The 50s and the 60s were the golden age of creature feature B-movies. Then the highly successful Steven Spielbergs' Jaws was released in 1972 and it took the genre to a whole new level. Expectedly, a new breed of movies spawned, trying to reproduce the success of Jaws. Several years after that, in 1978, a low budget movie named Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! came out. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (AOTKT) was primarily a spoof of the said genre. Unfortunately, many people took it too seriously and failed to recognize its comedic appeal. Therefore, ATOTK is generally considered a bad movie and holds a pretty low rating on both IMDb and Rotten (Killer) Tomatoes. But does this do it justice?
The movie's plot is rather simple. Tomatoes started killing people and are now a menace to whole humanity. The government of the USA decides to fight back with any means necessary. Here our protagonist, one Mason Dixon comes in play: he leads a group of useless men in a quest to find a solution for this horrible menace. Of course, calling Mason Dixon's character the protagonist could be a bit of an overstatement since there's a bundle of characters in the movie and no one is really that prominent. Because there are so many characters in the movie, AOTKT sometimes feels like a series of sketches rather than a coherent movie. Which isn't really that bad since many of the 'sketches' are funny but, considering general movie logic, various scenes don't lead anywhere and feel pointless.
First of all, I don't understand why people took this movie so seriously. The movie's name is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, and it even has its own theme song, for crying out loud! Also, the movie makes it pretty clear throughout that it is just a ludicrous little spoof. It's even a part time musical with a few ridiculous songs in it. So my advice is - if you're going to watch this trashy thing, try to relax and by no means take it seriously. So yes, the absurdity of the script, the awful acting and the bad special effects are deliberate. You may or may not enjoy that but it's insane to bash this movie for the wrong reasons.
One may say - 'ok, it's a spoof, not a serious movie but so what? That doesn't necessarily make it any good.' That's true but AOTKT is pretty enjoyable either way. It manages to successfully make fun of most creature feature movie clichés. I must say, I had quite a few laughs watching this. I would even go as far as to compare it to the classic 1980 comedy Airplane!. Who knows? Maybe Airplane! took the idea of the exclamation mark in the title from AOTKT. If you like trash movies, you can do no wrong by watching this one. Its low budget charm only makes it more appealing; if nothing, because it looks like the movies it spoofs. Naturally, it's not the best comedy movie out there, far from it, but it will certainly do well as a one-time comedy experience.
Rating: 7/10 Read more at http://passpopcorn.wordpress.com/
The movie's plot is rather simple. Tomatoes started killing people and are now a menace to whole humanity. The government of the USA decides to fight back with any means necessary. Here our protagonist, one Mason Dixon comes in play: he leads a group of useless men in a quest to find a solution for this horrible menace. Of course, calling Mason Dixon's character the protagonist could be a bit of an overstatement since there's a bundle of characters in the movie and no one is really that prominent. Because there are so many characters in the movie, AOTKT sometimes feels like a series of sketches rather than a coherent movie. Which isn't really that bad since many of the 'sketches' are funny but, considering general movie logic, various scenes don't lead anywhere and feel pointless.
First of all, I don't understand why people took this movie so seriously. The movie's name is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, and it even has its own theme song, for crying out loud! Also, the movie makes it pretty clear throughout that it is just a ludicrous little spoof. It's even a part time musical with a few ridiculous songs in it. So my advice is - if you're going to watch this trashy thing, try to relax and by no means take it seriously. So yes, the absurdity of the script, the awful acting and the bad special effects are deliberate. You may or may not enjoy that but it's insane to bash this movie for the wrong reasons.
One may say - 'ok, it's a spoof, not a serious movie but so what? That doesn't necessarily make it any good.' That's true but AOTKT is pretty enjoyable either way. It manages to successfully make fun of most creature feature movie clichés. I must say, I had quite a few laughs watching this. I would even go as far as to compare it to the classic 1980 comedy Airplane!. Who knows? Maybe Airplane! took the idea of the exclamation mark in the title from AOTKT. If you like trash movies, you can do no wrong by watching this one. Its low budget charm only makes it more appealing; if nothing, because it looks like the movies it spoofs. Naturally, it's not the best comedy movie out there, far from it, but it will certainly do well as a one-time comedy experience.
Rating: 7/10 Read more at http://passpopcorn.wordpress.com/