Killdozer! (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the movie picture. For information on original story, see Killdozer! (story).

Killdozer!
Directed by	Jerry London
Produced by	Herbert F. Solow
Written by	Ed MacKillop Theodore Sturgeon
Music by	Gil Melle
Cinematography	Terry K. Meade
Editing by	Bud Hoffman Fabien Tordfmann
Release date(s)	1974
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Killdozer! was a made for TV science-fiction/horror movie filmed in 1974, adapted from a 1944 novella by Theodore Sturgeon. A comic-book adaptation appeared the same year, in Marvel Comics Worlds Unknown #6 (April 1974).

[edit] Plot

A group of construction workers are building an airstrip on a South Pacific island. During the course of their work, the workers uncover a strange meteorite (seen at the beginning of the movie flying through space millions of years earlier and crashing onto Earth), emitting a strange sound. When they try to clear the massive rock by ramming it with the blade of one of their bulldozers, a noncorporeal entity contained within it transfers to the bulldozer accompanied by a strange blue light, disabling the bulldozer. A worker standing immediately next to the collision falls ill, then dies of unknown cause. A mechanic can't find anything wrong with the bulldozer, but can hear the odd sound behind the scoop. The group's foreman orders the bulldozer not to be used.

Later, another worker ignores the prohibition and starts up the bulldozer, bringing it to malevolent life. It destroys the camp's only two-way radio and begins a rampage, killing the workers one by one, seeming to run indefinitely in spite of a limited fuel capacity. The machine has some rudimentary intelligence and guile, and ambushes the men.

With only two survivors left, they reason it is up to them to destroy it, and jokingly convict it of murder, and wonder how to execute it. Too heavy to hang, too big for the gas chamber... but it could be electrocuted. They lure it to a trap, metal sheeting connected to the power cart.

As the bulldozer is electrified, the alien entity emerges as an aura around the machine, then finally fades. The men shut down the power and check the scoop: no sound. Unfortunately, the foreman knows they probably won't be believed since he has a reputation as an alcoholic, and this job was his last chance to redeem himself.