Okay, fellow tape-heads, dim the lights, adjust the tracking if you need to (we’ve all been there), and prepare yourself for a trip back to the absolute glorious absurdity that could only thrive in the wild west of late 70s filmmaking, spilling gleefully onto our beloved VHS shelves throughout the 80s. I’m talking, of course, about John DeBello’s magnum opus of vegetable villainy: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978).
The title alone is a masterpiece of B-movie marketing brilliance. It tells you exactly what you're getting, yet somehow undersells the sheer, unadulterated silliness contained within its 83-minute runtime. Forget nuanced suspense or chilling horror; this is a full-throated, ZAZ-style parody that arrived before Airplane! perfected the formula, throwing every gag, pun, and ludicrous scenario at the screen, seemingly born from a late-night pizza session among friends. Which, considering it was made by DeBello and his pals Costa Dillon and Stephen Peace for peanuts, isn't far from the truth.
### When Produce Goes Postal
The premise? Simple. Tomatoes, for reasons gloriously unexplained, are suddenly sentient, growing to enormous sizes, and, yes, attacking people. Panic grips the nation! The government assembles a crack team of specialists, including Lt. Boyle (David Miller, playing the straight man amidst chaos), a master-of-disguise expert (George Wilson, whose disguises include dressing as Hitler and George Washington), a scuba diver who never takes off his gear, and... well, others who mostly just look confused.
What follows is less a coherent plot and more a series of increasingly bizarre vignettes. We get giant tomatoes rolling down hills (sometimes clearly being pushed by off-screen hands), tomatoes attacking swimmers (look closely, you can sometimes see the strings!), and even a memorable scene involving a tomato trying to pass itself off as human. The "action," if you can call it that, is pure, unadulterated schlock. Forget high-octane car chases; here, the terror involves dodging oversized fruit props and listening to victims scream in a way that suggests mild inconvenience rather than mortal peril.
### Low Budget, High Weirdness
Let's talk about those effects, shall we? In an era before CGI smoothed everything over, Killer Tomatoes leans into its limitations with glorious abandon. The tomatoes themselves are often just large red balls, occasionally splattering with what looks suspiciously like ketchup. Remember how real some practical gore looked back then, those squibs and explosions? Well, this is the charmingly inept flip side. It’s filmmaking by sheer force of will and probably whatever they could find at the local hardware store.
And that infamous helicopter crash scene? Here’s a Retro Fun Fact for you: That crash was reportedly real and completely accidental! Filming near a Marine Corps base, a Hiller UH-12E helicopter worth around $60,000 (a significant chunk of their rumoured sub-$100,000 budget!) malfunctioned and crashed during a take. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, and DeBello, ever the opportunist, kept the footage in the movie, adding a layer of unexpected (and probably uninsured) production value. Talk about making lemonade when life gives you... well, crashing helicopters.
The whole film feels like a dare that somehow got funded. The acting ranges from earnest-but-wooden (David Miller anchors things as much as possible) to wildly over-the-top (George Wilson chews scenery like it’s going out of style). The musical numbers – yes, there are musical numbers, including the unforgettable theme song – are bafflingly catchy and utterly nonsensical. It’s the kind of movie you’d discover tucked away in the comedy or horror section of the video store, lured in by the ridiculous cover, and rent purely out of morbid curiosity. I distinctly remember renting this on a whim as a kid, expecting maybe something like The Blob (1958), and instead being confronted with... this. The sheer weirdness was magnetic.
### A Cult Seed Takes Root
Critics at the time? Mostly baffled or dismissive, as you might expect. This wasn't exactly The Godfather. But audiences, particularly on home video and late-night TV, found something special in its unashamed goofiness. It became a quintessential cult classic, the kind of film you'd quote with friends who were in on the joke. Its notoriety even spawned sequels – Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (1988) (featuring a young George Clooney!), Killer Tomatoes Strike Back! (1991), and Killer Tomatoes Eat France! (1992) – plus an animated series in the early 90s. Not bad for a film reportedly conceived because killer tomatoes sounded like the cheapest monster imaginable.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! isn't concerned with logic, pacing, or conventional filmmaking standards. It's a relentless barrage of puns, sight gags, and pure, unadulterated absurdity. It’s a testament to what you can achieve with limited resources but unlimited enthusiasm (and maybe a disregard for health and safety regulations).
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VHS Heaven Rating: 5/10
Rating Explained: Let's be honest, by any traditional measure of filmmaking quality (acting, script coherence, effects realism), this is maybe a 2. But for sheer audacity, unapologetic silliness, historical B-movie importance, and undeniable cult entertainment value? It punches far above its weight. That 5 represents the absolute joy derived from its glorious ineptitude and infectious, goofy spirit. It's terrible, yes, but brilliantly terrible.
Final Thought: It’s the cinematic equivalent of finding a weird novelty toy at the bottom of a cereal box – cheap, slightly baffling, but guaranteed to make you grin. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! remains the undisputed king of killer vegetable cinema, a pulpy, Velveeta-cheesy slice of B-movie history that’s still bizarrely watchable today, preferably late at night with friends who appreciate the finer points of rolling fruit terror.