I grew up with knowledge of the Killer Tomatoes since a young age,
created after co-screenwriter Costa
Dillon saw Ishirō Honda's Matango (1963), and continued over multiple
sequels by the same director, and Dillon's
high school friend, John De Bello
into the early nineties. An intentionally absurd, self reflective farce taking
old sci-fi b-movies tropes, it takes the fruit most often mistaken as a vegetable
and images if it developed sentience and decided to rebel against mankind. I
remember seeing a piece of the 1990-1991 animated series, where my fixation on
these rebellious tomatoes first came from. Alongside that series, there were
four films, the first two the most well known. With a proto-primordial Zucker brothers structure of absurd
comedy, the tone the first Killer
Tomatoes film has is rough around the edges. As intentionally goofy sci-fi,
ironically these films have to be watched in terms of the rise of genetically
modified crops and the fear of them, inexplicably bringing so seriousness to
films that were meant to be a joke1.
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| From https://i.imgur.com/HPxoG9U.jpg |
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
Director: John De Bello
Screenplay: John De Bello, Costa
Dillon and Stephen Peace
Cast: David Miller as Mason
Dixon; George Wilson as Jim Richardson; Sharon Taylor as Lois Fairchild;
Stephen Peace as Wilbur Finletter; Ernie Meyers as The President; Eric
Christmas as Senator Polk; Al Sklar as Ted Swan; Jerry Anderson as Major Mills;
Jack Riley as Von Schauer; Gary Smith as Sam Smith
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #146
The fascinating thing about the
first film - created between De Bello,
Dillon and fellow high school friend Stephen Peace - is that whilst
ultimately a mess, it perfectly slides into that era's rich history of American
independent genre cinema. Shot in San Diego, California you have a film with
the same rough edge of the other independent films, only with the desire to elicit
laughter at itself deliberately. The opening credits make you aware of this
farcical nature from the beginning as the text is full of jokes, none too lame
to not be included. The humour's scattershot, some jokes funny, others not
which is ultimately the issue that surrounds Attack.... Also be aware, sadly, that some of the humour is also
un-PC. To those who will perceive me as being "soft" for including
this warning, what qualifies as politically incorrect is usually not funny
anyway, jokes that merely present race or sexuality (for example) as they are
in exaggeration, usually for the sake of laughing at them rather than anything
remotely further. Sadly this does crop up in Attack... a couple of times, alongside a lot of sex humour, which
makes a film that would be suitable for families actually difficult to shown to
children.
There was a great energy at the
start. The first scene brings up a lot of hope, a tomato appearing out a
kitchen sink plughole to terrorise a stereotypical housewife. It doesn't have a
prologue and immediately gets to the red invasion, which helps the film a lot,
where the police are already fighting them and things are getting worse. It's
the perfect set up both for this absurd humour and even a cheap, but funny
political joke or two as the president (Ernie
Meyers) is in damage control by contacting an ad company to suggest the
tomato menace is not as bad as it sounds, in his office permanently signing
documents for their own sake and having bartered the Statue of Liberty to the
Middle East for a loan. A sense of mayhem is found alongside the ridiculous
humour where actors have to pretend to shot tomatoes and scream that they're
not being pushed back. This also includes a helicopter crash captured on film
that was not meant to happen. This is the one moment that stands out in the
film because its sudden on screen and was an actual accident, no one thankfully
hurt or killed, the actors hesitating but improvising that a rouge tomato jump
at it in the sky, an ad lib on screen that for any major flaws with the film
around the sequence is stuck in my mind still.
When the film is directly about
the tomatoes it succeeds. There is something ridiculous, despite the existence
of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951), in
tomatoes devouring people. The rudimentary effects behind them, whilst not
being bad for the sake of it, emphasises this. Actual tomatoes. Prop tomatoes.
Giant red inflatables larger than cars waddling across the camera. Many
speaking gibberish growling noises. There's even a tribute to the
aforementioned Toho films with a
battle in an urban city using extensive model shots, all explosions and prop
buildings and tomato juice on everything. Considering tomatoes are remotely the
least sinister of all fruit and vegetables - consider the pineapple with its
hard shell and spikes, or the pumpkin which has become part of horror symbolism
culture - these red fruit are funny to imagine in this role. To be lobbed at
people in stocks. A good base sauce for paste. For Red Nose Day charity. Not
for a monster stand in. The joke works when the film accepts the absurdity of
this situation, but important, plays the attack of the tomatoes as matter of
fact, finding humour elsewhere in the scenario.
The film's problems are in this
elsewhere. The human characters themselves is where you realise this film has a
shaky structure, one which is merely built to suppose any strange jokes the
creators could come up with but with the danger that the humour is hit-and-miss
to an extreme. You have a crack team of specialists to fight the tomatoes, the
only one of importance being Wilbur Finletter (Stephen Peace), a former Vietnam War veteran who wanders around in
full parachute and uniform even if the parachute itself is constantly in the
way of his movement. Peace is not bad
as a comedy figure especially paired to David
Miller as the government agent Mason Dixon meant to coordinate this task.
This team of specialists however is pretty useless in terms of humour and
story. A female athlete who eats steroids literally for breakfast but little
else. A scuba diver in full wet suit, back in the era where that was inherently
surreal. A master of disguise Sam Smith (Gary
Smith), who could've been more useful as a funny character, especially when
he attempts with some succeed to disguise himself as a tomato and infiltrate
the enemy, but also has risible humour attached to him such as, as an African
American actor, dressing up as Hitler just because. The female reporter Lois
Fairchild (Sharon Taylor) who also
plays a large role in the film is also not that interesting, contributing not a
lot and really there for dated sex humour that's somewhat demeaning.
