{"id":47174,"date":"2025-04-07T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=47174"},"modified":"2025-04-07T07:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T11:38:14","slug":"bad-movie-monday-attack-of-the-killer-tomatoes-1978","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/07\/bad-movie-monday-attack-of-the-killer-tomatoes-1978\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Movie Monday: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It\u2019s kind of weird that I hadn\u2019t reviewed Attack of the Killer Tomatoes yet since it was more or less my introduction to bad movies. I remember being about ten years old and hearing whispers about it on the playground. Kids would talk about having watched this movie with the same kind of eerie somber tone reserved for describing how they saw the ghost of a dead grandparent standing at their bedroom door. \u201cYou won\u2019t believe what I saw last night, but…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So, how does it hold up nearly forty years later? Well, let\u2019s find out!
\n<\/p>\n

When all the tomatoes in the world simultaneously start to grow in size and strength, and then proceed to kill every human they encounter, the president tasks Mason Dixon (David Miller) to form a team that can fight the tomato menace. This includes a master of disguise, a scuba diver, an East German Olympic swimmer, and a WW2 parachutist. Then, as the \u201cteam\u201d gets eaten one by one by the tomatoes while Dixon stumbles around ineffectively trying to figure out what\u2019s going on, the president also sends out his press secretary to hire an ad agency to do damage control over the devastating tomato attacks on the public. Meanwhile, news reporter Lois Fairchild is conducting her own investigation and trying to get Dixon to reveal the government conspiracy. Oh, and there\u2019s also an assassin trying to kill Dixon for some reason.<\/p>\n

The film is a precursor to parodies like \u201cAirplane!\u201d except with cheesier jokes. Some of these jokes land, like the sight gag of a bunch of military generals trying to have a secret meeting in a room that\u2019s way too small. Some of them don\u2019t, like the VERY dated humor in a scene with a ridiculously dubbed Japanese scientist. It\u2019s a mixed bag to be honest, but much of it is helped by the zippy pacing and the film\u2019s short runtime. So if a scene isn\u2019t working, you can at least be sure that it won\u2019t last very long.<\/p>\n

Personally, I feel that this is a relic of the late seventies. There\u2019s an anarchic stoner energy to the film that is very much of that era. Just read any old National Lampoon magazine or watch the original cast on Saturday Night Live to understand what I mean. Movies today are too expensive, too self-conscious, too market tested to be like this. This is a movie made by people who gave absolutely no thought at all to how an audience would react. They filmed stuff that they thought was funny and then released it as a film and hoped we would think it was funny too. This feels like a breath of fresh air compared to most modern movies which are so obsessively trying to please that they feel cringey and awkward and, most devastatingly of all, predictable<\/i>. Because, if nothing else, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes will surprise you with some of the crazy random stuff it comes up with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TEN THOUGHTS I HAD WATCHING THIS MOVIE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

#1 \u2013 The filmmakers name dropping Hitchcock in the opening crawl text is a pretty ballsy move, because this movie ain\u2019t Hitchcock. Hell, it ain\u2019t even Gus Van Sant\u2019s remake<\/i> of Hitchcock.<\/p>\n

#2 \u2013 The theme song is legitimately good. It\u2019s catchy and funny. I hadn\u2019t seen this movie in 20 years, probably more, and I still remember it. I\u2019m humming it as I\u2019m typing this review. It\u2019s a banger.<\/p>\n

#3 \u2013 Some jokes are so dated that I was laughing at the fact that someone had the balls to film this stuff more than at the jokes themselves.<\/p>\n

#4 \u2013 I\u2019d forgotten that Superman makes a cameo in this film. This isn\u2019t a spoiler, because it\u2019s not a surprise or a twist or anything. It\u2019s just one of the films many many throwaway gags.<\/p>\n

#5 \u2013 The acting is actually pretty good. It\u2019s over-the-top and silly of course, but that\u2019s what you want in something as ridiculous as this.<\/p>\n

#6 \u2013 Here\u2019s an example of this film\u2019s humor: There\u2019s a scene early on where a newspaper editor asks an underling to get him someone to cover the killer tomatoes. \u201cOkay, just get me anybody in the special assignment desk.\u201d The underling then tells him he can\u2019t. \u201cThey\u2019re all on special assignment!\u201d Bah Dum Tsst!<\/i> Yeah, that\u2019s the kind of gold you\u2019re gonna get.<\/p>\n

#7 \u2013 Attack of the Killer Tomatoes features a bunch of stunts, a lot of different locations, a huge cast of characters, and even has a musical number or two. All this in a movie that cost almost four times less<\/i> than the original Evil Dead which had one location and five characters. I was kind of amazed by this, because if you were to guess which movie was more expensive you\u2019d guess wrong every time.<\/p>\n

#8 \u2013 I actually believe that the song \u201cPuberty Love\u201d could destroy sentient murderous tomatoes. I only heard like 20 seconds of it in the movie and it almost destroyed me.<\/p>\n

#9 \u2013 The filmmakers probably forgot to add a romance between Mason Dixon and Lois Fairchild, so they have the two fall madly in love about five minutes before the end. Now THAT is some quality writing. This is what I keep telling all low budget filmmakers. Don\u2019t sweat the details. Don\u2019t try to make it logical. Nobody notices this crap anyway. So have fun with it.<\/p>\n

#10 \u2013 I would have bet my last dollar that this film ended with an ominous \u201cTHE END?\u201d but it did not, and now I feel silly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

WAS IT REALLY A BAD FILM?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, it isn\u2019t bad at all, but it\u2019s a bit of time capsule. If you\u2019re under forty, some of the more \u201cseventies\u201d jokes will fly right over your head. However, I also think a lot of the absurdist humor is timeless and will appeal to pretty much anyone. I feel it\u2019s worth a watch, it\u2019s not a must see by any stretch of the imagination, but it can be entertaining if you\u2019re in the right frame of mind. Plus, as of the date of this review, it\u2019s on TUBI for free and you can\u2019t beat the price can you?<\/p>\n

Attack of The Killer Tomatoes is a 1978 Horror\/Comedy starring David Miller as Mason Dixon, George Wilson as Jim Richardson, Sharon Taylor as Lois Fairchild, Stephen Peace as Wilbur Finletter, and Ernie Meyers as the President. It was directed by John DeBello and written by DeBello, Costa Dillon, and Stephen Peace.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s kind of weird that I hadn\u2019t reviewed Attack of the Killer Tomatoes yet since it was more or less my introduction to bad movies. I remember being about ten years old and hearing whispers about it on the playground. Kids would talk about having watched this movie with the same kind of eerie somber […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3070],"tags":[1416,1878,3655],"class_list":["post-47174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badmoviemonday","tag-1970s","tag-b-movies","tag-killer-tomatoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47174"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47196,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47174\/revisions\/47196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}