Time to kick back and relive the 1980s with my review for 80s cinema love letter, TURBO KID, a balls to the wall gore soaked homage to everything epic that came to our screens between the 70s and the 90s. Check my words after the jump but be careful, this review contains some spoilers....
I've
made it no secret on CA that my favourite decade for cinema is the
80s, everything from the Action, the horror, the sci-fi and even the
comedy, they all hold a special place in my heart, they're films I
grew up on. Some people say that when you watch them back now, you
see how bad they were, how dated they look and the only reason people
like them is because of nostalgia. Yeah that might be true of some
people who've not seen the Goonies since 1985 or compare the original
1984 Terminator with the latest, Terminator Genisys when looking at
visual FX (The Terminator is still a hardcore badass movies) but for
me, someone who has continually watched these 80s films since
childhood, there is no nostalgia, they're the films that I watch on a
regular basis. I know i'm not the only one who is like this, I know
many people who still dig on the films from the 80s and still love
them with a passion and it seems that that passion is moving into
modern films.
Recently
we've seen many independent film makers either homaging or directly
referencing the cinema of that decade, be it either with their choice
of a retro synthwave soundtrack akin to the music that would often
appear in the work of John Carpenter or the totally over the top gore
of films like A Nightmare On Elm Street or the Friday 13th
series. Most recent examples of films that openly show their
influences are the brilliant Jim Mickle crime drama, Cold In July and
Adam Wingard's awesome 80s action horror throwback, The Guest. But
none of these compare to the full on love letter to 80s genre films
more than TURBO KID, a post-Apocalyptic romantic action comedy that
started life as a 6 minute entry for the first ABC's OF Death, it
didn't make the final cut but the makers looked at the bigger picture
and decided to extend the short into a feature film. That my friends
was a great idea.
TURBO
KID starts with a voice over, stating that the film takes place in
the year 1997, years after WW3 where the world is surrounded by a
constant nuclear winter and acid rain. We follow “The Kid”, a
wasteland scavenger as he rummages through derelict buildings and
piles of rubble for stuff to barter with so he can eat and drink
clean-ish water. One day he meets a girl, a kinda crazy wasteland
girl who starts to follow him, her name, Apple. When apple is
kidnapped by the ruler of the wasteland, the evil one-eyed Zeus,
played with a ham-like grit by 80s movie icon, Michael Ironside
(Scanners, V, Total Recall) to fight in his death pit, the kid finds
the strength and a super suit belonging to his comic book hero, The
Turbo Rider, to go and save her and the rest of the survivors of the
wasteland from being processed into clean water through Zeus' water
filter. The kid teams up with a wasteland cowboy to take down Zeus
and his army of BMX riding thugs led by the Skull mask wearing
Skeletron.
Turbo
Kid gets it right, straight from the get go with the Road Warrior-esq
voice over, the BMX's, Apple's costume, the face off at the end
between The Kid and Zeus and especially the relationship between The
Kid and Apple, it just feels like a spot on OTT 80s movie, shot
through the lens of a digital camera. If you're going to make a film
that pays homage to the films of the 80s, Turbo Kid is the film to
use as a reference point. It's chocka-block full of blink and you'll
miss them references to obscure 80s flicks such as the opening song,
“Thunder In Your Heart” by John Farnham, the song was originally
used in the 1986 Hal Needham BMX drama RAD, When the song started
playing, I instantly knew the film would be awesome, I know that Hobo
With A Shotgun used the theme from The Raccoons, Run With Us, during
their ending credits but the fact that this scene in TK completely
captures the pure awesomeness of those 80s movies, throw in some
obvious BMX Bandits imagery too and the film feels like it should
have been made in 1985. The film's blu-ray would definitely benefit
from a trivia track or like the Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright films, an
Homage-O-Meter.
The
most interesting part of the film happens to be the relationship
between The Kid and Apple, a sweet developing romance of sorts. She's
cute and watch out SPOILERS!!!,.....She's a Robot, and seeing her
learn new things and behave abnormally around The Kid, some of the
things she says are hilarious and she gives us one of the greatest
weapons ever put on screen, A Gnome-stick, a garden gnome duct-taped
to a stick, you know for hitting people. But their relationship is
interesting in how it feels like a genuine romance even though The
Kid knows that she's a robot, She's a machine and her name is
Apple...hmm, clever. But the romance is never forced, there's no
Saxaphone sex scene, they only kiss once but the chemistry between
the two is obvious, plus Laurence Lebeouf, the woman who place Apple
is super cute.
The
film is very inventive in the gore department, some of the kills are
laugh out loud funny and there are buckets of blood on screen too.
The film does suffer a bit though, some of the acting is a little
stiff, mainly from the cowboy fella and the cinematography could have
used some colour but I guess they were going for the Italian style
post apocalypse as opposed to the Hollywood style. The film is just
grit, quarries and tarmac roads surrounded by desolate fields. I've
said that the opening song really sells the film on it's 80s charm
but the rest of the film is held together by a great 80s Synthwave
soundtrack courtesy of Canadian Electro outfit, Le Matos.
I
dug the hell out of Turbo Kid, it captured the imagination of this 31
year old 80s geek and I had an absolute blast watching it. If you
love 80s cinema then I highly recommend checking out Turbo Kid. It's
such a great little film with it's heart in the right place. It was,
as the kids would say in the 1980s,. “TOTALLY RAD!”....
Rating : 4.0
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