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Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Angriff der Killer Tomaten
USA 1978
produced by
John De Bello, J. Stephen Peace for Four Square Productions
directed by John De Bello
starring David Miller, George Wilson, Sharon Taylor, J. Stephen Peace, Ernie Meyers, Eric Christmas, Ron Shapiro, Al Sklar, Jerry Anderson, Don Birch, Tom Coleman, Art K. Koustik, Jack Nolen, Paul Oya, John Qualls, Alan Scharf, Gary Smith, Byron Teergarden, Doug Vernon, Dean Grell, D.J. Sullivan, Jim Hess
written by John De Bello, Costa Dillon, J. Stephen Peace, Rick Rockwell, music by Gordon Goodwin, Paul Sundfor
Killer Tomatoes
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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A series of gruesome murders keep the police baffled, and the only link
between the crimes ... are tomatoes. And as you might have guessed by the
titles, yes, tomatoes really ahve turned lethal and are threatening the very
existance of America/mankind itself. Naturally, the president (Ernie Meyers)
wants to hush everything up, so he assigns inept secret agent Mason Dixon
(David Miller) with the job to deal with the problem while his press secretary
Jim Richardson (George Wilson) is entrusted with the cover-up. Naturally there's a nosey
reporter though, Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor),
who gets all the right leads about the whole thing ... Dixon's
investigations seem to lead to naught, even though his expert in disguises
Smith (Gary Smith) manages to infitlrate the tomato-camp as one of them, but
his disguise is eventually blown when he during dinner asks for the ketchup. Another
associate of Dixon, Finletter (J. Stephen Peace), who never quite finds the way
out of his parachuting gear, seems to mess everything up in the meantime, so
it's only when the tomatoes are already threatening to overrun the USA
that Dixon finds the
decisive lead to the man behind the tomato-uprising, none other than press
secretary Richardson himself - but with Finletter on his team, all his efforts
to get the secret of how to control the tomatoes out of Richardson are
thwarted. And so it's up to Dixon's own ingenuity to take care of the
problem - a sort of ingenuity he might lack ... Years before companies like Troma
would make so-bad-it's-good trash comedies their regular output, Attack of
the Killer Tomatoes would self-consciously take its own ineptness and shortcomings
and would make fun of itself (something that's of course also true with a trio
of genre comedies from Roger Corman from the late 1950s/early 60s, Little Shop of Horrors, Bucket of Blood,
and the less-known Creature from the Haunted Sea). The result
is a combination of
trashy sci-fi-horror, blunt jokes, heavy-handed satire and downplayed
slapstick, that would in turns be just as unfunny as it sounds, endearingly
silly and genuinely funny, with the film's 1970s looks and feel only adding to
its retro charm. And while the film might be a bit lacking to be an actual
classic, it is a deserved fan favourite that works splendidly as a party
movie.
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