Killdozer (1974)

I'm not a movie snob by any means; I adore Manos: Hands of Fate and other bad movies if they're reasonably entertaining and have something redeemable about them.But Killdozer? No. This movie is every bit as bad as you'd expect for a movie with this premise The premise is that a bulldozer comes to life when a meteorite touches it. Then it starts killing people (in this case, a bunch of construction workers). This is so dumb and nonsensical that it beggars belief that someone came up with the idea, let alone the networks greenlighting it!Besides the ridiculous premise, I think the biggest problem with this movie is that it was actually shot by people who knew what they were doing. What makes bad movies so much fun is that the people who shoot them are usually so incompetent (or crazy) that they wind up creating a large number of "WTF" moments that have you and your friends bursting out with laughter. (Like the scene in Plan 9 from Outer Space where the detective scratches his face with the barrel of his loaded gun.)With Killdozer, everyone--from the actors to the direction--were just way too competent. So, when the movie plays everything so straight, it winds up being excruciatingly boring in its self-seriousness rather than unintentionally funny. This isn't the type of film where you're going to see a boom mike drop in the corner of one scene or a kid's toy boat standing in for a destroyer. It's competently shot and directed. So yeah, don't even waste your time with this. It's boring and tedious.

Released to TV in 1974 and directed by Jerry London based on Theodore Sturgeon's novella, "Killdozer" stars Clint Walker as the foreman of a small construction team 200 miles off the coast of Africa. Things go awry when a malevolent alien lifeforce is released from a meteorite that crashed on the planet hundreds or thousands of years ago. The thing possesses the bulldozer that tried to move the rock and proceeds to pick the men off one by one. Who will survive, if any? I realize that this was an ABC Movie of the Week so you have to have mercy, but many of those flicks were quite good and sometimes great, like "Tribes" (1970), "Duel" (1971), "The Night Stalker" (1972), "Kung Fu" (1972), "Go Ask Alice" (1973), "Pray for the Wildcats" (1974), "Winter Kill" (1974) and "The Legend of Lizzie Borden" (1975), amongst others. "Killdozer" is cut from the same production cloth, but it's done-in by the limitations of its plot. My title blurb IS the movie and, as such, it's filled with dull 'filler' scenes and dialogue. Walker always makes for a great protagonist and the other 3-4 main guys are decent, but they're limited by the thin story and general lack of pizazz. As far as the former goes, there's probably about 45 minutes of material here, which would've worked for an hour show (with commercials), but 74 minutes is just too long. Concerning the "lack of pizazz," the story needed SOMETHING to perk it out of its doldrums, like perhaps a fetching female co-worker and the corresponding rivalry over her affections or fighting to save the proverbial 'damsel in distress' or vice versa. I don't know; I'm just making suggestions. When you have a confined location and only a few characters you have to get creative with the dramatics or events in order to maintain the viewer's interest (2007's "Wind Chill" is a good example). As it is, the movie's just a handful of guys stranded on an island with a slow mechanical, hulking adversary.ADDITIONAL CAST: Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, James A. Watson Jr. and Robert Urich. The movie was shot on a filming ranch in Valencia, California, as well as the nearby coast. GRADE: C-

Sure. It's ostensibly about a driver less Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer on the rampage. Go ahead and blame the gun! I guess if it had a driver the movie would be lacking a key plot device if not a title. Really? Like so many Hollywood tomes, "Killdozer" is prescient. It's the "China Syndrome" of over development...and more importantly, Clint Walker at least tried to show us how to stop it: by his God-like example. It's not Cheyene of the nightmare producing (in my 10-year-old case) made for TV "Night of the Grizzly". Clint barely put that humongous bastard down (the grizzly was badly burned in a forest fire as a cub, another unheeded environmental warning). But, I digress. Clint always met whatever threats or evils head on. He was quiet and determined--a lot reluctant and a little bit shy. A quiet smile and never a sound or complaint. Everone was drawn to him because of his heroic beauty and stature. He was the cast's and America's last and best hope. Unlike most of our heroes, he never let us down. And as an actor, Clint barely needed a script although he deserved a lot better ones than he got. In an episode of "Cheyene" he pushed a carload of ore out of a mine unassisted. My father was a coal miner who as a child drove mules that had the same relentless task. Life is cruel like that but Clint never was. It gave a kid hope. That was just enough. Thanks, Clint. God Bless you and God Bless the United States of America. That's what Hollywood can accomplish even when it's not trying. You made it look easy.

I remember seeing this as a kid nearly 40 years ago. Other boys and I were captivated by it, we discussed it at school for a week! Recently I saw it on YouTube and I felt compelled to comment. The story centers around six construction workers on some digging project on "an island 200 miles off the coast of Africa". They hit a strange meteorite which is possessed by an electromagnetic alien lifeform (?) which transfers its energy lifeforce to the D9 bulldozer which struck it. Now possessed, the D9 emits a faint hum as it storms around the island killing off the men one by one.The story is a decent one for the sci-fi/horror genre. There are a few silly moments, like when one man sits stoically in the jeep as the D9 trundles toward him to flatten him. Why not jump out and run away? Sure he was drunk but even inebriated I think he could have outrun a bulldozer whose top speed is 4 miles an hour.The special effects are minimal so instead the movie focuses on its story, something which I wish more movies did so these days, rather than relaying on special effects exclusively. it's worth watching if you stumble across it.