Badi (1983)

Every once in a blue moon, something pops up in my social media cluster that is truly special. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's usually something that can't be ignored. The other day, whilst browsing Twitter I came across a tweet from Ed Glaser (@neonharbor) who unleashed upon the world a full length, subtitled, mostly watchable version of the 1983 movie: Badi. A Turkish "mockbuster" if you like serving as a "sequel" to the Steven Spielberg classic: E.T. When I was an incredibly young boy, E.T. was one of my favourite movies and it made me cry. My family have never let me forget it... but I did love that movie. It is fair to say that I know absolutely fuck all about Badi, I can tell you literally nothing, although I am familiar with the vague concept of the Turkish rip off movie scene. There is a Spider-Man out there somewhere, a Star Wars, fairly sure there is a Turkish Rambo as well. These movies are synonymous with being incredibly low budget, incredibly low quality and incredibly poorly produced making them a perfect fit for this blog, to be honest. I've never covered a Turkish movie before... I don't think and given the total lack of information I've been able to find, this is not going to be the most factually accurate movie review you will ever read, but it's all about the experience man, and this is err... definitely going to be an experience.

In the first 3 minutes of the movie, I have no fucking idea what is going on because there's no subtitles but these 2 strange boys with tinfoil on their heads appear to be trying to blow up the house or something? But anyway after that a lady I don't know the name of yet, goes to visit Dr. Metin, she wants his help to have an oscilloscope made. Whilst they're walking the streets, the Dr. introduces her to some kids playing on the street on the way to school, a young boy called Ozer, slightly older boy; Bulent, the eldest girl; Sabahat and younger girl Nilufer who is the same age as Bulent, all four of them are siblings, and then to orphan Ali who has an affinity with animals and is particularly friendly with a dog he has nicknamed Bowlegs. The following morning after witnessing Bowlegs get shot... Ali is comforted by this lady we don't know the name of yet, but that's enough of that scene because we have to cut to some very Turkish looking men talk about why they don't like dogs which is interrupted when a Police officer turns up (?). Meanwhile lady who's name we don't know is with... I think... her Professor, Professor Naci, and whilst talking about the kids, they're interrupted by bright purple lights in the sky and low pitched loud noises following by a phone call from ??? announcing that "it" has landed. Cut to our first shot of Turkish E.T. and he is fucking terrifying. I... think... I mean, it's really quite blurry and it's difficult to tell but he walks so un-naturally. Creepy A.F. His saucer lands in park somewhere and he wanders out the spacecraft. The saucer landing attracts the attention of the entire village, including Mr. Policeman from earlier and they all race down to the field to get a look at the UFO but arriving before the others, Mr. Policeman sends them all away. Ali does manage to sneak is way into the field though, with his flashlight, but is scared away when a clearly, very panicky extra terrestrial emerges from behind the trees, grumbling very loudly. The following morning, Ali pretends to be sick so he can avoid going to school and then sends his Aunty out to get... sour apples... so he can sneak away, but he is barely out the door, which he leaves open, when he dashes back and discovers that E.T. wandered into his house whilst he was outside! He introduces E.T to his caged bird which he calls his best friend. E.T's arrival has not gone unnoticed though and after Professor Naci announces he is certain it was a visit from aliens, the pretty lady from earlier is revealed to be named Nurten, and returns back to the village with the Professor and meets with Dr. Metin and the children, who with Mr. Policeman's permission venture into the field to look at the saucer.  Meanwhile back at home, Ali is showing E.T. his family photo album and force feeding him turkish delight (no really) until his Aunt comes home, and despite Ali trying to introduce E.T. to her, she is more concerned with him being out of bed. That night, Ali sneaks out and after collecting Bulent from his house, the pair head to the field where Ali introduces him to E.T., who he has nicknamed Badi and they decide that, in order to hide him from the adults, they will take him to Bulent's house. Which they do, and despite trying to keep him a secret, the rest of Bulent's brothers and sisters promptly discover him. As Professor Naci, Nurten and Dr. Metin begin to follow E.T.'s trail with some kind of scanning device (?) the kids watch on and help E.T. to build a "space phone", presumably so he can phone home. Again. But whilst they are at school, E.T. sneaks out and makes his way there too! Wandering right into the middle of class and causing the teacher to pass out before he completely vanishes when all the kids charge forward to try and touch him. The following evening the kids make a plan to try and sneak E.T. to the field during the night, but in doing so they wake up their father who literally has a hissy fit when he see's E.T. and in the confusion, E.T. runs away and make's his way to Ali's house where he also gets spotted by Ali's Aunt, who literally has a heart attack in shock, but E.T. kisses her to make it all better. Using a trenchcoat, they sneak E.T. out of the house and to the field with all his space phone equipment where... I think... he begins to transmit a message. But at the same time Professor Naci, Nurten and Dr. Metin all also decide to head out to the field to follow the trail they picked up earlier... then for some reason... we are at a funfair and all the rides suddenly power up and just start working on their own? Presumably thanks to E.T. and then all the schoolkids turn up and play on the rides... in the middle of the night? Proffessor Naci and team arrive at Bulent and the kids house after following the trail where they learn that the kids and E.T. have gone missing and presumably knowing exactly where they have gone without being told, they just head off after them, but lurking in the background is Nurten's jealous Partner who I genuinely thought wasn't significant enough to mention before now... Down in the field, after one of the schoolkids, I think Bulent, makes an impassioned speech to the rest of the kids to pledge to protect E.T., the Police turn up and begin searching the field but other than finding the space phone, they find nothing. It is... now daytime for some reason... and Ali is now sick for some reason?! And the rest of the kids are carrying him back into the village when Professor Naci and the others, abandoning their search for E.T. after going round in circles, return, planning to visit Ali's house. Inside, Ali suddenly springs to life and bounds out the house where, popping the trunk of Professor Naci's car, he discovers E.T. for... SOME REASON?... and he is visibly, obviously very sick so they carry him inside the house, which gets spotted by Nurten's jealous partner. Nurten tells Ali that they need to get E.T. to a hospital (?) and that he's homesick (sound familiar?) but then we cut away to reveal Nurten's partner telling the Policeman from the beginning, whilst surrounded by the whole village seemingly, that he saw them carry E.T. into Ali's house, and they all charge off in that direction. A crowd quickly gathers outside the house, demanding that the alien be taken away, but before the police can move in, the kids storm the street with smoke bombs and marbles and in the confusion, they steal a... trolley thing? And use balloons to make it fly (look, just go with it alright?) and they fly all the way back to the park, that takes so long it's apparently night when they get there. But once there, despite the children collectively begging him not to go E.T. heads back aboard his saucer and flies off into the night.

