User reviews

I will be the first to admit I absolutely ADORE this film. I absolutely love the sendup of horror films that seemed to exist up to that time. However, it really is a bad film.

I gave it a 5. Why, I think it is honestly a movie you will either love or hate. It is hard to be ambivalent about this film. The effects are cheesy, the dialogue silly, and the concept even sillier. Yet, I don't think it could of been pulled off any better. I think everyone should check this film out at least once, but do it with friends.

"Could someone please pass the ketchup?"

(r#43)

"Worst movie of all time"? No, actually one of the most insane and hilarious spoofs ever made. Not much of a plot, obviously low budget, non-actors doing the best they can to keep the dialogue deadpan and serious (George Wilson as the bad guy is particularly hilarious), and of course rampaging, evil, flesh-eating tomatoes.

In the tradition of David Zucker's Scary Movies, James De Bello's jokes aim to be as shamelessly stupid, but still funny, as possible. And it worked for me. Some lines literally had me howling with laughter. "Could somebody pass the ketchup?"; "Wienerschnitzel!"; "Technically, tomatoes are fags"; "Well, it was pretty dark, you know... it's lighter today"; "Why not? You're a woman!", just to name a few. And how can you not love a movie that features a catchy John Carradine-esquire theme song, a deliberately badly dubbed Japanese scientist, an insane katana-swinging WWII pilot who seems to drop from out of no where and just sort of follows along, a blind policeman, a president whose main job seems to be writing his signature on papers before crumpling them and throwing them away, a UN-type organization who spends the entire movie debating what should be done about the tomatoes before deciding it's not time to take action yet, a swimming champion who eats an entire bowl of the cereal "STEROIDS", mind-numbing musical numbers, the list goes on.

You'd have to be a pretty dull person not to enjoy this. Utterly insane, shamelessly cheap and silly, but somehow awesome. I'd recommend this movie to anyone with a knowledge of awful movies and a good sense of humour.

"Mlmlmlmlmlm mneed mlmlmlmlmlmmlm..."

Attack of the killer tomatoes is low-budget's answer to summer blockbuster Snakes on a Plane. Technically, it's the other way around, since AOTKT came first, but whatever. It's dumb, it has a small cult following, and you understand the plot when you read the title.

Tomatoes, you know, the kind in salads, attack people. This is shown in the movie, mostly as tomatoes being thrown at people with tomatoes on the ground everywhere. This continues for an entire movie, which might sound repetitive, but there's other side-tracks of the story as well, which more often than not are very funny.

The production values are non-existent but the filmmakers do their best to cover them up("I'm sorry, gentlemen, for the size of this room", the general says and then all the scientists climb over each other to get a seat) There are lots of silly plot points and many totally unnecessary, some funny and some not. Whenever it gets draggy, there's usually something really funny just in time. That's not bad.

If you need to have this told to you, then you will not like this movie, but I'll tell you anyway: Do NOT take this movie seriously. Enjoy the musical numbers, the stupid "Jaws"-like tomato attacks, the crazy characters, and all the other details that in then end makes AOTKT a fun experience.

This film combinds funny jokes with funnier unintentional humor and the result is one of the funniest cult films ever. The rest of the series is o.k., but the original is amazing. Horrible effects galore. make sure you try to grab the original version and not the director's cut. The new version is remastered in better quality, but they altered the film and it just isn't as cool that way. my rating 5/5 and for directors cut 4/5

It is so extremely bad and surreal that it hooks you from beginning to end. It's a very freaky movie, like a MAD Magazine come to life - a nice satire and a very fun B movie trash film!

The easiest way to describe this movie is as a satire. The target of the satire is quite vast, from the US Government to corporate America. It is also not a stinging satire, but rather a silly one.

Think of this movie as a mix between the Kentucky Fried movie, Airplane and Police Squad series, done with a much smaller budget and not as funny. I can see how this movie is a satire of many sci-fi disaster movies from the 50's and 60's. I see this movie as a big influence on Tim Burton's Mars Attacks.

The plot is simple enough. Genetically engineered giant tomatoes go "crazy" and start attacking people and cities. At first there is a cover up and then it blows over into full blown war.

