At my house, I have a practically constant cavalcade of crap, culled from the vault, playing on my television at any given time. I obtain most of these dusty nuggets from various sources. Sometimes, I am surprised by what is actually available to our domestic shores. Such is the case with the selection I’m reviewing herein called, “The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid” (1979) which stars Italian western/comedy/action star Bud Spencer (“My Name is Trinity” and “Trinity is Still My Name”) and that cute little scamp and “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind” alien abductee Cary Guffey.
Does the alien have any green moon cheese for our sandwiches?
This movie is a rare breed when it comes to categorization. Along with being a movie belonging 100% to my self-devised Vault category, this movie has a crazy sub-categorization of Spaghetti/Sci-Fi/Comedy/ Hicksploitation. I do not know whether everyone fully understands what this string of adjectives means. Sci-Fi and Comedy are pretty self-explanatory and I will assume that most everyone has heard of a Spaghetti western and what the term Spaghetti means in that context. But what about Hicksploitation? Just for the sake of clarification, I will explain; Hicksploitation means “exploitation of rednecks.” A few mainstream examples of Hicksploitation would be “Smokey and the Bandit” or the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard.” These examples are tame compared to their Grindhouse counterparts. The characters in these mainstream examples are pretty high functioning. It seems to me that there should be levels to the Hicksploitation genre going from soft to hard, a determination that is also used in the categorization of pornography. In pornography, the softer the feature is, the less graphic the sexual content is within it. In Hicksploitation, the softer it is, the higher the intelligence quotients of the main and surrounding characters. This movie rates at mediumcore Hicksploitation. The main characters are pretty smart (one of them is an alien, don’t forget), but the public at large is dumb enough to take cowpies to a bake sale. At any rate, I challenge anyone out there to find another movie with that pedigree. Italians exploiting southern small town buffoons for comedic purposes? Fuhgeddaboutit, Daisy Mae!
The small Georgia town of Newnan is in the grips of UFO fever! Many members of the community have gathered at the lake in the center of town where an alien has supposedly touched down. The military frogmen are searching the lake and the troops are searching the shore areas. On top of that, some people are claiming to have seen an actual alien stomping about. The lake area is a flurry of activity with all of the city services convening with news media from all of the surrounding areas. The people being interviewed by the press are doing all of the explaining in accents thicker than Mississippi mud. A woman screams and everyone cranes their heads to see what they think is a huge, foreboding alien in a silver spacesuit. It turns out that it is just the sheriff partaking in his off-duty hobby of beekeeping. Wouldn’t the sheriff know about the UFO sighting? Why would he be in the search area dressed in that extremely futuristic beekeeping outfit that closely resembles a spacesuit? Also, where did he get that beekeeping outfit in the first place? I want one for next Halloween. The sheriff explains himself and comedic fisticuffs with some members of the military ensue.
Did I mention that this movie was made in 1979? Cue vaguely disco theme song! The opening theme song has maybe 7 or 8 discernible words during its length. For sure I heard the words, “I’m the Sheriff!” and “…Walking along…,” but that is about all I can decipher from the garbled vocal. I have always been partial to disco or disco-like theme songs in movies, so this movie has one plus thus far.
Wacky occurences seem to abound all over town. A disbelieving farmer sits in the barber’s chair and it spins wildly. The barber screams, “He’s the UFO!” What? Is the barber implying that the farmer is the UFO? The sheriff shows up and stops the chair spinning and frees the farmer, now a very dizzy believer. An ice cream stand has some of its machines go haywire (machines of which whose actual, real-world uses are completely unknown and suspect), spitting out a steady stream of green, yellow, and pink foam. The sheriff pounds on the counter and the machines stop spewing forth their colorful goodness. The ice cream stand employee, covered in the goo, stares at the sheriff and exclaims, “Don’t look at me. I’m not a UFO!” Over the sheriff’s car radio his dispatcher and deputy, Allen, who rhymes everything like some sort of backwoods Dr Seuss, gives him the location of an alien disturbance at a restaurant. When he gets to the restaurant he arrests the town ruffian, Brennen, for dressing as an alien and causing havoc. His costume is composed of a cape and a werewolf mask that upon removal causes a woman to scream in terror. This made me chuckle a little because the guy is not the prettiest flower in the garden, if you catch my drift. After all of this hubbub, the Sheriff has had it with UFO fever.
He doesn't believe in UFOs, but he obviously believes in bacon.
