ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES! (DIRECTOR'S CUT)

We've all heard of this movie. It has one of the wittiest titles in film history. There are two options one could deduce from the title: (a) the movie takes itself seriously as a horror movie about killer tomatoes, which would potentially be hilarious; or (b) it is a witty satire of horror films which employs horror film clichés in a comedic manner. Well, unfortunately it's not the first. It attempts to be the second, but fails miserably.

Here's the plot of ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES! THE DIRECTOR'S CUT, as far as I could tell.  In fact, why even tell you the plot?  I'm sure you could figure it out from the title.  Killer tomatoes attack. Yup, that's about it.  I really should give the film more credit than that, however. The plot really cannot be summed up in that simple statement. Really there's more than simply "killer tomatoes attack."  In addition, people try to stop them. S o I guess that the plot takes two sentences.  Wait, let's combine the two to make, "Killer tomatoes attack and people try to stop them." It really does take only one sentence after all!

Anyways, this is a director's cut which includes a long prologue about the cult status of the film and why it was necessary to lengthen it (it wasn't). Also, there is even a running commentary throughout the film in which the director makes comments on the movie itself.  This movie is a comedy film without much horror at all.  When the tomatoes attack, there's not much in the way of gore.  Still, it is kind of funny that people die because these tomatoes are rolling around.

The thing about the movie is that it is made up of lots of loosely-tied comedy sketches held-together around this pseudo-horror plot. The sketches are mostly not funny and are not remotely PC.  For instance, a scene involving a Japanese scientist contains some dialogue which is highly offensive, to say the least.  Some, to be fair, are funny.  For instance, when the narrator states that the mere mention of the word tomato can induce panic, we have a scene of a bunch of people reading quietly in the library.  Someone says, "tomato" and the crowd goes nuts. This is indeed quite funny, and there are even a couple other funny scenes.

If this horror-movie-satire does have some funny scenes, then why did I give it a rating worthy of a pooper-scooper? Because these funny, isolated scenes are couched between so many shockingly unfunny vignettes that even the good ones seem bad.  I was so looking forward to watching this movie and I heard so much praise for it, but I just had real trouble sitting through it.  Honestly, I even hit the FF button on my remote a couple times.  Maybe the original, non-director's version was better.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES was going for cult status and has achieved it. But, please don't be fooled by this status.  It tried to be a "so-bad-it's-good" movie, but instead ended up as a "so-bad-it-sucks" movie.  It just tries too hard.  The best "so-bad-it's-good" movies try to be good. This just bites.  Stay away, I just didn't enjoy myself.

Rating: PURE DUNG, zero stars (out of a possible 4)