Nukie!

Nukie (1987)

Runtime: 99 agonizingly long minutes

Directed by: Sias Odendal/Michael Pakleppa

Starring: A bunch of random actors… but also somehow Glynis Johns and Steve Railsback

From: Some companies that I hope are forever embarrassed by this

It wasn’t my plan to ever watch this, but I ended up writing a novel about a movie deserving of its reputation. Last night on Letterboxd, someone commented on my review of Mac and Me; that was actually first experienced in childhood and as a adult it is hilariously bad. I was then asked if I had ever witnessed Nukie! My reply was “no”—then the realization hit that the movie is available on archive.org and as this received plenty of publicity in these circles due to Red Letter Media-more on that at the end-and it has such a rotten reputation that several notable people proclaimed this “the worst in history”—might as well, right? I survived The Room and Birdemic, after all.

Holy crap, was this ever atrocious, in a mesmerizing way. A pair of ugly simian-like aliens crash-land on Earth… one in Florida, the other (the titular Nukie) in the central region of Africa. Through telepathic communication, Nukie knows he must get to “America”. In execution… I’d love for this movie to get executed! But seriously, while this isn’t so devoid of any logic that it seemed like the product of aliens from outer space (like Things was), it is still amazingly baffling and incoherent. Basically, Nukie does many random things in and around a random African village, which is a stereotypical “white person” view of such. Curious, as this is a product of South Africa where the crew had many German names and for reasons I’d love to have explained to me, this has TWO recognizable names involved: Glynis Johns and Steve Railsback.

Oh, what a tremendous intro this movie gave him. He had one reaction shot then doesn’t properly show up for at least 20 minutes afterwards. That reaction shot: it is best described as “The Quaaludes that I took earlier have finally hit me!” Let me try to hit just some of the “highlights”:

* Nukie’s buddie Miko is stuck as he was captured by “The Space Foundation”… that already is inexplicable, as this is a ripoff of NASA yet… there are multiple signs you see which proclaim that these scientists work for NASA!

* Nukie can also communicate with monkeys.

* A helicopter crashes yet Railsback can somehow quickly put it back together with nary a scratch on it.

* There is a sentient computer named E.D.D.I. That is amazing enough but it actually has a sassy attitude and at one points delivers a maniacal laugh Vincent Price would be proud of! That is even before Miko programs it to have feelings, fall in love with an 80’s “hot chick”, tells another woman, “you know something, lady… you suck!” and makes a bald guy act like a clown… please don’t ask.

* The biggest unanswered question: Nukie and Miko flew down here to Earth as balls of light, and Nukie still has those powers during his African Adventure. Why doesn’t Nukie ask Miko to tell his computer buddy how to get to NASA?!

Then again, there is a long stretch where Nukie and Miko don’t even communicate with each other, so perhaps I am putting more thought in this than the filmmakers did. There are many more flubs, plotholes, illogical moments, footage obviously used multiple times and fractured storytelling that could be mentioned here; instead, by now my point should have been proven—Nukie is as bad as you’ve probably heard.

As for Red Letter Media… they had a long game for years of acquiring VHS copies of Nukie. This was done, because… they wanted to destroy those copies so that their sealed VHS copy of the movie could be professionally graded as if it was a Mickey Mantle baseball card or Action Comics #1. Even if the sale of that copy (for $80,000 dollars!) resulted in that money being given to charity, wouldn’t this have been a profitable sale anyway since it’s a popular YouTube channel (not to me; most of what they do is rather insufferable) and wasn’t it known anyway where the proceeds of the sale were going? There are good reasons why I ignore that channel despite their focus being on an esoteric topic of interest to me.

Subsequently, on eBay the prices for VHS and LaserDiscs (whether or not they are sealed) in general has become rather inflated. You’d be shocked at the prices that are listed for Nukie in particular. The sellers might as well be charging a trillion dollars for this product as who would want to shell out over 100 dollars for this on VHS or (according to a mutual in their recent review; this listing is sadly gone now) pay almost SEVENTY THOUSAND dollars for Nukie on LaserDisc?! Thanks, Red Letter Media.