Badi: The Turkish E.T. (1983)

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised that this movie exists.  It's from Turkey, it's a ripoff of a far-superior American film, it came out a year after said film was released, it'd take a board full of psychologists who specialize in deviant thought patterns to decipher its script...and it makes Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam (aka: Turkish Star Wars) seem trite by comparison.

In other words, this is a film for the ages.  Even moreso than Melissa Matheson's little thing I can't even remember the name of right now so it can't be important so let's move on....

Badi (also known as Turkish E.T. for reasons you will soon discover) doesn't give us the same story we were made familiar with back in 1982 - no, this movie has its own agenda and makes huge strides in the world of E.T.sploitation for the fact that we're not dealing with an Xtro that was all over the place in terms of story.  Instead, Badi makes no bones about offering up something that, while ostensibly for kids in its simple story, operates along the same lines as 1971's Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.

I'll get to what I mean shortly (though some of you may already be able to hazard a guess), but for now gird your loins, here's the plot: Ali (Tolga Sönmez) is your typical young Turkish kid who lives in the bombed-out remains of his Turkish hometown where everything - including his school - is in a state of disrepair.  Bülent (Cengiz Sayhan) is another typical young Turkish kid who lives in the bombed-out remains of blabblahblah.... 

The only exciting things about their lives are the fact that Bülent shares his home with a trio of sibs, your typical Turkish Mom and a dad who has a mustache Stalin would have been proud of.  He is also one of those abusive dads that they write sitcoms about.  Yeah.  And Ali lives with his mom and his pet bird, with whom he talks constantly in chirps and whistles and clicks and stuff.  Apparently they have deep, meaningful conversations, too.  Good for them.

Then one night Badi (that's the alien), is left behind by his fellow hideous monstrosities when the Turkish Authorities or investigators or night guards or whatever disturb them and they head outta Dodge.  He is discovered by Ali, who then shows him (or her or it or whatever) to Bülent, and this sets off a whole list of E.T.-ish things to check off until we get to the finale as the Turkish Seti-wannabes come after Badi, then he is pursued by townsfolk who carry all kinds of garden implements to beat the alien and the kids and everybody else with, I guess.  Oh my gosh - what will ever become of Badi??

Nothing too out-of-the-ordinary-sounding, is it?  I mean, anyone familiar with E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial should know the score.  It would be hard to make this something that is a billion light years away from its source, but somehow director Zafer Par and writer Baris Pirhasan seem to specialize in a gritty urban melodramatic face for our kiddie fantasy that involves death, violence and occasional forays into Scooby-Doo territory.

In fact, during the course of a single two-minute scene, we fall witness to Bülent's mustachioed dad getting ready to slap the Turkish off what he thinks is his own kid's butt in a stupid alien costume, only to get blasted by alien crotch smoke (I'll get to that), which makes Dad run around with about 7 or 8 others through a maze of hallway doors and leave a small toddler alone with the alien menace, looking as confused as Turkishly possible.

That's the kind of directorial choices that win you the Turkish Academy Award, folks.

In fact, there are so many incredibly distraught and distressed kids and adults in Badi that for a while you'd be forgiven if you thought you were watching Turkish Requiem For A Dream.  I was thinking such when a scene popped up early on where a Turkish cop shoots a dog that Eli was playing with moments before.  This makes others gather outside the barb wire-surrounded school Eli and Bülent go to in order to witness the spectacle of this same dog lying dead in the street.

...alright, hang on here.  A dead dog is in this movie.  And I don't mean a model or mock-up or a Russian chapka someone teased out to look like it had legs.  I mean someone in this film (I'm guessing) took the trouble of taking this poor defenseless mutt that hurt no one else, offed him, threw him in the street and shouted, "ROLL 'EM!"

That's right, Mister and Missus SPCA; this dog is actually dead.  Unalive. Non-breathing. Passed on. Deceased. Expired. Demised. Bereft of life. Resting in peace. No more. Ceased to be. Gone to meet his maker. A stiff. Pushing up daisies. His metabolic processes are now history. He's off the twig. Kicked the bucket.  Shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.  THIS IS AN EX-DOG!

It would seem there are no Turkish animal rights groups around to make sure anyone who is not a Turkish human is safe and sound, so we are subjected to dead dogs.  I won't say anymore on this, only that Ruggero Deodato wouldn't have gotten into a lot of the trouble he found himself in if he had just filmed Cannibal Holocaust in the wild, untamed jungles of Turkey. That's all.

Then when the scene comes where Badi is feeding Ali/Turkish Elliott #1 some chunks of grayish food-like stuff that he chews and spills from his mouth as he speaks...I felt (un)comfortably certain of what happened to that same dog not long after its last scene.

As far as the human acting, it's about as good as to be expected, seeing that everyone is performing their lines around the bombed-out shells of downtown London during The Blitz.  Or that's what it LOOKS like; never have you seen so many crumbling walls, rubble-strewn streets, piece-meal houses and run-down city blocks in your life.  At least not since the last documentary on World War II.  Near as I can tell, producer Serif Gören wanted to get as much realism into this project as he possibly could, so decided to forgo sets and just roll cameras after the results of a particularly bad instance of friendly fire or something.  Thank God this guy didn't film the 1982 E.T.; California would have been bombed clear into the ocean.

