There are few truly pure things in the world, so it is a rare and beautiful moment to encounter one. I include among those things which do exactly what they say they will do. As the British put it, things that “do what they say on the tin”. Such is the case with 1974’s made-for-TV picture Killdozer. It is all about a bulldozer that is intent on killing, logic be damned. It simply wants to kill and that’s what it does.
What is the motivation for Killdozer to do its Killdozing? None is given, except an alien force was transferred from a meteorite into a normal bulldozer when the blade made contact with the rock. It isn’t like it harvests human souls to continue running. Heck, it doesn’t seem to need anything to continue running, even all day and night, even after it was momentarily stilled when foreman Clint Walter cuts its fuel line. But as one of Walker’s team puts it, “You can’t kill a machine”. Interesting how the John Deere people went with “Nothing runs like a Deere” instead of that.
I feel kind of bad for Killdozer, given where that meteorite happened to land. World domination seems unlikely when one is an evil spirit confined to a dozer on the island of Madagascar. Only so much damage one can do on an island. It really would have fared better as a Killboat.
That rather large island off the coast of Africa is visible from space. Here, it has a curiously small population, with the only people we see being the six oil company men who are clearing an area there for a basecamp to be built for a drilling crew. This area is so desolate that it appears to have been uninhabited since it was briefly a refueling station for aircraft in WWII.
One might think it would be difficult for such a slow and cumbersome machine to kill anybody in a cast of six, especially when they should have all of an island of over 225,000 square miles on which they could hide. I could be like if the Olympics added hide and seek as an event.
But, no, everybody stays within a small area where they are doing their work, while the machine does things like destroying their radio and ambushing them. That’s right, several men are ambushed by one bulldozer. The men try to build a signal fire, but the dozer extinguishes that, inspiring that 70’s fire safety poster: “Only Killdozer can put out forest fires”. It would probably help if most of the men weren’t so goddamn stupid, such as the one who is crushed in his jeep even when he has a preposterously long time to potentially flee. I will be amazed if this wasn’t the inspiration for a similar scene in the first Austin Powers movie where a steamroller crushes a guy after starting from a great distance away.
When the men aren’t dealing with the killer bulldozer, they are fighting amongst themselves. Walker is the designated leader, a company man who completely toes the line, given this job is the last chance to redeem himself after his alcoholism ruined his previous assignment. Carl Betz is similarly pragmatic and hard-nosed, though always in contention with Walker for reasons I’m not sure were ever sufficiently explained. Neville Brand is the camp’s mechanic. James Wainwright is the group’s goofball and loose canon. James A. Watson, Jr., is the Black guy, and you know he’s not going to fare well in a production like this.
I expected interpersonal conflicts in a movie of this type, but what I was surprised is missing is the emergence of a natural leader from among the group of proles who would never be a designated one. Instead, Walker is the manager of the operation at the beginning, and he will be the one to whom the others surrender control of the situation through to the end. I guess the twist for me here is the lack of a twist.
Briefly in the cast is Robert Urich, and it was his “big yellow baby” which struck that meteorite. Something else that isn’t really explained is how he is blinded when that blue light that represents the evil alien force is transferred from the meteorite to his machine. He also seems to incur something like radiation burns, which he does of that very night.
His death sends close friend Wainwright into a downward spiral, who goes on to talk so much about the deceased that feels like Urich is still in the cast long after he has exited. Much of what he says reveals surprising homoerotic overtones to their relationship, such as the many times they used to go skinny-dipping at night, where they were “splashing around like jaybirds”.
Something else that distinguishes Wainwright’s character is he is the only one of the now five men who keeps looking for a rational explanation for the situation in which they find themselves. The others don’t even seem to interested in the nature of this absurd, and literal, killing machine. They are simply trying to survive and only determined to find a way to kill it. Even the dialogue concerning these plans is fairly dry, as if they can’t even afford to relax enough to laugh. One of only two witty lines I can recall as concerns the central conflict is when Betz says, “Maybe we should appeal to its sense of decency and fair play.” Then there’s this exchange between he and Walker: “if throwing that switch doesn’t work, then what do you do? ” “It has to work. It’s under warranty.”
And it is odd the dialogue is as unembellished as it is here, given witty repartee is the cheapest effect a television production such as this can afford. After all, they can’t show boobs, which are the cliché cheapest special effect of theatrical films. For a taste of the banter, consider this bizarre conversation between Betz and Walker: “I’m not a piece of candy” “You’re a sourball”. From then on out, Walker’s nickname for the other man is “sourball”, which isn’t witty. Then Walker keeps calling him this for the rest of the runtime, reinforcing how not-clever this nickname is. It is enough to make me wonder if a sentient bulldozer also wrote the script.
But we didn’t come here for dialogue, and the filmmakers know that. Instead, we get explosions, though not enough of them for my taste. We get cables snapping and bulldozers plowing through Quonset huts. In its best moments, it is like somebody took notes while kids played with Tonka trucks and then storyboarded scenes which reenact their play battles.
From the first to last frame, Killdozer is committed entirely to its concept and it never once questions how ridiculous this entire endeavor really is. It is also one of the most pure artifacts of the period in which it was made. So many shows and movies of the time ended on a freeze frame of people jumping into the air. This one ends in a still image of a hard hat tossed into the air, with the dozer in the background, while we hear a piece of music I am going to call “Love Theme from Killdozer”. And I love you, Killdozer. I honestly do.
Dir: Jerry London
Starring Clint Walker, Robert Urich, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, James A. Watson, Jr.
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray