Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Abysmally wretched yet curiously well-known, and somewhat loved, this movie has the best opening titles sequence and song going. It’s much, much more memorable than the picture that follows. (The song is by John DeBello, who directed from a screenplay by himself, Costa Dillon, and Stephen Peace.)

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes Song (1978)

If I were smart, I would have prefaced this by explaining that once, long after Incident One but before Operation Snow White, presumably, Elron HU-Bard was photographed in an unintentional bit of self-parody, having hooked up his tomato plants to an E-Meter. The Commodore has a look on his face so intent, so serious, and so… well, perfect, that the pic has become a minor classic. He wanted to know, by the way—was assessing, I suppose—not whether or not tomatoes could “go clear,” but whether or not they simply “felt pain.” What a big-hearted lug he was.

But let’s get on with it. This film, Attack, is a 1978 SNL or Kentucky Fried Movie (both of which were take-offs on Ken Shapiro’s 1974 cult comedy classic, The Groove Tube, starring a very young Chevy Chase) sketch that somebody forgot to edit for bloat, and ended up going on for far, far too long. Like about seventy minutes or so too long.

We begin knee-deep in tomato apocalypse, as people all across the width and breadth of the American Heartland are devoured by the bulbous red bulgies for unknown reasons. They do sort of growl and grumble menacingly, and they offer a lot of red, juicy splatter you’ll never see in the conventional tits-and-gore epics.

Mason Dixon (David Miller), a government agent, is tasked to solve the Tomato Question. His team, crew, what-have-you, consists of an out-of-the-water scuba man, a silent Black dude with wildly inappropriate costumes, a paratrooper dragging an unfurled chute behind him—you get the picture. There’s a lady reporter up his toot, Lois Fairchild (Sharon Taylor), who has a brief cameo with the Son of Krypton (this was 1978 after all). Meanwhile, tomatoes invade supermarkets, gas stations, and probably Jewish delis in Lower Manhattan (tomatoes are kosher, but Allen Ginsberg noted that his Jewish immigrant mother wouldn’t eat them, because she thought they were poisonous).

The movie hums and haws along (maybe not the best way to put it). I’m having trouble piecing it together because, fuck, with a movie this dumb you find yourself not really paying all that close attention. The Black master of disguise dresses like Hitler, then a tomato, then makes the mistake, while seated with fellow roundies around a crackling campfire, of asking them, “Could you please pass the ketchup?” On the whole, his character and performance are the one that best defines the film.

Which, by the way, has the look of a late Seventies low-budget religious pic about the coming of the Antichrist. Something they used to play on Channel 3 around thirty years ago. And, to that end, the comic book supervillain subplot drags out a villain ready-made to serve His Infernal Majesty—a presidential press secretary who is the nefarious bad guy, who would appear in a slightly different form, as the head of “Apocalypse Incorporated,” years later, in the sequel to The Toxic Avenger.

Attack is just about on the level of The Toxic Avenger—but it plays so nice and family-friendly it’s difficult to compare the two. It’s a parody comedy what-have-you with no teeth, a soft, squishy, unappealing abomination with just enough juice to keep the viewer mildly amused—but not enough to make him pay an undue amount of attention to a flick that could have ended after five minutes and been just as fine.

Squeezed, juiced, bottled, and set aside in the fridge, like a frothy Bloody Mary of banality, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is still essential viewing for the cult movie completist—just don’t expect a reaction from your viewing buddy anything short of canned.

Pomp-ching!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978) FULL MOVIE HD Starring David Miller and George Wilson B MOVIE

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My book: Silent Scream!: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, and Edison's Frankenstein--Four Novels.