Let’s get the first thing out of the way: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is absolutely not a musical, and I’m putting every single list that I found it on on fucking blast: you are liars and your entire journalistic career is a fraud. Also this movie sucks, so lets just fucking do this.
Vital Stats
Released: 1978
Starring: David Miller, George Wilson & Sharon Taylor
Directed by: John De Bello
Everything about this movie, on paper, really sets up a winner of a movie. A goofy b-movie with the promise of a musical and monstrous tomatoes? What more could you ask for? Apparently, after you’ve spent your money on an absolute banger of a poster you completely stop putting in any effort and make one of the dullest and most irritating movies that I’ve seen in quite some time. Where yesterday’s Big Meat Eater was a surreal and remarkable, Tomatoes leans into jokes and “satire” and falls fully flat on its face. Not to mention some racial and homophobic slurs for good measure.
It doesn’t even have the decency to have terrible monster effects or wild gore, it’s just dull and devoid of monsters and blood. What a complete waste of the first 30 minutes that I managed to get through.
So…
Instead, I turned it off and watched a seminal classic horror film from my child hood: The Witches. Happy Halloween! It’s time for a creepy switch ’em up, and this is a covert review of the 1990 Angelica Houston masterpiece, directed by Nicolas Roeg.
First of all, lets talk about how this movie is rated PG and has some of the most horrific body horror imagery that I’ve ever seen outside of a Cronenberg film. Ostensibly, we’re talking about a children’s movie based on a children’s book and they’ve opted to have just complete and total horror. Starting right off from the start with the tale of a girl getting trapped in a painting and just escalating from there.
There is no denying that the star of the show is Houston’s performance as the Grand High Witch. The make up effects are just fantastic and hold up shockingly well. Even now I’m noticing things I didn’t notice when I was a kid, like the way the GHW’s nose expands as she peels off her face. It’s just fucking excellent.
This is absolutely the movie that started me down this long road to being the horror fan that I am today, and it’s so gratifying to go back and watch something from the olden times and have it remain just as good all these years later.
Don’t watch Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, it’s not even a fraction as fun or funny as it thinks it is or as the title and poster suggest. Don’t forget, life is too fucking short for movies that are tedious, and this is a great example of that.
Also it’s not a musical and everyone who called it a musical is a hack fraud.