Later that night, after locking up Brennen, he goes to find the perpetual missing son of one of the towns’ residents at the local amusement park. He finds the boy playing with another boy who says he is an alien named H7-25. The sheriff tries unsuccessfully to get the kid to tell him his real name and where he lives. But the kid sticks to his story, so the sheriff has no other alternative but to take him to his office. There we discover the source of all the zany happenings throughout Newnan. It seems that H7-25 has a ray gun of some type that has been the source of the hi-jinks. He calls it the Fatonic (Phatonic? Photonic?) ray, but like the song, I can’t quite make out what exactly the little whippersnapper is saying here. Fartonic ray is more like it because the infantile slapstick humor that is the foundation on which this movie is supported is like a giant, gaseous rump leaking it’s iniquities upon the hapless celluloid onto which this film was developed. The only thing that saves this movie from being boring is the quick pace at which the “jokes” come at you. The half-assed shenanigans are foisted onto the screen with regularity, creating a frenzied pace that kept me interested. When something needs to be explained to the audience, like the idiotic science of H7-25’s Fartonic ray, the movie slows down. The Fartonic ray, as it turns out, is kind of like a telekinesis remote control and has the power to move time forward and backward in small increments of time. It also makes animals speak, which is how H7-25 is able to convince the sheriff that he is an alien.
The sheriff, now convinced that H7-25 is an alien, decides to protect him. Aside from the laughable chaos created by the Fartonic ray, the rest of the half-assed shenanigans of which I speak are mostly comedic fisticuffs with a twist. You see, this is a movie made for the kiddies. You have a lawman in the role of a protagonist, with a whole slew of military men and their leader in the roles of antagonists. If they all had guns, then common sense would dictate that they should be used at some point and that would create an ungodly mess in the psyches of the young audience. Guns are used in one scene by the military, as a way to scare poor H7-25 into telling the military leader how his Fartonic ray works, but no one is shot. As a result, most of the rest of the comedic set pieces come from long extended fight sequences. They really would not be as long as they were if it wasn’t for many little instant replays used for comedic effect. The Sheriff bonks someone on the head. The film rewinds, sped up, and it is shown again. Repeat a few times. The fight continues. There is also a scene where H7-25 is almost abducted by the military and the sheriff must use the Fartonic ray to wrest him from their clutches. Of course this includes lots of footage of helicopters taking off and landing and grunts embarking and disembarking, over and over, from said aircraft to a tune that sounds suspiciously like “Swan Lake.” Obviously the director had seen too many episodes of The Benny Hill Show. The scenes with all of the comedic fisticuffs even have the repetitive cheerful theme music that sounds like the 7 dwarfs became high on big doses of bathtub methamphetamine, breathed helium and then became backup singers at a country jamboree. It is one of those themes that sneaks into your head and stays there, permanently. The fact that this theme now must compete with the excellent Benny Hill main themes of “Mah Na Mah Na” and “Gimme Dat Ding” does not please me one iota.
Speaking of methamphetamine, there is one scene that indicates to me that this alien kid is really an intergalactic drug dealer. The sheriff, who sleeps at his office, wakes up to find his deputy dancing a wild jig. The sheriff asks about his rheumatism and the deputy says, “Disappeared. I took an H7 goofball. Makes you feel fantastic, mega-cosmic, Homeric…” Homeric? Really? Whatever, you old drug fiend.
Eventually, H7-24 leads his son and the sheriff to their rendezvous point, after many trials and tribulations. It all finishes in an easily foreseeable surprise ending. Did someone say sequel? “Why Did You Pick On Me?” came soon after in 1980. Both “The Sheriff and The Satellite Kid” and its’ sequel never made it to American cinemas upon release. So why is there a domestic DVD release for a movie that never reached American shores? In the early days of cable, movie channels were desperate for cheap time filler for the period of time that was way off the beaten path of prime time. Weekday and weekend afternoon time slots needed to be filled with the cheapest, family friendly product that could be found. This was one way in which many people saw this movie. Then there are people like me, discovering this movie 30 years after its initial release.
Good job on making another stinker, Italy!
When I first received this movie in the mail, I plopped it in my DVD player. For 20 excruciating minutes, I watched in detached horror until I tore “The Sheriff and The Satellite Kid” from the player and put it back in the envelope. When the sequel showed up, I sent it back right away. I rated this movie one star online, but soon I was questioning myself. What was it about this movie that made me have such a negative reaction? I had seen worse. Much, much worse. I thought that I should reexamine the movie and quickly put it back in my queue at the top. I waited a long time for it to come back. I believe that I had to wait so long because I angered the Gods of Bad Cinema, a gathering of dead, bad film directors on some celestial plane. Ed Wood, Al Adamson, and Doris Wishman had judged me, I thought. The waiting was one punishment. The other punishment is the fact that I must tell you all the truth. Even though it fills me with shame to admit it, I liked “The Sheriff and The Satellite Kid.” It was fast paced (like most cats, I cannot resist a feather on a string) and has a convoluted mixture of genres, a particular attribute I find utterly compelling.
Cave of the One-Eyed Beast 