequences deliberately plagiarized from Lucas' film (as well as the theme tune), the film quite simply defies all attempts at logic. The plot - if there is one - is a familiar good vs. evil affair - but the continuity simply doesn't exist. Cuneyt Arkin as the superhero is just wonderful; the way he pirouettes through the air during the fight sequences is breathtaking, almost as if his boots were turbocharged. The dialog - such as it is - gives cliché a good name. But before western audiences sit back and simply laugh derisively at the film, perhaps they should bear in mind that Yesilcam movies operated according to their own dramatic logic very different from what might be expected in Hollywood. Most of them were shot in two or three weeks at most, and depended for much of their success on the pleasures of familiarity: audiences enjoyed seeing mega-stars like Arkin play the same role over and over again, even if he wasn't very good at it. THE MAN WHO SAVED THE WORLD is a very good example of this kind of film; rather like a quota quickie in Hollywood in the 1930s, it was designed to fulfill a need rather than be accepted as "great" art. Whatever its merits or demerits, it's still a really entertaining piece to watch.
kemal t This movie is the beginning of everything.The antagonist just pulls the arm of one of the monsters, pulls it, tears it apart from the body.No wait, there is more, he then uses this arm to attack its poor former owner.The movie also shows the very foundations of mankind. İt addresses the location thou. Somewhere around Turkey. Although very poor effects and acting, this film really should be considered as a cult, the collectivity, perception and vision of this product is extremely ahead of its time for movie world except Hollywood. You may understand better when you take a close look at the current stream and situation of Turkish movie community 28 years later.It stinks.They draw fur to a man, put it in a movie, the guy swears and shows abnormal behaviour for a decent human being, and that movie becomes the most watched movie ever. Back then, those guys just did it as they could.
okankoc like all good art, this movie cannot be counted as a national phenomena, no it transcends time and space and the petty conventions of our "faithless" and "nuclear" age. so please tolerate the Turkish commentators who make up 90% of the DKA forum. developing nations (in general) tend to be a bit emotional and sensitive when it comes to their national produce. they fear the strangers will think "these turks are dumb as hell" when they watch the movie,so they feel the need to defend themselves (xxxtremely low budget, subnormal intelligence of the director etc. which could not be helped) but no defense is necessary the movie speaks for itself if you have the ears to listen to. the best art is done unintentionally, and it is the babe not the wise who conquers the muse