Well... considering that a good half of the time I hadn't got a fucking clue what was actually going on... I think that mostly went alright? It made more sense that The Tomb? Despite being in a completely foreign language and produced nearly 40 years earlier. But uh yeah. So that was definitely a different experience. I mean, I'm working from a "super low res" scan of a TV broadcast here so half the time it was difficult just to make out any discernible detail. But quality accounted for it was the whole movie, start to finish, so I was at least able to follow the story line... mostly... and at least able to partially understand and digest what it was I watching.

I... don't really know about I'm supposed to go about blogging this by applying my usual formula to it to be honest? I mean? I can't assign any of the actors names to any of the roles that they play. I've literally never watched a Turkish movie before in my life so I have no frame of reference. How does this stack up against other Turkish cinematic productions? I have no idea. No idea. So I guess, I'm just going to come at it on face value really. And try my best to avoid sounding massively racist.

Let's... let's address the biggest elephant in the room. The E.T. alien costume is fucking abysmal. It might be hilarious? It might just be shit. I thought it was honestly terrifying at first. And god damn creepy. He moves so un-naturally and just looks so un-natural. I genuinely found it unsettling and morbidly curious. But... it was just really fucking shit to be honest. I didn't look anything like the original. It just looks horrendous. And the voice they used was terrible. More bloodcurdling than endearing. If you recut it as a psychological horror I honestly think it would be the most terrifyingly unsettling thing you might ever watch.

But I feel like the biggest, most glaringly bad thing about this movie is the production values. There are abrupt jump cuts to the next scene, fragmented and chaotic changes of pace from one scene to the next, scene's that last no less than 10 seconds on occasion. Shots out of focus. Shots poorly composed. Shots absolutely not composed at all. But then on the flip side there are also moments where the movie manages to massively surprise you, with some actual, genuinely impressive cinematography and genuinely creative shot framing. I mean, they are few and far between, but they are there!  That being said though, it seems stark raveingly obvious that it was shot on an incredibly low budget, and the hasty and choppy editing just made it very difficult and very confusing to keep up with what was happening.

Acting wise though, and bearing in mind here that everybody spoke in a language I didn't understand and in their native accent, I honestly didn't think it was all that terrible. I mean there were moments that bordered on frankly ridiculous, especially the kids father, and to be honest I mostly just found the kids really annoying, but I'm not entirely sure if that was halfway intentional at times? Like the father was supposed to be massively over the top? Difficult to tell. But I honestly thought, considering the context, that the acting by the kids was genuinely mostly alright. 

But to be completely frank, half the time I hadn't really got a clue what was happening, and I don't think it's just because I was watching a movie in a language I didn't understand. The storyline just bounds on unrelentlessly with things often not really explained, things just randomly happening with no pre-context, there are sections where we just race from scene to scene with about 10 seconds of dialogue, before we move on to the next scene. It made the whole thing a very difficult, and very uncomfortable watch and I had to skip back a few times to try and make sense of where I was and what was happening. Again, potentially a language barrier thing but I also think it was just a very poorly paced, very hastily cobbled together movie. Whole thing, storylinewise, was also pretty much a note for note copy of the original E.T.

SO. That was my first experience with these notorious Turkish mockbusters. It would be remiss of me not to give a nod to Ed Glaser and Neon Harbor here for uploading and sharing this with the rest of the internet. Big respect. And if you want to watch the same version of the movie that I just did, at time of writing, you can find it hosted right here. This was... certainly different... and is arguably one of the worst things I've watched so far. But not necessarily unenjoyable. It had a plot that I could mostly follow. It was at least a little bit interesting to a degree and it at least told a story from start to finish, even if that story was heavily borrowed from another more successful movie. Watching it did just mostly give me a headache though to be fair, but at least in conversation now I can be like, yeah I watched a Turkish version of E.T. once from the 80's which, before this evening, I couldn't say before now, so uh, yeah that was life enriching I guess. Oh I don't know? 1 out of 5?