A reporter named Sapsal (Zafer Onen) and his photographer Kasar (Orhan Ercin) end up at a meeting of the women’s Lonely Hearts Club. The women that belong to this club are ugly but rich. They use beautiful belly dancers to lure men to their meetings so they can marry them. The reporters tell the women that they are there to take pictures and write an article for the paper. They tell the women that the article should bring men to their club. The president of the club tells Kasar and Sapsal that Marilyn Monroe (Mirella Monro) will be coming to their next meeting and perhaps they can include that in their article. The guys agree.
When they return to the paper to tell their boss about Marilyn Monroe coming to Istanbul the editor (Ozdemir Azaf) yells at them. He says that the other papers are talking about flying saucers being seen. He wants to know why they haven’t gotten a story about that. He kicks them out and tells them to get a story on the UFO.
The guys head to the local observatory and hide out until the astronomers leave. Kasar starts playing with the radio equipment and ends up in contact with the flying saucer. The aliens come from a planet they call Merih. The alien queen (Turkan Samil) wants Sapsal and Kasar to marry all of them. The guys say they can only marry one each. The aliens now need to find additional men so each of them can have a husband.
The aliens tell the guys about an elixir they have the makes people young again. The guys manage to talk the aliens into giving them the elixir to use to get men. Instead they take it to the lonely hearts club and sell it to the old ladies that are looking be young and beautiful. When the elixir gets stolen the guys go back to the aliens to try to con them out of more elixir. One sly alien (Ozcan Tekgul) turns the tables on the guys.
“Flying Saucers Over Istanbul” AKA “Ucan Daireler Istanbulda” was released in 1955 and was directed by Orhan Ercin. It is a Turkish science fiction comedy. At one time the movie was thought to be a lost film until a copy turned up in the early 2010’s.
There were a number of science fiction and horror movies that came out of Turkey. “Flying Saucers Over Istanbul” was the first to have UFO’s, aliens and interplanetary flight. The movie has been trashed unmercifully. There is a reason for that. It is probably the worst science fiction film ever.
There is more dancing in this movie than in “Fire Maidens from Outer Space” 1956. It has a Marilyn Monroe look-alike that looks nothing like Marilyn Monroe, and has absolutely nothing to do with the movie. The acting sucks, the directing is blah and the dialogue is blah blah blah.
The dimwitted Sapsal and Kasar are Turkey’s answer to either Abbott and Costello or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, whichever duo you think is the lamest, and one of them stutters in Turkish. Now before you go all “Plan 9” on me you need to understand that “Plan 9” actually had a plot. And a good one too. “Flying Saucers Over Istanbul” really doesn’t. And it’s not funny.
The production values for the film were about zero. The sets, robot, props and costumes are mostly painted cardboard, plywood, shower curtain liners and for class a little paper mache. The “flying” flying saucer was made from two pot lids with firecrackers stuck on it. The grounded flying saucer looks a lot like a concrete catch basin with a tinfoil cover. The giant camera that Kasar “uses” is made out of plywood, a sawn off broomstick and a small metal mixing bowl for a flash. All of this is cool. The film’s highlight is a funky looking cardboard robot named Stelekami that can barely walk. He's cool too. Other than that, everything else sucks.
The “rebellious alien” is played by Ozcan Tegul. Her claim to fame is that, in her prime, she was considered the queen of disgrace and scandal. She was a nude model and a belly dancing seductress who was once taken to court for dancing obscenely. Belly dancing was frowned upon in Turkey at the time. Ozcan made her notoriety touring and performing something called a Fire Dance for Sultans, Kings and Millionaires. It seems that her private life was gossiped about as being just as notorious as her professional life. In 1980 the National Turkish Cinema Council gave awards to a bunch of artists that had contributed to Turkish cinema for 25 years or more. Ozcan was one of them. This raised a ruckus among the more conservative of Turkey, especially the fundamentalist Islamic politicians. Researching Ozcan Tekgul was far more interesting than “Flying Saucers of Istanbul”.