Return of the Killer Tomatoes! |
  • USA • 1988 • 98m •   • Directed by: John De Bello. • Starring: Anthony Starke, George Clooney, Karen M. Waldron, Steve Lundquist, John Astin, Charlie Jones, J. Stephen Peace, Michael Villani, Frank Davis, Harvey Weber, John De Bello, Ian Hutton, Gordon Howard. • Music by: Neal Fox, Rick Patterson.      It has been 25 years since the last Killer Tomato has been squished into sauce. To this day the tasty red fruit are banned, and some folks fall in to paroxysms of fear at the mention of tomatoes. Still the general public has been lulled into believing that they are finally safe from the genetically engineered scourge. The purpose of this sci-fi sequel is to prove them wrong. The trouble begins when a pizza delivery boy (the pizzas only use non-tomato-base sauce) falls in love with a beautiful girl. Little does he know that she is the assistant of wicked Professor Gangreen who has engineered a brand new kind of tomato that can assume human form.
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Review:
Co-edited, co-starring, co-written & directed by John De Bello I thought Return of the Killer Tomatoes! was an OK comedy spoof that you simply can't take seriously. The script by De Bello, Stephen F. Andrich, Costa Dillon & J. Stephen Peace moves along at a fair pace & has plenty of cheap gags the best of which are centred around some tacky & blindingly obvious product placement, a trend that was becoming popular in films at the time this was made, the fact that tomatoes are now illegal & have to be smuggled into the country like drugs & the shortest car chase in cinema history. A lot of it is pretty much hit & miss, you'll either end up in stitches rolling around on the floor or you'll be sat there stoney faced. Personally I found a few scenes mildly amusing but I thought much of the comedy here was far to predictable, silly & juvenile to be effective. Also forget about any literal killer tomatoes because there aren't any as the film focuses on Tara & her adventures in the real world of which she had no knowledge of before, at heart it's a fish out of water tale with the hapless Chad bailing her out of trouble. At the end of the day I found it an acceptable way to pass the time, nothing more.
Director De Bello doesn't do much & as a whole Return of the Killer Tomatoes! is a rather bland & forgettable film throughout. There are flashbacks to the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978) to save money while he goes for zany comedy rather than bother with unimportant things like a story.
Technically Return of the Killer Tomatoes! is OK at best but nothing spectacular. It's competent but nothing more. The acting isn't up to much & it really is strange to see such a young George Clooney pre-stardom in such a, well lets be kind & call it a unique piece of film-making.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes! is OK if you liked films such as Airplane! (1980), Top Secret! (1984), The Naked Gun (1988) & Loaded Weapon 1 (1993). Watchable if your in the right mood. Followed by a further two sequels, Killer Tomatoes Strike Back! (1990) & Killer Tomatoes Eat France! (1991) both of which were directed by De Bello who seems to enjoy making films about tomatoes a little too much, he must have a giant tomato fetish or something like that...
Review by Paul Andrews from the Internet Movie Database.
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