Runtime: 74 minutes
Directed by: Jerry London
Starring: Clint Walker, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, Robert Urich
From: Universal Television
Not as much fun as you’d expect from “a Caterpillar bulldozer becomes a sentient killing machine after striking a long-buried meteorite” but it was still OK. I saw this as part of a YouTube stream where it was played after Shock Waves. Both were set on islands and featured killer 70’s synth scores (this one in particular from Gil Melle of The Andromeda Strain fame) yet the tones were markedly different. Shock featured a dark, creepy vibe while this was unintentionally hilarious due to the ludicrous premise and the runtime filled w/ middle-aged men bickering with each other.
At a construction site on an island “off Africa,” workers are picked off one by one by “Dozer.” The story is largely what you expect: most everyone disbelieves that their bulldozer becomes a sentient killing machine, the characters weren’t bad but were rather forgettable, some have regrets about their past, most of the kills from Dozer made the workers look like dopes due to “hiding” in a stupid spot or just standing there like that scene w/ the steamroller in the first Austin Powers… yeah, that happened and it always made me laugh.
Regrettably, there aren’t enough chuckles (intentional or not) to make this a camp classic even if there are some golden moments. The familiar faces-Clint Walker, Neville Brand, Robert Urich-could only do so much with those characters or when the enemy is a loud, slow-moving machine who surprisingly gets the jump on them more than once. My complaints aside, there are no regrets in finally experiencing this infamous piece of schlock; it wasn’t a miserable experience, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment