fredkontur.com - Diary - Archives - Wednesday, February 21, 2007

It occurs to me that my posts lately have tended to skew more towards the serious side. Typically I go by the credo, "It's my own damn website and I can damn well write what I damn well want. Dammit" But I've noticed that, as a consequence of showing my more serious side, I've lost significant readership. The site has gone from averaging 3 readers a day (not counting myself) all the way down to averaging 2 readers a day (counting myself). I'm afraid that my advertisers (Fred Industries, FJK Oil & Gas, F. J. Kontur Investing, The Kontur Group, and Ford Motor Company) are not going to like that at all. So, today I will "sacrifice my dignity" and "pander to the masses" and "not write a post that sucks", because that's what the ignorant public demands.

Several years ago, I came across some hilarous movie reviews of ET, Wizard of Oz, Star Trek, and Star Wars. What made the reviews so funny? Well, it was because the movies that were being reviewed were not the original versions of these classics. Instead, they were cheap, bizarre, nonsensical Turkish knockoffs. As one of the reviews put it, "Turkish cinema has proven time and time again that whatever we can do, they can do much, much worse." Posted below are links to each of the reviews, all of which come from The Wave Magazine, and some brief excerpts. Enjoy!

Turkish Wizard of Oz:
"The two make fast friends and skip off together. Once they get to a clearing, they start dancing. And oh God, this does not stop. In normal musicals, the songs, although lame, explain areas of the plot. Not in The Turkish Wizard of Oz. Here, the story just stops for 20 minutes so we can watch Dorothy and the Scarecrow jig to instrumental music. The only pause from this is an awkward point in between line dances and curtseys where Dorothy slightly lifts her dress and, if I’m not mistaken, tries to seduce the Scarecrow. He prances a step forward and points toward her crotch, saying what I’m positive is Turkish for, 'I’m not getting anywhere near that horrible thing.' Before long, they hear the muffled voice of the Tin Man, who is rusted in place. The rest of the sequence is similar to the American version, except that while Dorothy is oiling the Tin Man’s joints, the Scarecrow, and I’m deadly serious here, humps him. He just interrupts their rescue attempt to ram his crotch into the Tin Man. They soon skip off to dance."

Turkish Star Wars:
"My next best guess is that they’re hit by lasers since they both fall down when a man in armor shows up. Turkish special effects are not what you’d call an exact art, and here the picture is severely scratched up, which I think indicates a failed attempt at scratching a laser-like beam onto the film itself. They’re captured and taken to a cruel gladiator arena where Darth Vader’s water cooler robot proves its evilness by swinging a screaming child around by its neck. Luke and Han watch for what seriously has to be three solid minutes of noisy kid dangling before they start another karate fight. Darth Vader comes out of a cave, and as soon as he does, most of the rest of the scene is viewed through the eyeholes of his helmet, including shots of Darth Vader himself. This could have been another massively insane mistake by the Turkish production crew, but I like to think it was a profound metaphor about how karate fights make Darth Vader take a careful look at himself, through the evil-shaped helmet eyeholes in his mind."

Turkish E.T.:
"While running from E.T., Elliot sprains his ankle. The next morning, his mother cares for the wound with the ancient Turkish remedy of slapping a steak on it and wrapping the whole thing in toilet paper. Elliot then stays home from school, probably because the smell of rotting meat is emanating from his ankle. He climbs out of bed and limps through the mangled ruin of his house to find E.T. in a doorway. There’s an awkward silence as the two stare at each other, which is suddenly and insanely broken when E.T. launches a blast of smoke from its crotch. I have no idea if this was some sort of miscue with the fog machine or if E.T. comes from a race of creatures that has developed fire-extinguishing groins to be used as greeting devices. Either way, it made me rewind the tape many, many hilarious times."

Turkish Star Trek:
"Spak finally comes to his senses after the evil licking shapechanger leaves, and Kirk is strangely uninterested in why he just tried to kill him. They avoid discussing it as they walk to the next wasteland where they get attacked by 20 Tarzan karate bots. That’s what I said. This sets off a chain reaction of stupidity with naked robots kicking and punching in random directions and Omer almost pulling a face muscle with his mugging. Professor Krater built these robots for love, not karate, so the fight mostly consists of them rushing Kirk and Spak then stopping just short of them to scream 'YAAAHHH!' and dance."

Turkish Exorcist:
"After the doctors rattle her skull at incredible speeds and it fails to remove the satan from it, the girl’s mother calls in a hypnotist. The girl pretends to follow his watch, then with comic timing beyond that of normal non-demons, she punches him square in the balls. He crunches into a standing fetal position that is so well-acted that it’d be impossible to duplicate without actually ramming something dangerous into your groin. The only reason this film didn’t get the full four stars for Comedy is due to the lack of him waddling out of the room and saying something retarded in a high-pitched voice."

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