A movie about killer tomatoes, that are eating humans, that the humans are actively trying to stop by all manner of things, and somehow no one thought to use the term “Food Fight” anywhere in the poster. This should speak to the amount of prep and forethought that went into this film.
Here’s what I know, and what you need to know about this stinker of a film; Killer Tomatoes are killing people. There is no backstory, there is no reason for it, it’s just happening. Naturally, the government wants to cover up or spin the story of killer tomatoes, and this government official dies. The people finally win by playing a terrible song on the PA system in a stadium that for whatever reason, makes the tomatoes shrink. They shrink enough that the townsfolk left are able to stampede across the tomatoes and squash them to death.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a terrible movie. Even by the standards of movies of its ilk made in the mid to late 70s, it’s just bad. It’s poorly written, ham-fisted jokes are strung together by the thinnest of plotlines. I tried to figure out what comedic movie formula they were attempting to copy, but couldn’t find one. (Kentucky Fried Movie is maybe the closest.) I don’t pretend that any horror movie should be up for an academy award for the story, but there just isn’t one here. The most amazing thing is that this pile of garbage managed to make two sequels, a Saturday morning cartoon that ran for two seasons, and two different video games. Obviously, people were way more tolerant back in the late 70s early 80s.
This was not the movie I really wanted to kick off my end of the marathon with, but maybe it sets the bar low enough that it turns out to be a good thing. The entire movie is bad, save one scene from the very beginning. As two government officials are approaching a fight against the tomatoes, their helicopter crashes. I don’t just mean like special effects, the damn thing crashes right on camera. Luckily everyone walked away okay. They even managed to work the crash into the movie. Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes cost a rental company a $600k helicopter and still turned out to be this flop of a film. I had to honestly look up the origin of “Rotten Tomatoes” the website just to be sure it wasn’t inspired by this film, which it was not. Skip this one, please.
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