Sunday, February 25, 2024

1974 - KILLDOZER!, the possessed bulldozer classic

 Deliriously goofy made for TV movie from the mid 1970's. The ABC network had something on their schedule called "The Movie of the Week."  Essentially they were low budget films that fit a 90 minute time slot on Tuesday nights.  The stories skewed heavily towards low rent science fiction and/or horror genre plots.  Killdozer! managed to cover both of these genres.

In brief, an alien entity comes down to earth and happens to crash on an island where a construction crew is building a landing strip.  The entity possesses a bulldozer which proceeds to kill the construction crew one at a time.  This film was clearly trolling in the same waters as Duel the made for TV classic that put Steven Spielberg on the map as a director to watch.  I would even venture to say that Stephen King in his B-movie classic Maximum Overdrive took a good long look at this film before he created that classic.

The movie has a to die for cast of television actors, Clint Walker uttering the immortal line "come and get me dozer," Carl Betz, Neville Brand and James Wainwright as the leads.  The film also includes two supporting players, a young Robert Urich, future star of the film Ice Pirates and James A Watson Jr, the only black guy in the cast so you know he's gonna get it right away.

 

The film lists Theodore Sturgeon a noted science fiction author as one of the screenwriters. Sturgeon had seen better assignments writing for the original Star Trek television series.  The director Jerry London was basically a TV guy who graduated to high class assignments like the miniseries Shogun, The Scarlet and the Black and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman to name just a few.  You have to give Jerry London credit, he manages to stage the death scenes for most of the cast in creative ways. The killer bulldozer moves at such an incredibly slow pace, it makes you wonder how nobody could stay out of it's way. 

 

Killdozer! was written by Ed MacKillop and Theodore Sturgeon, the running time is 76 minutes, 45 minutes of it are spent setting up this ridiculous but entertaining situation.  Killdozer! is on YouTube in a fairly decent copy.

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