The Man Who Saved the World: Sheer genius. Beyond bad.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) 1982

The little-known Turkish quintessence of trash cinema has to be seen to be believed.

Two space cadets, Murat and Ali, crash-land on a desert planet. It’s a bit unclear if it’s Earth, but we learn from a commentator apparently cunning in astrophysics that "hundreds of thousands years had been passed and earth and planet systems in space turned into galaxy system."

While hiking across the desert, our heroes speculate that only women inhabit the planet. Encouraged of the thought Murat does his "wolf whistle", which he uses on attractive women. However, he blows the wrong tune. Instead of scantly clad females, they are attacked by skeletons on horseback, which they defeat in a hand-to-hand combat.

A strange looking guy with spikes around his head soon shows up and captures our heroes. He takes them to a gladiator arena and tells them he is actually from Earth, and is a 1,000-year-old Wizard. He seeks the ultimate power to take over the world, but unfortunately it has a shield of “concentrated human brain molecules” (which, by the way, looks exactly like the Death Star). The only way he can bypass this impenetrable defense is to use a human brain against it.

Apparently the planet has been under nuclear attack a number of times before. The surviving humans are living in a neo-primitive society (it looks like a mix of Conan the Barbarian and the Power Rangers). They bravely, but hopelessly fight back the villain.

The evil Wizard now tries to use the space cadets to destroy the few remains of human race. But our heroes escape once again and hide in a cave full of refugees, who already fled the villain's tyrannical rule. Murat falls I love with the only woman in the cave, who looks after the children.

Now zombies attack the cave and turn several of the children into more zombies. Our heroes flee the cave and find a local bar (which, by the way, looks exactly like the Mos Eisley Cantina). There, our heroes for no apparent reason start a bar fight, but the Wizard suddenly appears and captures them again.

Now the Wizard sends his Queen to seduce Ali, while he orders Murat to be brought before him and ask him to join his course to rule the world.

Murat declines and fights the wizard's pink shag-rug monsters and guardians in skeleton t-shirts. He takes a “golden human brain” from the wizard, which possesses "the power of Earth's ancestry".

Meanwhile, at Ali and the Queen, two assassin monkeys teleport into the room and try to strangle him. He abandons the Queen and joins the fight. Now laser-armed guards catch our heroes. The heroes are taken to the caves, where they are tied up with spiral phone cords and tortured by monkeys who pushes styrofoam blocks against their chest.

The Wizard senses that this torture isn't optimal, so he decides to bury them alive. Maybe being covered in dirt isn't the most painful torture ever devised. This really angers the Wizard and he goes like "how the hell did they survive my ultimate torture?!" So he decides to take them back to the gladiator arena. There the Wizard forces Murat against a giant monster, but Murat defeats the monster and flees.

Then Murat finds out that the brain is not the only golden loot around. There is also a golden sword, all made by "the 13th clan," who melted a mountain thousands of "space years" ago. Murat finds the sword in a cave defended by two golden ninjas.

Renewed by the sword's power, Murat goes to free Ali from the sorcerer's dungeon. Unfortunately, Ali is killed during the rescue.

Now Murat melts the golden sword and the golden brain, and forges them into a pair of golden magical gloves and super-jumping boots. Girded with his new gloves and boots, he searches for the Wizard to avenge his friend's death.

It all ends up with a big fight with gorilla suit aliens, party masks monsters and toilet paper-wrapped zombies. Murat jumps around to get face-to-face with his nemesis and karate chops him in half.

The film ends with a speech about the human brain being the strongest weapon in the universe.

Examples of the unforgettable script:

Murat: An unknown force pulls us to itself, we go far away from earth, our indicators don't work. I can't know what this force is, we are in a very dangerous situation, you need to be very careful.

...

Murat: Begin to your famous whistle, which no women can resist.
Ali: [Whistles]
Murat: You whistle it wrong.
Ali: Why?
Murat: Skeletons came instead of woman.
Ali: It doesn't seem it will finish, they are still coming, let's go over them.
Murat: That's what suit us, we must go beyond the space speed, be ready to welcome arrivers.
Ali: These are too ugly. It would be better if some girls come with mini skirts.

A genius work undoubtfully.

Not only does most of the movie consist of re-used footage from Star Wars as well as Soviet and American space program newsreel clips, the music has been ripped from other movies like Battlestar Galactica and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

You'll be spellbound, either horrified and unable to move, or laughing yourself into a coma.

Pay special attention to the demise of the golden-clad bad guy with the spiky head.

Don’t bother to search for the DVD. You can watch the full movie here: https://archive.org/details/TheManWhoSavedTheWorldturkishStarWars1982, 1 hour and 31 min. Sit back and enjoy a middle-aged Luke Skywalker proxy bounces around like a bunny and beats up/rips apart a series of Sesame Street rejects, Cylon rip-offs, Robbie the Robot, and a whole host of other people in ¢99 costumes to the Indiana Jones theme.