The movie runs the gamut of characters and characterizations : Lois "Fairchild" (a Lois Lane clone), a very ambitious Presidential Press Secretary, Clark Kent, Mason Dixon (FIA agent who hasn't worked since the Bay of Pigs), a useless President (who only seems to be able to sign his name and attack New York), an even inept Congress, a sleazy marketing CEO, and Mason's team consisting of an obese East German "female" swimmer, a scuba diver, a crazed WWII paratrooper and an African-American disguise expert (disguised as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Hitler and finally as a tomato). Did I also forget to mention, lots and lots of tomatoes? There are all kinds of tomatoes from small tomatoes, to giant plastic tomatoes, to smashed tomatoes, to tomato juice and finally to people dressed up as tomatoes.

On top of all this, you have a couple of musical numbers as well. They aren't that good and seem to be dubbed. The best tune is by far the theme of the movie ("Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"). It is way too catchy and you might end up humming or singing it in public. Be warned.

Most of the movie is quite amusing and shows the absurdity of various real life situations as well as various entertainment genres. I don't believe I was induced to laughter, but mostly smiled and scratched my head. I definitely recommend this movie for fans of B and C grade movies, but only as a rental.

-Celluloid Rehab

Decided to watch this classic while making Easter Dinner. A must see for those who love the classics. It's definitely more comedy than serious picture but the script is hilarious and it does a good job making fun of itself. Definitely worth watching once. I'd give it a 5/10.

This film essentially begins with a woman washing dishes at the kitchen sink when a tomato comes up out of the drain and attacks her. Her body is then found by the police covered in tomato juice. That same morning a man drinks his tomato juice for breakfast and dies as a result. Soon complete havoc erupts as the entire town is besieged by tomatoes and nobody seems capable of stopping them. Fortunately, the Feds are on top of it and to keep things under wraps assign a very obscure person by the name of "Mason Dixon" (David Miller) to field a highly specialized team to handle the situation. But in the meantime the tomatoes continue their rampage which spreads to all parts of the country. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an extremely low-budget film which was apparently assembled with great haste and little concern for the overall quality of the product. As such the acting, script, plot and special effects suffer as a result. In short, the producers intentionally created a bad film with the hope that it would obtain a cult status of sorts. Unfortunately, the film lacked the necessary humor to salvage this project and for that reason I would not recommend it to anybody at any time

One has to re-watch this movie from time to time just to adsorb the stupidity! Yes it's that funny! Tomatoes Still Humor Me.

This is one of those it's so bad it's good type of films - that is exactly what it is suppose to be and that IS the comedy of the movie. This type of comedy is hard for a lot of people to "get": It's suppose to be cheesy and in bad taste... it is a deliberately cheesy b-rated movie that IS the humor of it. The movie is basically poking fun at older b-rated sci-fi horror movies that were meant to be scary - yet they came across as funny.

I will be the first one to admit that you have to be in the right mood to watch a deliberately bad b-rated comedy film such as this one. But when the mood strikes just right, this movie can tickle-your-fancy!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a cult classic film - so it will not suit everyone's taste in b-rated comedies but it does suit mine from time to time.

8/10

"Tomatoes" has been unfairly maligned as one of the worst movies of all time. This is too bad, because the film is really a satire of cheap, bad sci-fi movies. So what better way to satirize a cheap, bad sci-fi movie than by unintentionally making one?

If you saw this movie as a child or teenager, scenes will be indelibly imprinted upon your mind. The guy taking a shower in a hallway; the dubbed voice of the Japanese scientist; the helicopter crash (which wasn't supposed to happen...the pilot came in at too steep of an angle and crushed the back rotor blade. The pilot lost control and crashed the copter. The producers, not wanting to waste this precious filming of an actual accident, put it in the film and instructed actor Jack Riley to pretend to crawl away from the smoldering wreckage); the tomato chasing a woman in a parking lot, with oh-so-noticeable wheels propelling it forward; ah, the magic of film.

Brought to you in part by future California state Assemblyman and State Senator J. Stephen "Rock" Peace.

