Hikaru's Worst Rated Films Review: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

By Hikaru Tateishi 

Movies can inspire you to think, have a passion and take action. But those inspiring movies tend to get awards. They are often produced with large sums of money at stake, often with well-known actors and high expectations. Then I was wondering what the worst rated movie in the world is. So, I decided to judge it by myself if it does deserve to get such a bad reputation. 

“On Metacritic, the film got an average score of 9 out of 100 based on 5 critical reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike".”

Attack of the Killer tomatoes (1978)

Director; John De Bello

Running time; 87 minutes 

Language; English

Budget; $100,000

Cast; David Miller, George Wilson, Sharon Taylor, Stephen Peace

A city in the US, a housewife was found dead in her home, covered in blood. But the detective who came to inspect the scene found that it’s tomato juice, not blood, that covered the dead body. Eventually a series of tomato attacks throughout the U.S, and even tomatoes on government-controlled farms turned on people. At that time, a top-secret government meeting was being organized. In fact, a giant tomato that the government had been secretly developing mutated and Began to attack people. So the U.S government has taken serious steps to address the issue to eliminate all the tomatoes. 

This is a B-rated comedy movie that was made with a low budget. The props in the film were very crude because the film was shot on a low budget. The airplane crash footage that plays abruptly in the beginning of the film is a scene from a real accident that was accidentally shot during filming. Also, the quality of tomatoes are so bad. You can see feet of staff moving tomatoes, it’s obvious that there is a bogie under the tomato. And they don’t even look like the one on the above poster, it’s just a tomato with a human made feel, not scary, not eyes and a mouth. 

The unique characters are also a highlight. In the story, the government offered 4 people, Swimmer, a professional in disguise, a master diver and captain in the military parachute unit to attack tomatoes. The swimmer got killed while eating steroids, the professional in disguise could get close to them but a gaffe about wanting ketchup reveals his true identity. The master diver hasn’t been seen since he dove into the park’s aquarium and is unaccounted for. The captain was alive in the whole story, but he dragged his parachute the whole time. 

I personally think it’s interesting to set up tomatoes attacking humans. I’ve never seen vegetables attacking human beings in other movies, besides zombie movies. Tomatoes in the crops look like just tomatoes and are not scary at all. And it looks silly that pops were shooting them seriously. Also all effects used in the movie were cheesy and it reminds us of the director's freedom and the fact that the film was made on a low budget.

Lastly, I recommend you to watch it with your friends or family. Because this is the first movie I felt that 90 minutes was long. It's a really silly movie but I was sometimes lost and couldn’t follow what was going on, plus gradually I lost my motivation to watch it. So I believe that you will enjoy this movie with your friends or family.