davejones
Joined Aug 2001
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Reviews49
davejones's rating
This movie is a series of half-baked setups with very obvious payoffs. Within ten minutes of starting to watch it, if you haven't figured out everything that will happen, what each character will do, more or less, and how it will all play out, then. . . Congratulations. I think you're really going to enjoy watching your very first movie.
The story moves along such well-worn and predictable lines that it's more of an outline than an actual story. None of the events that take place is properly developed. We certainly have no idea of why, really, anyone does what he or she does: Brian is meek. The town spinster is smitten (and inspirational!). The bully is bad. The townsfolk just need a leader. Charles wants to see the world.
Now for the good: The robot itself is so hilarious to behold and so disarming in its robotic, deadpan utterances that I kept watching--if for no other reason than to hear what Charles would say next. Just looking at him mad me laugh out loud in places. You really have to admire the audacity of the filmmakers cobbling this thing together and saying to themselves (let alone their financiers), "Oh yeah. We can make this thing work."
Then there's also the gorgeous cinematography of the Welsh countryside and its ramshackle cottages to hold your interest. The story is nothing much, but the whole movie is a visual treat.
Just don't go in expecting to believe--or be surprised by--a single moment.
The story moves along such well-worn and predictable lines that it's more of an outline than an actual story. None of the events that take place is properly developed. We certainly have no idea of why, really, anyone does what he or she does: Brian is meek. The town spinster is smitten (and inspirational!). The bully is bad. The townsfolk just need a leader. Charles wants to see the world.
Now for the good: The robot itself is so hilarious to behold and so disarming in its robotic, deadpan utterances that I kept watching--if for no other reason than to hear what Charles would say next. Just looking at him mad me laugh out loud in places. You really have to admire the audacity of the filmmakers cobbling this thing together and saying to themselves (let alone their financiers), "Oh yeah. We can make this thing work."
Then there's also the gorgeous cinematography of the Welsh countryside and its ramshackle cottages to hold your interest. The story is nothing much, but the whole movie is a visual treat.
Just don't go in expecting to believe--or be surprised by--a single moment.
There are two main problems with this movie:
1) The bulldozer just isn't much of an adversary. As so many of the other commenters here have noted, any healthy person under the age of about 80 could outrun or outmanoeuvre the evil bulldozer. It's really only a threat to the very dumb (Hey, why don't I hide from the oncoming bulldozer in this flimsy piece of metal pipe?) or the very clumsy (Whoops! What a time to trip on this. . . Sand). Sadly, we've got at least three characters in this movie who fall into one or the other of those categories. They don't last long.
2) The characters simply don't *do* enough to fight the bulldozer. They mostly just drive away from it in other, faster vehicles (which is, of course, the smart thing to do with a rescue ship coming in four days. While it makes sense, it just isn't very exciting).
In fact, I don't think I've seen another movie brimming with as much footage of people hopping into, starting, and hopping out of Jeeps as this one. It's as if they were trying to run out the clock on this mercifully short movie.
What this movie is crying out for is shovel-to-shovel combat with the other construction machines on the island. After all, the characters are all supposedly skilled heavy equipment operators. So why don't they jump into the earth mover and the hydraulic shovel and gang up on the killer dozer in the battle every kid would love to to see?
The closest we come to this fantasy climax is a feeble, two-minute standoff with the power shovel. About the most exciting moment there was when a cable on the pulley lifting the shovel boom snaps. The writers of this film could have taken some pointers from the climax of Aliens.
Of course, they just didn't have the budget or the visual effects technology to pull that off in 1974.
This is the kind of film, with an interesting premise and a cult following, that I wish studios would remake. Instead of re-making movies that were made well in the first place, they should re-make bad movies with good premises--like this one.
In the case of Killdozer, they should start with a completely new script and finish with state-of-the-art visual effects. And then they might have a movie worth watching.
1) The bulldozer just isn't much of an adversary. As so many of the other commenters here have noted, any healthy person under the age of about 80 could outrun or outmanoeuvre the evil bulldozer. It's really only a threat to the very dumb (Hey, why don't I hide from the oncoming bulldozer in this flimsy piece of metal pipe?) or the very clumsy (Whoops! What a time to trip on this. . . Sand). Sadly, we've got at least three characters in this movie who fall into one or the other of those categories. They don't last long.
2) The characters simply don't *do* enough to fight the bulldozer. They mostly just drive away from it in other, faster vehicles (which is, of course, the smart thing to do with a rescue ship coming in four days. While it makes sense, it just isn't very exciting).
In fact, I don't think I've seen another movie brimming with as much footage of people hopping into, starting, and hopping out of Jeeps as this one. It's as if they were trying to run out the clock on this mercifully short movie.
What this movie is crying out for is shovel-to-shovel combat with the other construction machines on the island. After all, the characters are all supposedly skilled heavy equipment operators. So why don't they jump into the earth mover and the hydraulic shovel and gang up on the killer dozer in the battle every kid would love to to see?
The closest we come to this fantasy climax is a feeble, two-minute standoff with the power shovel. About the most exciting moment there was when a cable on the pulley lifting the shovel boom snaps. The writers of this film could have taken some pointers from the climax of Aliens.
Of course, they just didn't have the budget or the visual effects technology to pull that off in 1974.
This is the kind of film, with an interesting premise and a cult following, that I wish studios would remake. Instead of re-making movies that were made well in the first place, they should re-make bad movies with good premises--like this one.
In the case of Killdozer, they should start with a completely new script and finish with state-of-the-art visual effects. And then they might have a movie worth watching.
