Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988) review

9. Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988)

Directed by: John De Bello

Produced by: Stephen Peace

Screenplay by: John De Bello, Costa Dillon, Stephen Peace

Starring: Anthony Starke, George Clooney, Karen Mistal, Steve Lundquist, John Astin

When you think of the best horror comedies in film history, the obvious choices are ones like the “Abbott and Costello” monster mashes, “Young Frankenstein,” “The Little Shop of Horrors,” “Shaun of the Dead,” etc. But strangely enough, I’ve always held a soft spot for “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” This spoof of B movies, made on a budget of less than $100,000 and featuring tomatoes that come alive and revolt against humanity, is both as stupid and as amazing as you’d expect. Ten years later, it spawned—or should I say sprouted—a sequel called “Return of the Killer Tomatoes.” Just like the first movie, this is one of those situations where it’s hard for me to really recommend for everyone; if the idea of sentient tomatoes that kill people isn’t inherently funny to you, feel free to skip it, but if it is, you might find at least some clever satire and memorably absurd humor in there, although the story is surprisingly lacking in tomato action.

It’s been ten years since the “Great Tomato War,” and tomatoes have since been outlawed in the United States. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace), the soldier and hero of the war, has opened a pizzeria, notably serving tomato-less pizzas; his nephew Chad (Anthony Starke) and his roommate Matt (George Clooney) work there, where the former eventually meets and starts dating a strange young woman named Tara (Karen Mistal), who boasts of her sexual knowledge and how well she cooks and cleans. But it turns out—and again, decide for yourself if this piques your interest—that the mad scientist Professor Gangreen (John Astin) was responsible for creating the killer tomatoes, and is now using music—which defeated them via the song “Puberty Love”—to manipulate them by using select tracks to turn them into his own personal human army to take over the world. Tara is an escaped transformed assistant who looks after a rejected fuzzy tomato she calls FT, and while Chad hates tomatoes, he and his uncle must inevitably set aside their prejudice when Gangreen steals her back.

Okay, if I haven’t lost you with that summary, let me point out that while this is also very cheap and goofy, it’s not entirely for the same reasons. The first one lampooned monster movies of the 1950s like “Them!” and “Godzilla,” with most of the emphasis on survival and military strategy. This is more about crazy inventions and off-the-wall science fiction, with plenty of “Frankenstein” references and nods to more current gimmicks from “Rambo” and “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” There’s also a LOT more breaking of the fourth wall, with characters pointing out that they’re in a movie, even mentioning scripts and special effects; in fact, it opens with a host presenting a film called “Big Breasted Girls go to the Beach and Take Their Tops Off” before switching to the “right” movie. Halfway through, they suddenly stop the story to announce the production has run out of money, and can only continue through blatant product placement, which had become much more prominent in the 1980s. So four years before “Wayne’s World” poked fun at the concept, this one had a mad science lab brought to you by Pepsi.

Thankfully, the jokes aren’t all just winking at the camera; some of the ideas are actually pretty smart. I like how tomatoes are treated like a drug trade, with people caught smuggling them and making back-alley transactions; also, rather than having a pushy vegan character who thumbs their nose at people for eating meat, you have literal tomato Tara who instead abhors the eating of vegetables. The downside is that an unfortunate portion of the actual humor is a little off as far as timing, so the run time feels longer than it really should be. Also, did we really need a subplot dedicated to characters watching yacht racing championships? The mindset for a lot of these jokes seems to be, “It doesn’t have to make sense; just make it weird.” Some are funny, some aren’t; the ones that probably make me laugh the hardest are the ones with the delayed punch line, like tossing the pizza dough.

With that said, I wish the movie had funnier actors to perform these roles. Finletter was one of the more memorable characters in the first movie, but he’s barely in this; most of the action is focused on Chad, and he’s just kind of whiny, while Karen Mistal makes for an awkward Tara. The only one who’s consistently funny is John Astin—Gomez Addams on “The Addams Family”—as Gangreen; he just devours the scenery with no apology, and I do like that his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist) is not a prototypical ugly, hunchbacked buffoon, but a tall, blonde, handsome buffoon who just wants to be a TV newscaster. And yeah, let’s talk about it; that is future Oscar-winner and Hollywood powerhouse George Clooney in one of his first film roles as Matt, sporting much more hair than I think any of us are used to seeing on him. He’s one of the only actors that really excels in presenting this dialogue, which is a credit to his natural charisma. Clooney famously often apologizes for starring in “Batman and Robin,” but how many people ask him about this?

So while “Return of the Killer Tomatoes” certainly maintains its own unique identity, I wish it had a little more fun with the concept of “killer tomatoes.” Aside from archive footage of the first movie, they’re basically just used to turn into humans or as cute foils. So any real action is pretty generic; I found myself really missing the visual of tomatoes jump-cutting around their victims’ dead bodies. With that said, however, the film still finds interesting and unexpected ways to make me laugh. Yes, it’s often childish and the actual craft isn’t even objectively good; but if you enjoy Mel Brooks movies like “Spaceballs,” where there’s just such an enthusiasm and creativity to these clearly intentionally moronic decisions, I say give this one a look.

My rating: 6.5/10