But neither is this Turkish Hope And Glory, so expect no ironic, life-affirming commentary.  Rather, the Turks here just handle things like another day at the office.  The bombed-out, crumbling, collapsing-into-itself office.

Again, the acting - at least in physical terms - is fine; you get the sense that Ali and Bülent (our tag-team Elliotts) really are freaked-out by this crotch-smoking  alien (I'll get there, don't worry...), and the fact that Bülent's overly-mustached Dad is more than willing to beat every living thing into submission at a whip-stitch....but is still horrified by this Badi thing.  Even moreso than at this rolled-up Turkish rug shoved underneath his nose.

That's another thing, though; the family dynamic in this flick is all wrong for E.T.sploitation; in the original E.T., Elliott was living in a divorced household with just mom, older brother and his booze-chugging, pill-popping younger sister(okay, just Drew Barrymore, but still...).  Here, Ali and Bülent have so many parents, siblings and other family members hanging around each house that we have the makings of a Turkish sitcom fit for ABC Friday Night Family!  Ali even has a grandmama, fercryinoutloud!  Eli/Turkish Elliott #1 probably hoped and prayed for a divorce so he could get the family unit split up and stand a better chance at getting into the water bucket and coffee can they have for a bathroom.

But such family drama is unimportant in this film.  Come on; we came here to see the alien.

Ironically, this is where the differences show not only between Badi and E.T., but between Badi and Turkish Star Wars.  For Turkish Star Wars, every costume rental store throughout Turkey got raided, and most of the populace from Ankara to Istanbul was fitted with a fuzzy suit, Halloween mask, gladiator armor, flowing robe, or any combination of same.

In Badi?  One costume.  Period.

And what a costume it is - Carlo Rambaldi may have gotten some awards for his work, but it's THIS suit people will remember.

For the greenhorn, let me describe it this way: picture a Don Post E.T. mask that's been turned inside-out and slapped over the head of a child.  That same child is wrapped in a  brown plastic trash bag with a hubcap taped to his chest.  Then the whole get-up is spray-painted with tan and yellow Krylon - 5 or 6 cans - and there you go.  Oh, and jam a fire extinguisher between its legs...then while the spray paint fumes are still making the kid woozy, have him walk around and start filming.  AND EVERYONE ACT ENCHANTED, DAMMIT!

No wonder the adults are so terrified at this thing: being curled in a fetal position and screaming until you're hoarse is a natural response to what looks like a hybrid between Bat Boy from "Weekly World News", a seahorse and the baby from Eraserhead.  That's enough to make Lucy Van Pelt charge more than a nickel for the psychiatric help needed to get over such a sight.

As far as dialogue goes, the copy I have is pure Turkish at its finest without English subs or dubs - rendering me at the mercy of the visuals envisioned by Pirhasan's script and Par's direction of same.  Bizarre is the name of the game, as is evidenced in one scene where Eli, Bülent and all their little Turkish friends use Badi to break into an amusement park at night, turn on all the lights and rides with E.T.S.P. and play to their hearts' delight as we cut back to the folks at home, who continue screaming and/or just being catatonic.  You think it was a close call that David Lynch didn't direct Return Of the Jedi?  Here's a glimpse into what his vision of E.T. would look like.

By the end, various bad guy adults come after Badi with clubs, rakes, hoes, scythes, sticks and other instruments with which to examine the alien then beat him and everyone else in a 50-yard radius. Taking the initiative, all the kids bundle up Short 'N' Smoky and run outside to find an old man with a shopping cart and, instead of taking the cart and running, wait for the old man to lay down and die - which the old man thoughtfully does - then everyone piles in and E.T.S.P. strikes again and the cart flies off into the sky in what has to be the absolute worse special effect of a shopping cart filled with kids and crummy aliens you've ever seen.  Guess that bicycles are hard to come by in Turkey.

Speaking of which, would you be at all surprised that this effect looks less convincing than would the same scene animated with construction paper cutouts of the same scene?  I thought not, but I still wanted to put that out there.

Then Badi is reunited with his fellow ugly mutants and hitches a ride home after a tearful farewell with his Earthbound homies.  I greatly suspect that in order to get the realistic tears for this scene, the director told them that the dog earlier was shot by each of their parents.

And so ends Badi, a movie so damned bad that I'll be switched if I didn't find it entertaining.  Turkey may not be the best country for replicating our movies, but they sure know how to  make such failed efforts interesting.

I guess "interesting" is the right word to use seeing that Badi makes itself such a wild exercise in skewed decisions and misrepresentation that it All but collapses under the weight of its intended E.T.sploitation moniker and exploits more of Turkey and what it believes is movie magic than it does Stevie Spielberg's works.

I'd watch Badi again in a minute, and more than willingly inflict it on friends and acquaintances without warning or provocation.  It's just that much of a charmer.

A neurotic charmer, yes, but a charmer anyways.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to write a scathing letter to Harry Bromley Davenport, the writer/director of Xtro, to tell him that when it comes to E.T.spolitation, he best turn his eyes and intentions further East.

As must we all, dear Badi.  As must we all.