This humour, despite being the
main point of Attack..., is inconsistent
to an extreme. Attempts to be wacky are as liable to fail as they are to
succeed, with reoccurring jokes taking huge chunks of the running time that
could either be awful to sit through as much as be a pleasure to follow on
with. When it works, it's the jokes about the ad company being hired to
disguise the tomato invasion in propaganda, the presidential press secretary Jim
Richardson (George Wilson) meeting an
ad company manager obsessed with pure commercialism. Ads appearing on screen to
the viewer, as well as his latest projects (never seen onscreen but heard)
which allows us to witness Wilson's horrified
reactions to material like Jesus Christ shilling a tech company. Or the
unexpected fact this turns into a musical at multiple points, such as with the
ad executive bursting into song about his work or soldiers performing a
choreographed dance before they fight the enemy. Its heavy handed but, outside
the homicidal tomatoes themselves, its where the film gets the most interesting.
However there is so much undeveloped slapstick, crass sex jokes, and jokes in
general that fall short that I have to concede that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is the sum of its individual parts
judged separate rather than a success. Aspects I am happy to have seen, and
laughed at, but it's also a failure.
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| From http://www.scifi-movies.com/images/ contenu/data/0002003/affiche.jpg |
Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)
Director: John De Bello
Screenplay: John De Bello, Costa
Dillon and Stephen Peace
Cast: Anthony Starke as Chad
Finletter; George Clooney as Matt Stevens; Karen Mistal as Tara Boumdeay; Steve
Lundquist as Igor; John Astin as Professor Mortimer Gangreen; J. Stephen Peace
as Wilbur Finletter; Michael Villani as Bob Downs; Frank Davis as Sam Smith
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #147
Return of the Killer Tomatoes is in many ways the superior film
even if the original, despite being a failure, had the more intentional risks
to praise. It also has to be kept in mind this isn't really a film about giant
killer tomatoes, but where a mad scientist Professor Mortimer Gangreen (John Astin) can turn tomatoes into human
beings with toxic waste and certain choices of music. As bizarre as you could
get as a premise still, slap bang in the late eighties after teen sex comedies
populated the era. Surprisingly it does continue on from the last film, ten
years later in a world where tomatoes are outlawed, a subplot never really
tackled fully but amusing that they've become prized contraband and the owner
of any grocery store could be the equivalent of a moonshine dealer in
Prohibition America hiding the goods in the back. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace returning back to the film)
is now running a pizza parlour after his military service, where weird (and
likely disgusting) pizza toppings have to be used like candy to replace tomato
sauce2, and our two leads, nephew Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) and Matt Stevens (George Clooney) work behind the counter.
Clooney, and young and bouffanted here, is part of the reason the
sequel is known, his early pre ER
television days a curiosity where, before his television success let alone when
people called his the Clark Gable of
his era, he feels here like he's merely in primordial form here. His comic
timing especially isn't as defined here as when you get to his work for the Coen Brothers, the only really
interesting joke (that just happens to also be crass) being how he's conning
beautiful women with a fake competition in hope of getting laid himself. Starke as his friend, the straight man
to his joker and the main lead, is also just adequate. The plot's absurd fluff
where Chad meets Tara (Karen Mistal),
the perfect woman who just happens to have once been a tomato, Gangreen's ideal
woman he wants back. It's a cocktail of meta humour, sex jokes and farce which
is as erratic as the first film even if the look and style of the film is
considerably slicker than before.
The more overt meta humour works,
the film actually stopping half way through as the cast and crew deal with the
fact they're run out of money, the film afterwards suddenly full of product
placement in the background and blatantly in dialogue. It's moments like this
where Return..., even as a fun romp
first, gets the funniest and more rewarding. Going for the strangeness of its
material is as successful. Where the scuba diver returns from the first film
for a cameo, living in a water submerged lounge where even the pet dog has a
scuba mask on. How it runs with Gangreen's machine being able to create an army
of Rambo knockoffs, big beefy musclemen, or even the Pope just from tomatoes
and certain music. And Igor (Steve
Lundquist), one such creation who despite being the henchman really wants
to be a news reporter more, a joke the actor does pull off with real fun. Even
the fluffy tomato creature named FT turns out to be funny as a creature which
makes noises, waddles around unconvincingly, and is willing even to sacrifice
itself by jumping on a live hand grenade.
It's a shame, considering these
virtues, that the ending does lean more of the scattershot tone of the first
movie, a mess of jokes and plot which vary in whether they work. It's this
which does undermine Return..., arguable
that if the creators focused more on giving a more serious plot to these two films,
they would have been more well structured and actually funnier as a result. Also
strange with Return... is that,
whilst its more overt about the sex comedy, its surprisingly chaste, not a
criticism or a compliment, just a very strange detail with the sequel that
stands out.
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| From http://theslaughteredbird.com/wp-content/uploads/ 2016/07/Killer-Tomatoes-Product-Placement.jpg |
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1) And Matango, despite its absurd premise of mushroom men, is actually a
bizarre and compelling psychodrama, one in which shipwrecked people forced to
survive on an island may be hallucinating their own turning into mushroom
people from eating the local fungus, or that the mushroom people are real but
the desperation and madness being formed in the survivors is as dangerous as
the local population. It's a film in dire need of availability as its
underrated from the director of Godzilla
(1954) and very alien from the traditional "fun" sci-fi Toho studios were also doing.
2) Though considering you can have
caramelised onions, hummus, cheese, even pumpkin as options instead of tomato
sauce for pizza or otherwise, we're clearly dealing with the deliberately
absurd. Only a mad person would consider eating any of the pizzas made during
this film.
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