Some may call this the worst movie of all times, but if you have shots like "The Toxic Avenger", "Plan 9 from outer space" or "Dracula Vs. Frankenstein" in your collection this is exactly the right film for you! The humor in "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" appears like a cheap version of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker-flicks à la "Airplane!" or "The Naked Gun", but always pretty entertaining and amusing! If you´re in search for the right stuff for your next party check this out - but don´t do the mistake and take this too serious in any way!!

As much as it is a comedy homage to 50s monster movies, I actually enjoyed this. I loved the comedy dean pan delivery they do in this film and reminds me of the naked gun movies so watch it for fun and goofy time and it won't be as bad.

I knew this film was supposed to be so bad it was funny, so I went into it with that expectation. I just found it to be so bad it was murderously boring. The whiny theme song is funny for about 10 seconds, until you realize there is nothing clever about it except its intentionally irritating quality. Seeing things get splattered with tomatoes gets old in about 30 seconds. There is just nothing clever or funny about the film except for the premise. It could sustain a 3-4 minute comedy sketch maybe, but this is just not a feature film by any stretch of the imagination.

This title isn't worth watching. I know, because I did, though I couldn't do it in one sitting.

It is not clever. It is not satirical. It is not even juvenile. It's is worthless.

Never see this movie.

It tries to be a spoof on scifi/thriller films of the 1950s and 1960s but all it succedes at is making you wish really badly that you were watching one of them and not it.

It is very lame. A spoof has to have some aspect which has some above par quality to it. This movie does not have any such aspect.

Save yourself. It's too late for me but... just don't watch it.

I saw this film on a triple-bill that included ROBOT MONSTER and PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. Since those two movies were unqualified stinkers, things didn't bode well for KILLER TOMATOES. But, as I began watching this film, something began to happen. I found myself laughing, but not AT the movie, but WITH it! I saw exactly what they were trying to do and actually got some of the jokes: The black master of disguise who tries to pass as an African-American Hitler; the scuba expert who has to find water to dive in to justify his being part of the mission; the Japanese scientist whose words don't match his lips; the Elvis army number (my highlight) and the commercial parodies. I found them all hilarious. Needless to say, the "Puberty Love" song had me in stitches. All I have to say is just ignore the negative reviews leveled at this film and check it out for yourself. It's not a classic, but you should get more than a few laughs out of it. After all, any movie that has the following lyrics in its theme song can't be ALL bad: "I know I'm gonna miss her/A tomato ate my sister"

In case you're a self-acclaimed connoisseur of cult cinema and/or bad movie-making, there comes a certain point in life – preferably sooner than later – that you have to watch "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". It's an inescapable certainty, as this is one of the most notoriously awful cult movies ever made. One tiny but essential detail, however, is that "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" is deliberately awful. Right from the opening message already, mocking Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", this is clearly intended as a zero-budgeted parody and I can't escape the impression that writer/director John De Bello never expected for his film to become such a hit. The film spoofs the contemporary popular trend of so-called "eco-horror" movies (plants, animals and nature in general revolting against humanity) and introduces the least menacing type of vegetable imaginable as undefeatable killing machines. A secret government agricultural project to produce bigger and tastier tomatoes goes horribly wrong and soon there are reports about tomato-attacks coming from all over the country. The president puts together a Special Forces team to battle the juicy enemy, which includes secret agents with very specific areas of expertise and scientists with horrendously dubbed voices. The first half hour of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" is very entertaining. As silly as it is, the sight of normally shaped vegetables jumping up from the sink and attacking hysterical housewives is quite original and funny. The first half hour also contains numerous memorable moments like the catchy theme song, the "Jaws" homage and the infamous unforeseen helicopter crash (see the trivia section for more details) that made it to the final cut. After that, however, the whole thing turns into a tedious, unstructured and insufferably amateurish mess. The quality level of the jokes goes from fresh and inventive towards embarrassing and downright not funny and there are too many characters and sub plots. Personally, I prefer the late 80's and early 90's sequels (which I saw before seeing the original) because they benefit from slightly better production values, incredibly over-the-top tomato special effects and the presence of veteran actor John Astin ("The Addams Family") as the mad scientist Dr. Gangreen. But, as said before already, the original inexplicably remains obligatory viewing material at some point in your life.

