Nukie (1987)

I've covered ALOT of dross on this blog since I first started watching movies recreationally in 2021. And ironically some of the worst movies I've subjected myself to aren't actually considered to be enshrined within the definitive list of movies considered the worst ever made! I'm taking about that football movie and categorically the worst whole shit of a movie I've ever watched so far. Just two of the most unspeakably bollocks productions I've ever had to suffer through. But if we talking statistically about the worst movie I've watched so far, that award goes to: Manos: The Hands of Fate which ranks at a paltry 1.6/10 on IMDB, the lowest yet and, yeah it was shit really, but a far better experience than those I've had with some of the other watches on the Worst List that I've had to sit through. HOWEVER, the subject of this weeks watch has swaggered on to the schedule and is the strongest and newest contender yet for what might be the definitive worst movie ever made. Ranking in at just a smidgen above Manos with 1.7/10 on IMDB is: Nukie. A South African Science Fiction movie from 1987 about an alien crash landing on Earth who is befriended by two children. Sound familiar? It should. And yes I will be making that reference again a little bit later on. I'm excited, I'm not gonna lie. There is dross and then there is vintage dross. Antique dross. This is antique dross. Very rarely do I get to cover a movie so infamous for it's absolute bollocksness that it takes on a mystical aura all of it's own. And Nukie is one of those movies. I'm looking forward to this one.

In the opening scenes, two UFO's descend from space crash landing on Earth with the first landing somewhere in California and the second somewhere in Central Africa. With NASA observing the crash landings they move fast to recover the first UFO, an Alien named Miko (Voice: Anthony Morrison) with the second in Central Africa, Nukie (Voice: Anthony Morrison... again...) left to one Dr Eric Harvey (Steve Railsback), somebody a little more local, to recover. Nukie, waking up and realising his partner Miko has disappeared manages to make telepathic contact with his brother who reveals to him that he is being held prisoner in America. The movie then zips backwards and forwards as Nukie wanders around Africa trying to communicate with the local wildlife whilst those horrible bastards at NASA conduct all kind of painful and uncomfortable experiments on Miko. Nukie eventually manages to communicate with some baboons (no, uh really...) and they direct Nukie to seek out Charlie - a chimpanzee adopted by the local townspeople but warn Nukie to avoid humans. Meanwhile Dr. Harvey arrives at the local Catholic mission in the region and is introduced to Sister Anne (Glynis Johns) who tells him to turn back around and leave immediately. Which is just the kind of welcome you want after 3 days worth of travelling to be fair... but Dr. Harvey laughs it off before he is lead away in his carriage, that appears to be the back half of a Mercedes Benz car being towed by donkeys.... ? Anyway, Nukie turns up at the mission and makes contact with Charlie the Chimp but he is totally useless and no help at all. As Nukie leaves he comes across two young tribal boys being stalked by a lioness and after saving them from being horribly slaughtered the boys agree to help Nukie find America. After a... slightly bizarre scene where Miko, back in America, seems to get hypnotised by an evil computer... we are then back in Africa with Nukie who tries to commandeer the helicopter that Dr. Harvey flew in on, only to end ploughing it into some trees after a short time in the air. Nukie then later decides it's a good idea to make all the pots of water explode whilst trying to reason with the local tribe leader that he is not a "bad God." which then leads to a sped up chase scene as local tribesman chase him around in the desert and I err... don't quite know why. Pissing off the local Tribal leader doesn't really help matters though and instead leads to the two boys from earlier being kicked out of the tribe and left to die. In the evening they catch up with Nukie who makes a fire for them to keep warm before doing some kind of weird dance number that makes fireworks appear...? Back in America there is this weird sub-plot developing that I'd sort of ignored for now where Miko has reprogramed the base computer to have feelings and a heart (?) and it proclaims it's love for the only rational minded person; Pamela Carter (Carin. C. Tietze) in the whole base who, up until this point in the movie has been protesting against the horrible experiments being carried out on Miko. Back in Africa, Sister Anne explains to Dr. Harvey what has happened, finally naming the boys as Toki (Sipho Mlangeni) and Tiko (Siphiwe Mlangeni), whilst Nukie tries to convince the village he's not a bad God by... possessing a motorbike and driving around aggressively because yes that is sure to work. Out in the bush Toki is bitten by a cobra and despite Tiko's help is almost certainly on deaths door until Dr. Harvey arrives on the scene and after earning their trust escorts Toki away to the Mission Hospital. Nukie arrives on the scene just a little bit too late and consoles Tiko before he is shot with a tranquilizer dart by "The Corporal" (Ronald France), another American guy who lives at the Mission and hatches a plan with the local Tribe leader to sell Nukie to America, making them both rich. Back in America, the computer system - which is now sentient I guess... decides it will no longer work with the humans to hurt Miko and backchats the Doctors when they try to make it work. Back in Africa (look, this is just how they shot this movie ok?) Tiko is now at the mission and seemingly explained everything off camera because Dr. Harvey now knows that Nukie exists and has been captured by Corporal and the Tribe Leader, and Tiko explains that he (Nukie) was just trying to find America. In America; Miko somehow telepathically communicates with Tiko - in Africa - and explains that he needs to rescue Nukie. Tiko tracks down Nukie who is being held in a cage inside Corporal's place and sets him free, managing to make their escape with a bit of help from Charlie the Chimp. Nukie then heals Toki before him and Tiko say their goodbyes and head off for America seemingly just knowing how to get there now? For some reason Dr. Harvey disappears? I think he presumes Nukie is dead and just goes home? Whilst back in America, Miko convinces the computer system which has taken on the name EDDI to unlock the doors and let him escape. Which it does. And he does. He makes it as far as Pamela's office before falling asleep in a massive... well... bin... where he is discovered by Pamela. She smuggles him out at the same time contacting Dr. Harvey and arranging for the pair to be on the next flight to Africa. Speaking of Africa, back over that way and Tiko and Nukie are still crossing the bush to get to America when Corporal catches up with them. They try to commandeer his jeep when his back is turned but end up driving it into a creek which leads to a weakened Nukie being whisked away by the current and down a massive waterfall before washing up on the rocks at the bottom. On the verge of death he is carried by Tiko to some caves where low on energy and almost dead, Nukie still has enough energy to make him and Tiko fly. And they zip through the sky until weak, they crash land in some random abandoned town. Just when it looks like all hope is lost and Nukie is about to die, literally everybody arrives on the scene! Sister Anne with Toki and Charlie the Chimp, and Dr. Harvey in his helicopter with Miko, finally reuniting the pair of extra-terrestrial brothers. The pair say their goodbyes before leaving, taking Charlie the Chimp with them too! I err... don't know why.

