Killdozer (1974, directed by Jerry London)


Six construction workers (played by Clint Walker, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, James A. Watson, and Robert Urich) are boated to an isolated island off the coast of Africa.  An oil company has assigned them to build an airstrip on the island.  On the first day of work, they come across a meteorite buried in the ground.  When one of the men tries to pick up the meteorite with the bulldozer, a blue light envelops the bulldozer and, at the same time, fatally injures Robert Urich.  Possessed by the meteorite, the bulldozer starts to track the remaining workers down, killing them one-at-a-time.  It’s a killdozer!

Based on a short story by Theodore Surgeon and made-for-television, Killdozer asks the question, “Have you ever seen a big, bulky bulldozer attempt to sneak up on someone?”  Given that Killdozer is not fast and it’s not very agile, it should be easy to escape it but the construction keep doing dumb things, like getting drunk or trying to hide inside a copper tube instead of just running away.  The surviving men wonder how they are going to make it until help eventually arrives.  Maybe if you hear Killdozer coming, you should could just step to the side or maybe you could even run behind Killdozer.  Instead, the construction workers keep trying to fight it head-on.  Every time Killdozer pauses from noisily rolling across the island and sits still because it senses one of the workers might be nearby, I’m reminded that Killdozer is an absolutely ludicrous film but that it’s also wonderfully strange and that it’s also impossible to enjoy it on some level.

The cast is good and, for the most part, so is the straight-forward, waste-no-time direction.  The Killdozer deserved an Emmy and maybe its own series but instead, it just had to settle for cult stardom.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Toshiro Mifune Edition


4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

104 years ago today, the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, Shandong, China, which was under Japanese occupation at the time.  After working as a photographer and as an assistant cameraman, Mifune made his acting debut in 1947, playing a bank robber in Snow Trail.

Mifune would go on to become an international superstar, appearing in hundreds of films before his death in 1997.  Sixteen of those films would be directed by Akira Kurosawa and Mifune’s performances in Kurosawa’s yakuza and samurai films would go on to inspire actors the world over.  When Sergio Leone adapted Yojimbo into A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood based his performance on Mifune’s performance in the original.  George Lucas would later create the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi with Mifune in mind.

In honor of the man and his career, here are

4 Shots From 4 Films

Drunken Angel (1948, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Throne of Blood (1957, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Yojimbo (1961, directed by Akira Kurosawa)

Shogun (1980, directed by Jerry London)

Horror On The Lens: Killdozer (dir by Jerry London)


killdozerA bunch of manly men are building an airstrip on an island off the coast of Africa.  Two of them come across an oddly glowing meteorite and they make the mistake of trying to move it with a bulldozer.  Needless to say, the bulldozer gets possessed by an alien presence and soon, the men are all being pursued by the … Killdozer!

My boyfriend and I recently sat down and watched this 1974 made-for-TV movie.  Jeff enjoyed it while I thought Killdozer was perhaps one of the silliest films I have ever seen in my life.  That’s not surprising, however.  Killdozer is a guy film all the way, celebrating both the destructive power of machinery and the ability of men to tame that power.

Killdozer may not be a great film but it’s a film that feels rather appropriate for October.