Ok it's crap, but very funny crap.

It lacks so much logic, effects, story and talent that it's really worth looking at. One of those crap movies, that are even good by being crap. You know ;)

Watch it on a geek party with some beer and you will have lotsa fun

America is overtaken by tomatoes -- killer tomatoes! A team of military men and scientists, lead by Mason Dixon, is assigned the task of fighting the tomatoes. Can they be stopped, and who is behind this terrible menace?

I first encountered this film as a child, not by watching the movie itself but by seeing clips on "Jim Henson's Muppet Babies". And although I didn't see it until I was twenty-six, I always knew about the film -- it has a reputation. Few people have actually watched it, I imagine, but just about everyone has heard of it. And after seeing the film, it's no wonder why -- this film is unique in the best sense of the word.

The acting is awful, the comedy is funny in a very cheesy way (a poor man's Monty Python) and the songs (yes, this is a musical) are not really important to the plot and just seem to fill space. The special effects could be done by high school students. But there's something endearing about a film that just stinks this bad... a b-movie that could never be anything more. (The best effect was a crashing helicopter, which allegedly happened on accident!)

If you want real horror, this won't give you the thrills. If you want a real comedy, you'll be let down. Heck, none of the actors or actresses are even nice to look at. But something about the blend of bad horror and bad comedy gives it a watchable quality. I could sit through this again and again with friends (if I had enough booze) and I can even see how this may have developed into a cult film with people quoting the bad lines.

I guess the movie was popular enough to make a few sequels, including one with George Clooney. And if you like horror films or b-movies, you know you'll have to watch this for your life to be complete. I enjoyed it. You'll enjoy it. We will all enjoy it. Pick up a copy, I implore you.

This is one of the weirdest movies I have seen in a long time. It's actually hard for me to even criticize this film because there isn't much to say about it other than that it's completely ridiculous. I'm wondering if a lot of these jokes were improvised. There was one thing that really annoyed me. The poster showed tomatoes with faces and vines as limbs. That never appears in the movie and I was really looking forward to that! It would have been a lot more creative. This was two years before "Airplane!" which was a spoof movie that was just genuinely good. It is kind of funny to see tomatoes killing people by just touching them, apparently.

So many things in this movie come out of nowhere. A lot of it is just completely irrelevant. I doubt anything in this movie is meant to be taken seriously. I can understand why a lot of people enjoy it because of how dumb it is. I guess I'll go right in the middle with this one. There actually are some pretty funny parts but not enough for a whole movie. I guess this would have worked better as a sketch or an episode of a TV show. The funniest part was probably with the blind guy directing traffic. We even started with a good joke at the very beginning! **

The trailers before the movie on my VHS copy are for a Hannah Barberra cartoon ("Yogi bear in the Arabian Nights" or something) which shows you who the marketing guys thought their target audience was and, taken on that kind of dumb stupid cartoon level, this is one of the funniest things I have seen for years. I laughed out loud several times whilst completely sober and on my own. Yes, its story structure is an utter mess, yes, the acting, directing, editing production values and sound (especially the sound) are awful, yes, a lot of the gags just don't work - the timing is all over the place sometimes jokes are rushed, other times they are stretched out way beyond their worth but as a whole "Tomatoes" is undeniably funny. I'm afraid I nearly wet myself when the Adolf Hitler line came as the payoff to a what looked like a lame running gag.

Reading some of the reviews here I find it hard to understand how anyone can be disappointed in this movie. It lays its stall out in the first two minutes. Girl is attacked by a tomato - then some of the funniest opening credits ever. It is so preposterous it defies criticism. This is the purest form of High Concept movie making. "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"... unless you didn't actually KNOW what a tomato was how could anyone think this is anything other than what it is - a dumb, stupid, funny movie? and I defy anyone who watches this film not to have the theme song running around their head for days afterwards.

Think of this movie as being made by Matt Stone & Trey Parker (the guys behind South Park etc.) and you get the idea - though in my opinion "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" is a lot funnier than "Cannibal, the Musical" or "Orgazmo".

Definitely a movie to watch with your brain, and any critical faculties you may think you have, switched very, very off.