HAHA WOW. I mean, where do I start with this one? We have alot of ground to cover. I'm going to level with you straight away this was not all bad. There was some redeeming elements to this movie that, genuinely, I thought were ok. But uh yeah. There is alot to unwrap here. Just an absolute incredible masterclass in how not to make a movie!! And to a degree it's a shame because the underlying motive; an extra-terrestrial encounter but with African theming does have creative legs to be honest but it served little to no purpose here than to just be geographically really far away but we'll get to that in a moment. As I said there were positives, incredibly! But I think, unfortunately, there are just a significant number of negatives here really that a really tipping that balance in the opposite direction.

So hey, look, let me start off by being a bit nice about it huh? I was, for the most part, impressed with the costume design of Nukie and Miko. They were incredibly stiff, incredibly wooden in the metaphorical sense, not the physical state of being, but they looked at least like credible alien lifeforms and they got alot of screentime, lots of different shots and angles, full body shots, it's clear that a good portion of effort was put in to at least develop and flesh them out as characters and features in the movie. And they went through physical changes throughout, looking dishevelled by the time the movie reached it's conclusion. It wasn't quite on par with the leading special effects of the time, but there was effort and there was an attempt to at least make them credible. And I'm not going to rag on the movie for that. It could have been worse.

AND... yes... and it at least told a story! There was too much of it, granted, but there was a story. A narrative. A plot that had a beginning, a middle and reached a crescendo (sort of) at the end. A good portion of the middle is mostly just spent meandering around not really going anywhere or developing anything... but there is a 3 stage story development to this one and at least something happens. You can't take that away from the movie. It's there. There is a framework upon which the rest of this picture is built around. And for the most part, it was... ok. I struggled alot towards the last 25 - 30 minutes and it just needed to be over, but there was at least a narrative ok. It was there.

