Os Tomates Assassinos Atacam a França

"Killer Tomatoes Eat France", which is the fourth and final installment in John DeBello's vegetable quadrilogy, is only my first acquaintance with the series. I love horror and I love comedy, but I'm usually very skeptical about a combination of both; especially when the storyline revolves on giant murderous tomatoes. But I watched this thing together with some friends and whilst heavily intoxicated and, you know, under these circumstances the silly premise isn't even half that bad. Typically, the French stereotypes and jokes are the funniest aspect in this film and actually often downright hilarious. The French are all peasants that live in really low-built houses and only consider fat women to be attractive. They read "Ze Times" and weave bread. The women are all called Marie and they're ready to have sex for free with every stranger that passes by. The story centers once more on the malignant Professor Mortimer Gangrene (John Astin having a blast again) and his killer tomatoes trying to take over the world. After he escaped from prison with the help of his loyal tomatoes, Gangrene entrenches himself in France in a really big castle (appropriately called Igor's really big castle) and kidnap a famous and furry tomato singer for one of his diabolical plans. It's entirely up to a random American tourist and a sexy French maid to save the world. There's also a sub plot stating that the war against the tomatoes will bring forward the new King of France, which makes this film actually a fairly witty parody on "The Man in the Iron Mask". According to most people who have seen the other three previous installments, unlike myself, this "fourth part in the trilogy" isn't as funny in comparison and the franchise is turning more and more children friendly. I can't really judge the other three films, but I did think this was reasonably funny and entertaining.

Professor Gangreen (the immortal John Astin) has escaped from prison after stealing a prophetic book from the prison library. Now, with the help of his henchman Igor (Steve Lundquist), Gangreen seeks to use the prophesies to fulfill his nefarious dream of world conquest.

This time, Gangreen develops some even stranger tomato mutants, including a two-ton whopper with a mouth big enough to swallow a Volkswagen!

Enter Michael J. Fox (Marc "Skippy" Price), a hapless tourist thrust into the middle of this scenario of ultimate doom.

Assisted by the lovely Marie (Angela Visser), Michael must ascend the dreaded "Tower of 900 Steps" to face off against the putrid professor in his castle lair. That is, if the daily castle tour groups don't get in the way!

KILLER TOMATOES EAT FRANCE! Is every bit as fun as the rest of the films in this silly series. Yes, FT (Fuzzy Tomato) does indeed return...

John DeBello provides us one final Killer Tomato movie and honestly that's probably a good thing.

Professor Gangreen and his incompetent lacky Igor have one more shot at world domination, this time involving an ancient prophecy and the king of France.

Much like the 3rd film there are laughs to be had but most is purile filler and the charm of the first film is thoroughly gone.

John Astin is great once again but the novelty is beyond being worn thin and as much as I think the franchise accomplished something it's definitely best that this film be it's death rattle.

Essential viewing for fans of the series, but as a standalone film this has very little to offer.

The Good:

Brilliant opening credits jokes

The Bad:

Generally very stale

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Singing tomatoes are still better than 90% of the UK top 40

Bra's make great parachutes for fluffy talking tomatoes....wait, what?

The french armies ammunition of choice are baguettes

The Hunchback of Notre Dame isn't 100% certain but he has a hunch

The Killer Tomato movies are all great, but this one was the best. The Tomato puppets were fantastic, especially Fangmato. John Astin was once again great as Dr. Gangreen. I hope they make a 5th movie soon, I cant wait to see the Killer Tomatoes again. Also they really should release this movie on DVD along with the cartoon series from the early 90's. I think that too many people look down on these movies without even giving them a chance, or they watch them with the mindset of not liking them to begin with. If you like the first one, the second one, or the third one, then you will like this one. The one thing I think they should have done with this film is make a theme song for it, instead there is just an instrumental. The theme song is hilarious in the first movie, and then even better in Return of the Killer Tomatoes, so why stop making new songs!! Anyway, bottom line, if you are a fan of the other films, or a fan of comedies in general, you should watch this movie.

I felt this movie, though strongly supported by the uber talented Skippy, who, contrary to the credits, has no real name, he's only Skippy, was just poorly thought out. For instance, how would a tomato put on an eye patch? It's oversights like that that make this movie suffer.

On the other hand, we have John Astin, father of Sean Astin, star of Rudy. Just the name makes me laugh. Rudy. It's about a 20 lb boy who wants to play lacrosse for a community college. Or something very close to that but equally unimportant. However, if memory serves, no tomatoes present themselves, so I couldn't care less.

Back to Skippy. Since I only watched about 10 minutes of this movie and then got distracted by a shiny object on the opposite of the room, there's obviously much that I can say. The plot revolves around a young Skippy who is employed in a desert town as a slave, when Liam Neeson comes to rescue him from Chinese aliens and androids. Oh, it's good times.

In closing, I give Rudy a 5 out of 7 for heart, moxy and stick-to-itivness.