My friend Dave sent me a clip of Paul Reubens’ big acting break on Turkish Star Trek that has since been taken down from YouTube. It was pretty good, but I’ve seen Turkish Star Trek enough to know that splicing in Reubens doesn’t make it any more ridiculous (see below).
Of course Turkish Star Trek is just one of many Turkish remakes of American TV shows and movies that are simply hilarious. I’m not saying these are worth hours of your time, but I’m pretty sure they’ll make you laugh (or cringe, if you’re wary of American cultural influence). Here are some of my favorites:
Turkish Superman:
Turkish Star Wars (but with Indiana Jones music):
Turkish Star Wars (extreme copyright violation, gets good around 3:00 - Turkish with French subtitles only)
Turkish E.T. (could induce nightmares):
Last, but not least, Turkish Star Trek (sans Pee-Wee Herman):
3 comments ↓
lol … my favorite is when he’s working out with huge rocks roped to his ankles. So do these actually play in movie theaters over there? on TV?
Yeah, that’s my favorite, too, though you should really check out the extended version of that training sequence to get the full effect:
The name of the film is “The Man Who Saved the World,” and it was made in 1982. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the amazing plot and a little on why American films were copied so much.
I’ve seen Turkish Star Trek on TV (as far as I know it’s just one film, actually) and I’m sure some of the others played in theaters back in the 80’s, but today it’s a different story. Besides all the major American and European films that come to the theaters there’s a large Turkish film industry. G.O.R.A. was a very successful spoof of American sci-fi movies, but I’m partial to the smaller productions: my wife was art director for a little film that came to the Tribecca Film Festival in 2005 called “Boats out of watermelon rinds”:
“Boats” … I love it! It’s probably even better if you know Turkish.
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