The Rerun Review: The first one with a killer bulldozer

 

Title: Killdozer

What Year?: 1974

Classification: Knockoff/ Evil Twin

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (2/5)

 

As I write this, I’m up to my repeatedly announced 200^th review, and I have been going through a lot of material just to decide what to review. I finally decided that it was time to do another TV movie review. It just happened I had one very promising lead, unearthed while I was at one of the local used shops. I didn’t buy it, but I quickly confirmed it was available to view in gray-area online videos. So, at the last possible moment, I watched the damn thing, and the easy punchline that I got my money’s worth definitely applies. Here is Killdozer, an adaptation of a classic story of possessed construction machinery that somehow managed to make that boring.

Our story begins with a meteor falling to Earth. We then jump forward an uncertain amount of time to an island where a construction crew is at work. When one of the workmen runs into the meteorite with a bulldozer, he falls ill and dies from a mysterious blue radiation. Soon after, the foreman narrowly survives an apparent malfunction of the bulldozer. He promptly disables the machine, but another workman takes it back online. The dozer begins to move seemingly of its own volition, throwing and crushing its operator (of course the black guy) and destroying the only radio equipment. The remaining crew are stalked by the slow-moving but unstoppable machine. Their only hope is to meet the killdozer in a duel with their remaining vehicle. But can they destroy the being that is animating the machine.

Killdozer was a 1974 made-for-TV movie originally aired by ABC. The film was based on a 1944 novella of the same name by Theodore Sturgeon, who shared credit for the script with one Ed MacKillop.  The film starred Clint Walker of The Dirty Dozen and Robert Urich of Magnum Force. A soundtrack was provided by Gil Melle, a jazz performer and composer who had previously worked on The Andromeda Strain. The movie received negative reviews from both contemporary and later critics. The film was released on DVD and Blu Ray by Kino Lorber in 2020. The term “Killdozer” has been used for an improvised armored vehicle used in a 2004 incident in Granby, Colorado. It is unclear if those using the label were aware of either the film or the story.

For my experiences, I read the original story early in my binge on “Golden Age” pulp sci fi. Along with “It” (see… Swamp Thing?), it contributed to my early and very high opinion of Sturgeon, and contributed to the somewhat misleading impression that the author simply wrote monster/ alien stories. I am sure I heard of the movie at an early date, but never heard of it being available until a chance sighting of the DVD. That was motivation enough to take a look at the movie for this review. I will not mince any words: This is bad. Very bad. Even more inexplicably and unforgivably, it’s just plain dull.

Moving forward to the movie, the first and foremost thing to be said is that it’s disarming on first impressions. If you know made-for-TV movies (see The Time Machine), this wobbles between tolerable and moderately impressive. The acting is good, the dialogue competent and frequently thoughtful, and the music almost distractingly well-done. The better moments get packed in early with an innovative meteor sequence (compare to The Green Slime only 6 years earlier), followed by the meaningful death and subsequent mourning of one of the crew. In the process, there’s some amusing references to the wartime setting of the original story, complete with the discovery of a photo of Veronica Lake. What quickly becomes apparent, however, is how little happens. The whole damn movie is barely over 70 minutes, and the murder machine doesn’t get its first victim until the half-hour mark. That wonky scene demonstrates a couple more things that will continue to weigh the movie down. First, this is very toned down, even compared to the pulps. Second, the bulldozer is really slow, to the point that the cast have to go out of their way to get themselves killed.

Meanwhile, the suspicion that quickly grew in my mind, which I had never seriously considered reading about the film in cold blood, is that this is a ripoff of Duel. Now, this doesn’t mean that this film owes its existence to that earlier and far superior TV movie. What gets suspicious very is the attempt to develop the machine as an actual villain, especially through frequent closeups. The unaccountable failure here is not simply that the killdozer isn’t threatening; it’s that it fails almost entirely at manifesting any sense of personality. This is all the more odd as Duel clearly succeeded at capturing malevolent personality in a non-anthropomorphic machine. Even Maximum Overdrive got this right a good part of the time, and it was a collaboration between Stephen King and narcotics. (Actually, illegal substances wouldn’t have been a bad backup plan…) The obvious difference is that those movies showed old, beat-up vehicles that looked like they had lived a life all their own, whether they were animated by an unseen sentience or just an extension of a human operator’s malign will. Here, on the other hand, the killdozer and indeed all the machines look so pristine this could just as well be a commercial. That goes a long way to account for the further anticlimax of the duel between the dozer and a far larger machine, which is so awkward that Dinosaurus would laugh at it. (Wait a minute, I haven’t reviewed Dinosaurus???)

Now, I’m already up to the “one scene”. About 15 minutes in, the foreman starts the bulldozer for no obvious reason in the middle of the night. The camerawork gives a better than usual sense of the machine inside and out. Within bare seconds, the machine is clearly out of control. The veteran character actor sells the scene with obvious confusion and growing alarm as he literally struggles with the controls. (In the story, the hero is physically battered in the process.) He finally cuts a hose, triggering a spray of steam or smoke. He finally either bails or gets knocked off. That’s when the machine backs up for a turn, its blade raised. There’s no mistaking the purposeful intent as it begins to advance… except, it’s too early to doubt what’s going to happen. It’s a good sequence that proves the movie was made by people who knew what they were doing, and that more than usual makes the final product even more disappointing.

In closing, the main thing I have to say is that this is the shortest review I’ve done in a long time. As for the rating, it may seem like a surprise that I haven’t given this movie the lowest rating, something I specifically revived my Space 1979 scale to keep for this feature. As usual, the driving consideration isn’t how “bad” the movie is, but how much I actively hate it. In those terms, this movie is just too harmless to provoke me. If it comes to that, it has the upside of being a very quick watch and a pretty fast review. With that, I’m ready to finish, with one more milestone in the rear view mirror. Punch it, Bishop!

Image credit Horror Patch.