Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes (1978)

Mutated giant monster movies can be fun. Anyone who has seen the likes of The Giant Gila Monster, Night of the Lepus, Empire of the Ants and Food of the Gods can attest to that fact.

What you have here are gigantic creatures brought about by mankind's tampering into God's domain (to quote one such flick), resulting in the murderous beasties destroying cities, armies, weaponry of all kinds and threatening the rule of man on Earth. But we brought it on ourselves, so it's okay.

Not a lick of it is believable for a minute of course, but it's fun to watch all the scale models being destroyed scene after scene. It's like being a kid again and watching the Saturday Afternoon Movie, right after the "Pro Bowler's Tour" and before the 30-minute commercials extolling the virtues of the latest model of Chevrolet and its scientifically-perfected suspension system.

Why were these movies so popular? Because they all took themselves so seriously and with such solemn pretension that you could feel the corners of your mouth twitching as they stretched for profundity with every appearance of a gigantic mutated grasshopper crawling up the side of a building (which was really a building on a postcard or some such).

Of course, it stands to reason that all these huge mutated whatevers were allegorical as to our contamination of this precious Earth we are left to care for. So you see: it's all serious. Stop laughing at the giant killer rabbits - they're representative of man's mistreatment of his natural resources.

This does NOT make them any less hilarious, however.

In fact, the only thing that can ruin the good fun of such movies is when they are made the center of a parody.

There's that word again: parody. Like Jekyll & Hyde...Together Again parodied Robert Louis Stevenson or Pandemonium parodied Friday the 13th or The Underground Comedy Movie parodied...whatever it was it tried to parody.

With those examples, you should know what I'm getting at; so let's get right to the point 'kay?

I first came across Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when reading through Harry and Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards (did I ever mention I proudly own a copy? Just checking). Such an ungainly title, conjuring visions of Fifties movies where gigantic forms of produce attacked the likes of Peter Graves and John Agar, made me expect something that would not only be entertaining but funny (in a self-important way). Yet, after finally watching this same movie on an old episode of Elvira's "Movie Macabre" TV show (remember, fellow b-movie fans? Remember...) not only convinced me for certain that such a movie existed, but at the same time convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that such a movie did not NEED to exist.

I watched the whole thing, even caught it in a rerun of this same episode, and yet I was conflicted. Is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes a bad movie, struggling to make us believe it's good? A good movie, celebrating the bad qualities of its brethren? Is it just plain ineptness, trying to make us believe that the mediocrity is the message? Well, if there’s any place where you can get into the aesthetics of a movie about murderous vegetation, the Internet is the place, let alone this very blog. And so with that in mind....

Leave us begin: intrepid and schlumpy government agent Mason Dixon (David Miller) is called into action when people left and right are being rubbed out by the killer tomatoes of the title. Where did they come from? Why are they killing people? Who knows, and who has time to examine the whys and wheres and whens - this is a comedy, any kind of explanation would just bog down the story, wouldn't it?

Dixon is immediately assigned a crack team of associates to fight the fruits. They consist of Lt. Wilbur Finletter (Rock Peace, aka: J. Stephen Peace), who drags around a deployed parachute and a samurai sword, Colburn (Steve Cates): a guy who wears scuba gear constantly - even when not in the water, Attenbaum (Benita Barton): a female Olympic swimmer who's built more like a shot-putter, and Agent Smith: (Gary Smith) a gentleman who’s supposed to be a master of disguise...never mind the fact that his best disguise is Adolph Hitler. . .and the gentleman in question is black. This has all the makings of the stuff of comedic legend...or it would, if it were handled the opposite of a sledgehammer and the subtlety of a truck crashing into a brick wall.

With all of these goings-on going on, the attention is attracted of an intrepid lady reporter named Fairchild (Sharon Taylor), who trails after the group, witnessing the carnage and contributing next to nothing to the story, let alone filing a report or anything. But that's okay, she's not supposed to - this is a comedy, after all.

A few blackout routines involving a Senate discussion on the matter headed by Senator Polk (Eric Christmas, more famous as Principal Carter from the Porky's series) pop up, as does the dealings of presidential aide Richardson (George Wilson) who teams with TV commercial whiz Ted Swann (Al Sklar) to devise a series of ads which will convince America that killer tomatoes aren't that bad of a thing after all....

We also have numerous (WAY too numerous) government satires thrown in - or at least satires in the sense that a large group of people meet in a closet-sized meeting room, a Japanese scientist speaks in a perfectly enunciating English voice and a scientist who has just suffered an explosion of chemicals in his face must wait in line at a drinking fountain to rinse out his eyes. Is that satire? Maybe in the sense that stunted humor and characters doing face palms en masse at ridiculous situations is satire. If that be the case then yes, this is satire.

We even get a few song-and-dance numbers (one about the garish world of advertising, and another one with a stripping Army sergeant -- don’t ask, don't tell). Then there's the business of strained takes on "The Six Million Dollar Man", Jaws and Superman, wacky radio news reports, a President who is constantly sharpening pencils, people running for long distances and others who dress in tomato suits and ask gigantic killer tomatoes to "pass the ketchup".