Ok and just one more. A nod of respect for the African setting and the theming. I mean, it mostly just existed to be somewhere really far away but it at least took some elements to form it's foundation: a Christian Mission, the local tribespeople, your two human boys being members of the tribe and some other minor associated elements. Do I think it was explored and portrayed to it's fullest potential. No. Absolutely not, but there was at least some of it here to try and differentiate it from that other, more famous alien encounter movie that was very popular around the same time.

That is really, about where the positives end on this one I'm afraid and alot of everything else was mostly just bad. I mean, I don't even really know where I should start. How about: production. And I don't mean the cinematography and soundtracking which, was fine, was adequate. Bordering on impressive in spots. But err no, I'm talking more about the formulation of the movie. For some reason they decided very early on that the movie was going to zip backwards and forwards between what was happening in America to Miko and what was happening to Nukie in Africa. And I guess that's ok, it's been done in movies before and since. But I found here that the distribution and the pacing was just massively off! You had like 1 scene in Africa that lasted a few minutes, then it's back to America! Then Africa! America! Africa! AMERICA! AFRICA! It see-sawed across settings so quickly and continuously throughout the whole thing that I actually started to find it irritating. It didn't help that the good majority of the scenes with Miko, the computer; EDDI and the humans were just massively cringey and I was genuinely second hand embarrassed at some of the goofy bollocks that was depicted. 

Compounding that the movie was a mess, just careering all over the place from scene to scene sometimes with little to no exposition, or little development on what had just happened in the scene prior and I don't just mean as they flitted from location to location. During some of the Africa segments there was 3 - 4 short burst scenes of just stuff happening that had little to no bearing on the plot and didn't really develop anything or elaborate on anything. I swear the whole cut of the movie was just pieced together and developed like that: 1st draft. With no editing, no resequencing. Just as it arrived, as it was shot on film. No post prod.

And then there is the script which, given that you are mostly relying on: two actors dressed in costume that are aliens, two native boys as supporting characters who mainly serve as plot development and a Nun who is somehow central to the story but has absolutely no bearing on what happens in the film, oh and a Doctor who manages to accomplish nothing for 1 hour 40 minutes until he has to be at the end to reunite the aliens... there is very little you can really accomplish with the dialogue and there wasn't large amounts of story telling really being told that way to be honest. In fact I'd wager that a good 40% of the dialogue in the script is mostly Miko wailing: "Nukie!" and Nukie wailing: "Miko" and it got alot un-necessary really by about the 45 minute mark. What little dialogue there is beyond that was pretty much filler, out-of-context trailer bait and irrelevant anyway.

And in terms of acting, the whole movie pretty much hinges on Glynis Jones as Sister Anne and Steve Railsback as Dr. Harvey. Two characters really who shared some dialogue and generated this kind of illusion that they almost built up a relationship that frankly, has zero payoff or relevance to the larger story. I thought the boys were decent and put in a good job of genuinely being active and engaging with the movies storyline, but the two other main adults were just so bland and stereotypically typecast that it almost didn't matter that they were in the movie. And as for the rest of the adult characters in the base back in America, who were mostly so irrelevant I haven't even bothered to really name and include them in my plot summary; what little screen time they spent featuring in was just so painfully amateur and embarrassing to witness that they are best just forgotten and glossed over about to be honest.

I'll be frank, I don't usually go all in on a movie unless it really pisses me off, and I can't say that Nukie really pissed me off because it didn't. And I actually was intrigued to see how this spaghetti dinner of a production was going to neatly wrap it all up and box it off at the end when I noticed there was less than 5 minutes of run time left... but to be honest I found the last 25 - 30 minutes a struggle. I'd lost interest, the movie was just firing plot milestones at you one after the other, scene after scene in order to build up some last minute tension before drawing events to a conclusion and I just wanted them to draw a line under one of them and call it done. But they didn't. And they kept moving on to the next point, next point, next point until I was almost exhausted and exasperated by it all. They just needed to wrap it up and call it done!

However, HOWEVER, despite all of this. And despite some glancing familiarities with the famous Steven Spielberg production, the actual full on similarities were fairly low! It was clearly very much an inspiration for the movie, absolutely, but wasn't a full on carbon copy knock off. You can't shade the movie for that, or at least not so much, but even despite that, on it's own merits alone it was just an exercise in how not to make a movie. Low tier acting, terrible zig-zag production, awful pacing, an idea that clearly hadn't been fully fleshed out, and plot development that felt like it was made up as it went along. It's a mid zero but still a zero though. Zero out of Five.