Nukie (1988)

In the world of ripoff movies, many titles have come the way of the wary moviegoer. Given that 99% of them are so bad that many TVs are afraid to play them, we're stuck with titles that kept video rental stores in business for many years.

We have King Kong ripoffs, we have Jaws ripoffs, we have Star Wars ripoffs, we have Superman ripoffs, we have Mad Max ripoffs, we have Terminator ripoffs, we have Alien ripoffs, we have Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoffs, we have Friday the 13th ripoffs, we have Enter the Dragon ripoffs...and then we have E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial ripoffs.

I'm sure you can wrap your brain around the others I've mentioned, but E.T.? Sure, it made millions if not billions worldwide, scored a nice plume in Steven Spielberg's chapeau and was a great advertisement for Reese's Pieces, but who in their right mind could or would rip off a movie like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial??

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea there was such a thing as E.T.spolitation, but it seems there is. And we have such sparkling examples of this genre as Mac and Me, Xtro, Pod People - and I also stumbled across two (yes, TWO) pornographic takes on E.T.; hey, if film-makers can do a porno take on Pinocchio....

But all of this pales - PALES, I tell you - to the example I have here for you today. Yes, even the porno E.T.s aren't a shade on this, the one E.T.-wannabe that was not just the worst E.T.sploitation and the worst movie ever made based on a better, but also a ripoff that is an international production

Yes, you read me right, Pollyanna; this was German film production, that was filmed in Namibia, Botswana and all points South in Africa, a scene or two in Munich and they even bothered to lens something in Los Angeles, to boot. If they had just filmed scenes in China and Chile, we could have all joined hands and sung "We Are The World"....

Nukie is an odd fish in that, while gloaming off Spielberg and apparently catering to the kiddies whilst employing scenes that all but play to its German/African market, it also features not one but TWO alien creatures. Two E.T.s - and two of the most horrifyingly ugly, ungainly, mucus-dripping abominations ever to curse a pair of eyes.

While that may give some of you out there an untold "gotta-see-it-so-I-can-say-I-saw-it" high, please keep in mind this is a country-specific kiddie comedy, not a horror movie. Never mind that it'll give you nightmares...this is a comedy. For kids.

Here's some plot for you: In the farthest reaches of outer space, two aliens named Nukie and Miko from some undisclosed planet somewhere are flying around as bright lights in the universe...no, they have no ships - they just become bright lights that sail around; you expected special effects or something? Anyway, Nukie and Miko think it would be a good idea to sail around in Earth's atmosphere until they sail too carelessly and crash-land on different parts of the planet.

Miko is quickly captured by an American space foundation which is only identified as The Space Foundation - in spite of the fact that they drive around in cars which have NASA plainly slapped right there on their doors! - and is given multiple tests which involve wires, tubes stuck up his nose and electricity. Nukie has landed in the middle of the African savanna and wanders all over trying to make friends with the animals (only a few of which TALK TO HIM!!!) until he befriends two young boys from a nearby tribe who themselves become outcasts when they are blamed for damages caused by Nukie.

For some reason, a doctor from The Space Foundation named Eric Harvey (Steve Railsback) tries to track down Nukie with minimal help from a nun stationed out in the middle of this tribal outpost in the African version of nowhere. This nun, Sister Anne (Glynnis Johns), complains, whines, grumbles, argues and does everything but be helpful as the two young boys get in more trouble, Nukie wanders about more, Miko is experimented on more, and everything culminates in a stupid plot twist where everyone ends up in the same place at the same time. And did I mention the talking chimpanzee wearing a pink t-shirt?

Director Sias Odendal has directed and written absolutely nothing before or after Nukie (proving conclusively that justice is out there in the world) and here proves that he is good at nothing more than keeping a camera in focus. His co-director, Michael Pakleppa, at least had a couple more credits under his belt - never mind that you've never heard of them. But Odendal's co-writer Ben Taylor at least got an award nomination for his writing...not for Nukie but for his 1988 film In The Flesh. He didn't win anything for it but hey, at least he proved he could do something creative.

The production aid of choice for this film seems to have been peyote, seeing as how not one thing in this film makes any kind of sense nor is entertaining in any manner than humans recognize. And it all seems to have been edited by an ADHD Edward Scissorhands. In fact, there were no less than seven (that's 7; four plus two, VII) editors working on this film. Not that it makes any difference in this thing as far as content goes - unless you think about it like seven doctors all operating on the same appendix with one scalpel.