Then we have a whole glut of "special effects" (see what I did with the quotes, there?), headed by Craig Berkos, Robert Matzenauer and Roger Dorney to give us the aid needed to believe that 'maters can murder....

SEE! Stop-motion tomatoes crawl over two people in a supermarket!

SEE! Tomatoes floating in the water to suggest an aquatic attack!

SEE! A papier-mâché tomato chase someone down the sidewalk whilst perched on a skateboard!

SEE! A very durable - perhaps rubber - tomato roll after Agent Dixon and reverse-camera bounce its way up a flight of stairs!

SEE! Off-camera crew members throw real actual tomatoes at moving vehicles!

Oh, and then there’s “Puberty Love”. Sweet, squeaky, quiveringly lame "Puberty Love". This is a featured song in the film and is played over and over and over until it gets to the point that the viewer will use their "MUTE" button on their remote more than the "Fast Forward" button. And you thought hearing "That Thing You Do" over and over was bad....

Ah yes, “Puberty Love” - music by Paul Sundfor and Gordon Goodwin; lyrics by Costa Dillon, John De Bello and Steve “Rock” Peace.

Thought you’d want to know who to blame.

And everything culminates in a huge football stadium where the tomatoes are cornered and hundreds of foolish-looking people who wanted their 15-seconds of fame dress up in garish costumes and stomp down hundreds of tomatoes into the AstroTurf. Yep. The pie fight in The Great Race ain't got nothin' on this finale, folks.

Oh, sorry: SPOILER ALERT, up there.

Well there you have it, there’s the facts. Now, is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes any good?

How can I put this? I've agonized over the concepts of "good" and "bad' as pertain to this monstrosity and came up with a few rationalizations.

Follow me on these - when it comes to the theory of this being a parody of giant monster movies of yore, it fails. Those movies were all parodies in and of themselves. Sure, films such as Them! had thrilling moments, built good suspense and contained exciting climaxes. But for every film like that we had something like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman or Beginning of the End and some really bad, stupid, cheesy or just downright embarrassing effects meaning to relay a towering threat to man. Next to these, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes isn't much. If anything, it's too much - it tries too hard and attempts to throw everything in but the kitchen sink in the name of humor but succeeds only in making itself look foolish instead of funny.

In another sense, there are elements here that are good by the virtue that they ARE so bad. It’s obvious we’re dealing with a non-existent budget, way-beyond amateur actors, partially fleshed-out ideas where you can see what they were aiming for but are still juuuuuuuust out of reach. That's one of those situations when you can feel yourself be embarrassed for everybody on screen as they struggle to make the unfunny funny and helplessly watch things crumble in their hands.

So there's nothing good in this movie? To be fair, I enjoyed a scene where Dixon and the parachute guy are on one set of payphones, and the lady reporter and her editor are on another set of phones and their mixed conversations mesh into one of those kind of “Benny Hill”-ish double-entendre conversations. That was funny.

There's an old couple in the beginning of the film (Don and Rebecca Birch) who react to an off-screen tomato attack as the marauding fruits attack and eat their son that was terribly funny in that they were so obviously trying to act by reading cue cards with disinterest. That's always good for a laugh.

And Miller's performance as Agent Dixon was actually good in the sense that his character was so completely put-upon, over-his-head in the details and incredulous at the stupidity surrounding him that the very desperation of his trying to catch up with everybody else was, in fact, funny. Never mind the fact that those surrounding him were so feckless and glassy-eyed in their desire to overact and be broad comic stereotypes that they were all ambulatory nails-on-the-chalkboard. HE was funny in spite of them.

However, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes came into its own in spite of itself. How? By admittedly being the only film of its kind, to be perfectly honest. Nowhere else in 1978 could you find a killer tomato movie. Nowhere else did a marauding creature movie have a scene with The San Diego Chicken and "Bob Newhart Show" regular Jack Riley as a no-nonsense FBI agent. And no other film like this $90,000 slapdash effort could spawn three sequels (one of which starred a pre-stardom George Clooney), and a kid's cartoon series that itself lasted two seasons, surprisingly. And no bad movie festival is complete without a showing of this film.

Director/writer/co-producer John DeBello apparently made enough of a splash with this flick to prove at least one point: if you aim low enough with your film, there is a demographic out there that will make it a success!

Naturally, it all depends. If you’re one of these types who want to have actual, recognizable humor in your comedy movie, this isn’t for you. And if that's the case, what are you doing reading this, anyway? By the time this flick's over and that small row of carrots poke their heads out of the ground to see if the coast is clear, the viewer's gotten everything they deserved. And then some.

Have I thought too much about a movie that contains fruits on a vine as its villains? Was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes in reality some kind of revisionist joke on anyone who expected to find a funny comedy in a film with a title like this? Was Attack of the Killer Tomatoes the 1978 version of Freddy Got Fingered? Well, let's not get too carried away. I do think this film is not the best of its kind, though.

Unless we're talking about over-reaching comedies. If that be the case, then we have a winner.