Attack of the Killer Tomatoes Review

In doing my old school, bad movie night time of deal, I found Attack of the Killer Tomatoes over on Amazon Prime for free at the moment. Admittedly, I had only seen this movie perhaps once and I can’t recall if I saw it in full. I do remember certain parts possibly due to it being on Elvira or perhaps channel 5 at an odd hour. But at the very least, I’m sure I haven’t seen this movie in at least 40 years, which meant that it would seem mostly fresh outside of a few key moments.

I realized later in life that many people considered Attack of the Killer Tomatoes a bad movie. By no means, does this movie fall under the category of say a Halloween by John Carpenter nor the classic slapstick comedy of Airplane by the Zuckers and Jim Abrahams (who I guess passed away just a few days ago). Instead, it’s mostly a bad parody trying to be the Zuckers in their sense of humor in ridiculing a variety of old horror films and cliches. There’s a lot of jokes and corniness along with bizarre characters that pop up out of nowhere. However, for me it felt on the border of amateurish while the jokes themselves have a wide degree of hit and miss (more miss than anything).

There’s no real “horror” in this movie that’ll terrify you beyond the frequent misfire of bad jokes that the writers attempt to zap you with at every turn. In fact, the biggest nemesis in the movie of the tomato itself is probably more interesting than all the named characters themselves. These things make some weird buzzing noises like an incoherent Bugs Bunny whenever they appear on screen. I was more fascinated by these noises than listening to the bulk of the drab dialog.

The hero is in this movie is some schlub named Mason Dixon. He really doesn’t have much of a personality and is part of a special task force in dealing with the tomatoes. We don’t get a sense of what makes him special and he pretty much serves just as a viewpoint type of character. Of course, he does manage to figure out how to stop the tomatoes serendipitously but he’s as dull as the jokes in the show.

Equally dull but more abhorrently annoying is his partner Wilbur Finletter. He comes off as a complete moron who happens to be in the wrong places at the right times. Or perhaps, vice versa. But his most notable feature is a parachute that seems to act more like a bizarre fetish that he cannot detach himself from that helps him bungle or get bungled at key moments in the movie. He reminds me a bit of Murdock from the A-Team in his personality except not as loud.

Then there’s the Lois Lane character who is named Lois Fairchild. Like Lois Lane, she works as a news reporter and even was seen talking to a Superman-like off screen character to reinforce her role in this movie. But she does little except serve as bad eye candy and misogynistic jokes for her boss.

Now, one of the more interesting characters in this story is a disguise expert named Sam Smith. He’s mostly interesting because he gets the best reactionary face and one of the best lines in the entire movie. “Hey, can someone pass me some ketchup!” (saying this holding a hot dog in a camp full of tomatoes). But that’s part of the problem with this movie where you’d get a couple of really good zingers that work thematically well then the rest of the movie falls apart due to sheer boredom.

I think what ended up happening is that the writers simply had no focus and wanted to toss in as many things as possible for their next laugh. At the same time, the main story gets bungled because they needed Mason Dixon to eventually uncover the plot by the press secretary in taking over. In between that, you had way too many characters, cut scenes and just random interjections that ruined the pace of the movie.

In a way, this movie reminded me a bit of the Zuckers’ Kentucky Fried Movie except that this one wasn’t as funny. The primary difference in Kentucky Fried Movie is that it was handled more like an SNL show where you had more self contained skits that didn’t last long and you could relate to because they didn’t drone on. Like you could see the writers trying to throw in irrelevant jokes here and there. Some were funny like the Japanese dude mistakenly calling tomatoes fags (where someone corrected him to say “fruits”). But then the guy bumps his arm so a plastic model of an Arizona ship drops into a one time shown fish tank. Or they’d go off to a random lake where some kids are swimming so they can do their version of Jaws except with tomatoes.

Then for the climax I think it was somewhat well summoned up by how the remaining people in that town were just the crazy ones. I felt like the writers just ran out of juice towards the end and kept tossing more things against the wall to see if they could provoke a reaction. Having all those “crazy” people show up had nothing to do with anything except getting a bizarre pastiche of imagery bolted together with a writer’s version of duct tape. It’s just that by this point you’re just out of breath waiting for this thing to end. Add the periodic musical aspect and this movie could get downright irritating. I fast forwarded through a few of the songs because I just couldn’t take it anymore.

In retrospect, I can understand why I failed to remember if I saw this movie in its entirety. The bulk of it was simply not noteworthy outside of a few moments like the tomatoes’ voices, the earmuffs covering the final tomato’s supposed ears, the guy in the tomato outfit asking for ketchup, etc. Maybe the best memory I had was the stop action footage of two people unconscious on the ground as tomatoes rolled over their bodies in a molestive fashion while making their strange voices. It looked like shit but it was funny and surreal to watch which made it stand out and be memorable. But yeah, this movie really was the pits.

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