As far as the attitude of this film, let me just mention that Odendal and Taylor both collaborated on this script after apparently going on a viewing binge on their Australian better The Gods Must Be Crazy, where a Coke bottle dropped from an airplane set off an epic comic quest. The fact is that here, even with two aliens, a talking chimpanzee in a pink t-shirt, a whole African tribe, lots of stupid white people, a nun to throw in some always-funny Catholic guilt into the proceedings and an overly-smart computer who learns to get in touch with its inner HAL, Nukie tries too hard to shoehorn in a bunch of subplots, details, and characters to aim for slapstick, and instead end up with scattershot.

There's chase scenes to spare, lots of stock footage of wild animals, a musical sequence or two, white dots moving across postcards of outer space and various Earth panoramas and fast-motion scenes of African tribal hunters running around, a la Benny Hill, BUT when you couple all for this with scenes where Railsback and Johns have lukewarm heart-to-heart talks about whatever, heartless scientists being heartless to ugly aliens, and depressing scenes of expressionless aliens dripping snot, mucus and various fluids from every available orifice while squealing like pigs cross-bred with prunes, the Spielbergian sense of wonder is gone. Instead, the only wonder associated with Nukie is, "I wonder what kind of weird psychedelic head trip the guys who did this thing were on?"

The actors who play The Space Foundation scientists and the African tribe members both seem to have gone to the same acting classes - looking at them you cannot tell if they had any professional acting training or not. If so, it sure doesn't come through here. The Space Foundation scientists are all so dull and boring and borderline sinister that you really don't care about anything they do - especially not to their little captive mucus machine.

Every single thing these idiots do is so completely and utterly stupid; especially when one of these "men of science" is convinced by The Space Foundation's computer named EDDI to become a clown and so dances around and starts talking off his clothes. Just like a regular clown.

The African tribe members at least come off better by the sole virtue that no one ever tells them to be circus clowns. Other than that, I guess the best thing that can be said about them is that it looks like they went ahead and saved themselves a lot of production money and hired an actual African tribe to be in this movie. Who needs actors when you can get "the real thing"?

And speaking of the actors, I remember when Steve Railsback was in his heyday in the Seventies and illuminated the small screen with his electrifying performance as Charles Manson in the made-for-TV film "Helter Skelter". Then again in 1980 when he shone brightly in that wonderfully artistic stunner The Stunt Man. I mean, he was quite literally lauded all over the place for a breakout performance against the likes of Peter O'Toole. That was such a loooong time ago.

What about Johns, though? She was in such classics as The 49th Parallel, Mary Poppins, The Sword and the Rose, Rob Roy The Highland Rogue, The Court Jester and Around the World in Eighty Days. But like everyone else, she fell on hard times after a while and took a job wherever she could get one. Apparently it's a toss-up as to whether she thought she was in a comedy or a drama, judging from her performance which teeters dangerously between doddering dottiness and grim talkings-to.

At one time they were both their respective darlings of their respective cinemas but Nukie contained some pretty high hurdle to clear. Some people make it over such hurdles, some clip the bar, other times still the runners stumble. This, however, was a race run in scuba flippers.

Nothing about this film comes even close to hitting the tone of E.T. - heck, they don't even reach a Mac and Me vibe. How did something like this go so wrong and fail so completely? I'll tell you exactly why: because Odendal, Pakleppa and Taylor saw E.T., came up with a cute title, then completely forgot to do anything original once they got past the "hey, let's make a movie" stage. Nukie is a product of people who not only didn't care about what they were making but made darned sure no one else involved cared and that no one who watched it would care, either.

I'm going to give you a few names: Marguerite Sehr. Thorsten Schreiber. David De Vries. Kissi Schwabe. Neil Swanepoel. Charlotte Van Graan. Johan Barnard. Jorg Springfield. Rod Dyson. These are the names of the people responsible for (as they say in the credits) makeup, wardrobe props and special effects for Nukie. Why do I mention their names? Because NOWHERE in the end credits do they mention anything about who was responsible for constructing and bringing to life the hideous alien costumes used in this thing. No one. They refuse to take responsibility for either Nukie or Miko. Not that I blame them, but I want to know who to write my letters to ... uh, my fan letters. Yeah, that's it: FAN letters.... Yeah.

The only thing I can tell you about Nukie, money-wise, is that the lack of any hard facts as to what this thing cost to make only adds to my suspicion that this was something funded by the blood of the innocent. I suspect some arcane chants were employed during various points of production and are still going on to this day, just to keep the dark secrets of Nukie hidden. After all, if the truth were to be known, would we want Germany to make any more sci-fi-oriented kiddie films?

I think anyone who willingly subjects themselves to Nukie deserves everything they get, right down to talking chimpanzees in pink t-shirts.