"RMK" just sent in a fantastic e-mail: "The other day I was cleaning out our hall closet, and for whatever reason someone had stored a stack of late 80s magazines and newspapers in the back. With nothing better to do on a weekend I looked through the pile before sending it to the recycling bin, and low and behold I found two things that I normally wouldn't have given a second glance to had it not been for recent mentions in X-Entertainment stories. First off, a copy of "USA Today" from June 2 1986.....I noticed the little snapshot graphic. I know this looks like a photoshopped picture, but I still have the whole sheet, so I can prove its not if need be. Check out the fifth greatest selling video cassette of all time circa 1986."
"Secondly, I found a Variety magazine from the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Guess what film was screened at that esteemed gathering of film critics and glamorous stars....."Nukie"! I can just imagine Roger Ebert - who brags about seeing every last film presented at the yearly event - sitting through this flick."
Awesome stuff, RMK. I'd be truly amazed if USA Today's facts weren't a bit screwy, because I just can't see Clue: The VCR Game gaining that much momentum without word-of-mouth negative advertising killing it off first. It wasn't a terrible game for the time, and it felt "special" in a less technologically advanced decade, but come on...the proof is in the pudding. The rest of the list seems off, too. Michael Jackson's "The Making of Thriller" was the third best-selling video ever?
As for Nukie, I'd guess that the page you scanned is just about the only print promotion the film ever enjoyed. Most of the films I've reviewed were awful in their own special way, but Nukie was awful in absolutely every way imaginable. I've never seen a group of people put so much effort into something so obviously terrible at every turn. The only people I've ever spoken to who were able to sit through the thing were fellow reviewers of bad movies, so you can imagine the drive and motivation it'd take for a regular audience to make it through.
Incidentally, I haven't watched the flick yet, but there's a weird old movie sitting on the shelf here that stars some kind of alien puppet thing, and strike me down if I'm wrong, but based on the box art, the guy looks exactly like Nukie, save for a glued-on cotton beard. It's entirely possible that the Nukie suit showed up for another shitty movie, and if that turns out to be true, you can bet on a review sometime soon.
Posted by Matt on 09/26/2003. E-mail me!
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Hey, wait a minute… in the movie, Nukie was wearing some ugly cloth robe thing, but in this ad, he appears to be naked… in the immortal words of more people than I care to credit, WTF?