A group of
Director: John De Bello
Stars: David Miller, George Wilson, Sharon Taylor.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080391/
Watched on AmazonPrime, ok print.
5 songs in the Soundtracks.
IMDb rating of 4.6 with almost 11k votes.
This one is rather famous for being bad. Deservedly so. But intriguing enough to not be boring, at least during this curiosity viewing. Having seen it, once is enough.
It turns out to be the US President's Press Secretary who's behind the tomato rampage. He was frustrated being so close to power without having it. Supposedly he was going to wait a while and then tame the tomatoes, and manipulate the public gratitude for his own elevation. He gets killed just before revealing how he did it.
The solution to taming/destroying the tomatoes, after all the weapons of war were insufficient (oh, I don't think they dropped any nuclear weapons), was playing a pop single Puberty Love, no doubt a jab at Donny Osmond's Puppy Love ('72), but the kid singing the film's PL is no singer. When the govt official plays the record to destroy the 6 giant tomatoes present, he tells the stadium of people to cover their ears.
Although "scientists" are involved in the attempt to defeat the tomatoes, the majority of people we see are govt operatives from the FIA (Federal Intelligence Agency).
Probably the funniest moment in the film was in the opening credits, when one screen read "This Space Available" with a phone number. Yeah, big yucks.
indie, dir. De Bello; 5
