A quite rare occurance happens with ‘Killdozer’ its a sensationalist film that ACTUALLY manages to deliver on it’s brief. The film promises a killer sentient bulldozer, and it delivers on a killer sentient bulldozer. In many ways you cant ask more of it than that…
The plot? Some construction workers are digging a cavern through a mountain on a small island just off the coast of Africa. When one of their bulldozers hits a strange metallic rock embedded in the mountainside. the rock glows and transfers some strange alien power into the bulldozer, causing it to take on a life of its own and to seek out bloody vengence!
And…thats the movie, the killdozer starts off by picking off any construction workers who just so happen to use it, but once the whole team realise that bulldozers got a mind of its own, it shifts into a bit more of a vietnam inspired style ‘survival’ picture with our crew huddling together and choosing their moments to try and mount an assault carefully.
Is it the perfect movie? No. The script gives you everything you’d want in a movie like this, but even with it only clocking in at 74 minutes, its still a *little* dry in places, I feel like a good character actor, or maybe just a little more eccentricity sprinkled in here and there would have really helped oil the wheels on this thing. They chose to play it less campy and more VERY serious…which is a bit odd considering this is a film about a load of 40+ year old men being headhunted by a killer bulldozer…
The dialogues fine enough, they’ve taken the naturalistic approach and theres some alright and believable backing and forthing here. The pacings a little on the slow side for 74 minutes, and the act structuring is a little bit soft. But It’s a TV movie…so whadda ya expect?
The premise doenst lend itself to a TV movie…not at this point in time, but it does feel more in the realm of the TV movie when it comes to the direction and cine. Both are a bit flat, they dont really get *too* creative here and the result is a film thats more than fine enough in terms of just getting the film up on screen, but I feel with just a few more cutaways, a bit more experimentation and a more considered approach to colour usage, it could have gone from ‘good’ to ‘great’
The performances as mentioned are all aiming for fairly serious, with only maybe a couple of twinkles of ham from the cast, and very subtle ones at that…I think they knew what kind of film this WAS…I just think they wernt entirely able to act on their impulses for this one.
In fact the only thing I think WAS majorly out of place was the score…which seemed to go for a kind of hallmarky ‘loss of a family member’ drama vibe of orchestral stringy arrangements…it maybe would have been interesting to have the score be a bit more fitting to the otherworldly premise.
I’d watch Killdozer again, I’d recommend Killdozer to folk. I bought it because I wanted to see a killer sentient Bulldozer and from about 15 minutes in till the end, I got to see a killer sentient Bulldozer. It has a nice atmosphere to it, an unique tone and directional choice…its a pretty solid movie. I think it’d pair up well with something like ‘God Monster of Indian Flats’ or even a bit of a curveball picture like ‘Alien’…as a B-picture mind! But yeh…this one was fun…I wish it had leant a little more into its premise, but I got what I paid for.
TYTD Reviews 