Badi

I'll admit right now that I get a kick out of watching rare movies. By rare, I mean really rare films – the type that Roger Ebert or Leonard Maltin have never even heard of, and the ones that bypass even the fans of the film's genre. These are the films that were never released outside of their own countries, the ones that were never dubbed for an English market. More often than not, they're diabolically bad. But I like 'em, anyway.

Turkish E.T. is one such film. As you might well guess from the title, this is a cheap rip-off of Spielberg's E.T., made without a budget and without much in the way of inspiration. It fits into a whole Turkish sub-genre of rip-off movies; we've got variants on STAR TREK, STAR WARS, RAMBO, THE EXORCIST and THE WIZARD OF OZ floating around in the ether out there, and none of them are much cop. Unless you dig bad films, that is.

Turkish E.T. is definitely one of those. The alien, called Badi, is a poor cousin to the lovable Spielbergian creature. He's played by either a kid or a midget in a rubber suit, with a huge, elongated head (a bit like the creatures in the ALIEN films) and poached egg eyes. He blows smoke when he gets annoyed and he makes some pretty creepy growling noises. All in all, Badi is a sinister creation, and not something you'd let your kids hang around with. Hang around with him they do, however, in an extraordinarily slow moving plot that's generally played for laughs and not a lot else. The film takes an age to move from one scene to another with the impression that the actors are just making it up as the go along. Badi hides in a cupboard, Badi goes to a funfair, Badi enters a schoolroom and makes the teacher faint. There are a few good set-pieces – like when the gang of kids ambush the authorities – but these are far and far between.

The comedy value is high. The rip-off of the bike-over-the-moon sequence is pure comedy gold, as Badi and his buddies grab an old handcart, tie a load of balloons to it, and proceed to fly through the air. I actually liked it better than the effects in the Spielberg movie. On the whole, though, this is a cruddy movie, of interest to those with a REAL liking for cheap world cinema in all its forms.

This is a cheap, unwatchable, creepy, sometimes hilarious rip-off of "E.T.", done Turkish-style. The story concerns a three-foot alien who gets stranded on Earth and befriends a young boy. The plot is completely derivative of Spielberg's yarn, and the special effects have to be seen to be believed. The alien character, named "Badi", is made up of a midget inside an extremely disturbing rubber mask. A far cry from the cute E.T. that we all know and love.

I saw an undubbed version with no subtitles, so I can't comment on the dialogue or plot intricacies. The story is very slow moving, with only a few memorable scenes to keep it from being a totally wasted rental. I'm not sure if this was a hit in Turkey back in '83, but I feel very sorry for their filmgoing public if it was. This is worth seeing only for the horrifying rubber-faced Badi, a creature that would scare any child no matter how curious and open-minded.

Badi (1983)

1/2 (out of 4)

An alien ends up getting stranded on Earth where he befriends a lonely little boy.

BADI is best remembered for being the first of the many E.T. rip-offs. Of course, the fact that it comes from Turkey means that it's also an incredibly poorly made film that is pretty bad on every level. I think what makes these Turkish movies so bad is the simple fact that there was zero attempt to make them any good. Instead of trying to be a good, decent or even a poor rip-off they instead just came up with a copycat idea and would do nothing with it.

It doesn't matter that BADI features horrible acting, horrible direction and horrible effects. The only thing that mattered to the producer and director was the fact that they got anything filmed and sold it to the public. Today we watch movies like these just for cheap thrills of seeking out something bad but can you imagine if you actually had to pay money and walked into a theater showing this?

The version I watched didn't have any subtitles so who knows what type of dialogue was going on here. Whatever was being said certainly didn't help bring anything out of the performances. As for the alien, it was a midget inside a really awful looking costume with an incredibly scary looking mask. I guess you could say the mask looked like a Mr. Potato Head that had been beaten and mashed with a bat.

BADI will appeal to awful movie lovers but sadly there's nothing here that would fit the "so bad it's good" label.

All good things depend on money of course. That film has been made with a very small budget, in a short time, with unknown actors(!) and Actress(!) just for children, like other films during the worst time of Yesilcam(Turkish Hoolywood). Any intellectual and/or any normal person who has common sense doesn't go to see these kind of films even in Turkey, and just find them too ridiculous to bother about them.

But considering the very limited opportunities for the films for the children, these kind of films could earn some money but not much, then. Therefore, these kind of films may be considered as cult films from the point of the developing of the Cinema Art in Turkey.

One of the many Turkish ripoffs of famous movies from the US depicts a boy befriending an alien. Yep, "Badi" is Turkey's very own "E.T.". And this time, the boy's extraterrestrial friend looks bizarre! It's one of those no-budget movies that you watch just to laugh at it. The copy that I saw didn't have subtitles, but you don't need to know what they're saying since there's not much in the way of acting going on.

This is one of three "E.T." ripoffs (that I know of, at least). The others were 1983's "Pod People" (riffed on "Mystery Science Theater 3000") and 1988's "Mac and Me" (by far one of the worst movies ever made; it was less a movie than a 90-minute ad for McDonald's and Coca Cola).