YOU’D BE FORGIVEN for never having heard of Nukie. This 1987 South African spin on Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, complete with a wrinkly, big-headed extra-terrestrial who lands on Earth and befriends curious children, has been widely labelled one of the worst movies of all time, not least due to its creepy animatronics and talking chimpanzee. “If I ever have to torture someone, I’ll use this,” wrote one Letterboxd user.
So why, then, has a copy of the infamously bad film, on VHS no less, just sold on eBay for a whopping $80,000? A recent boom in auctions for old and rare VHS tapes has seen vintage, sealed copies of major blockbusters like Back To The Future and Star Wars: A New Hope sold for $75,000 and $60,000 respectively. But the disastrous Nukie? That particular sale was part of a charity auction by YouTubers RedLetterMedia, but this rising trend in VHS appreciation means all sorts of films are growing in value. It’s even having a glorified movie moment of its own thanks to films like Censor, set in the video-nasty era, or Ghostbusters: Afterlife, in which Paul Rudd’s Gary Grooberson plays his class VHS tapes of Cujo and Child’s Play. Then, of course, there’s the format’s celebrity endorsers; see: The Video Archives Podcast, hosted by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.
Jay Carlson, Consignment Director of VHS at Heritage Auctions and the man who handled the Back To The Future sale, understands this hype for rare tapes as a VHS collector himself. “I think that people who grew up loving VHS are now doing well in their careers and have some expendable money. They want to recapture a piece of that history that they remember so well,” he says. Nostalgic memories of video-rental services in the 1980s is a big part of this trend, he believes, but Carlson adds that, for him, they’re also just great to look at. “Some of these VHS cases are just beautiful,” he explains. “They’re like mini movie posters to keep on display.”