Killdozer (1974)

Our film begins thousands of centuries ago with a meteor tumbling toward a planet; a planet that looks suspiciously familiar…

And after making a rather spectacular crash landing, the space rock begins radiating an unhealthy looking, bluish-tinted glow while also emitting a menacing drone. And there it sat, undisturbed -- until now.

We switch to the present -- some time in the mid-1970s, judging by the haircuts and wardrobe, where our attention is drawn to a group of construction workers clearing and leveling some land on a tiny remote island some 200 miles off the coast of Africa.

Apparently, the island in question had been deserted since it was used as a refueling depot during World War II. Sent there at the behest of the mega-conglomerate Warco, these six men are on a mission to demolish the old to make way for a new oil refinery.

However, the work to reclaim and flatten the island isn't progressing nearly fast enough for the man in charge, one Lloyd Kelly (Walker), a no-nonsense company man. This lack of progress is mostly due to the constant goldbricking of Dutch Krasner (Wainwright ) and his buddy, “Mac” McCarthy (Urich), who are caught exploring an old barracks.

After rousting these two ersatz treasure hunters out of the abandoned building, Kelly puts them back to work on demolishing it. And to those ends, Mac jumps on the big D9 bulldozer, fires it up and, well, starts bulldozing things. As you do.

But while leveling these last few remaining buildings, Mac unearths our mysterious meteorite. Now, this space rock isn't all that big but the diesel-powered bulldozer can’t even budge the obstruction despite Mac’s best efforts.

Seeing things have come to a halt again, again, when an angry Kelly wants to know what the hold up is this time, Mac points out the strange rock.

Neither man can identify the anomalous mini-monolith because it doesn’t really match "the geological landscape." But since they’re on the clock, Kelly quickly concludes it doesn't really matter what the rock is; what matters is the obstacle has to be removed. Ergo, Kelly jumps on the D9 this time, backs it up, and takes another run at it.

Suddenly, as if sensing the danger, the meteorite starts to glow and whine again. But only Mac notices this, with the 'dozer’s blade blocking Kelly’s view and the engine drowning out the noise. And when Kelly strikes it with the blade, there is a massive discharge of energy that not only burns Mac but knocks him clean off his feet.

And here, as the other men rush to help him, we also notice that strange bluish glow has rather menacingly transferred away from the meteorite and into the D9…

In an article for The New York Times (May 28, 1978), noted astronomer and scientist Carl Sagan once described Theodore Sturgeon's works as among the "rare few science‐fiction [authors that] combine a standard science‐fiction theme with a deep human sensitivity.”

High praise from a guy who, in the very same article, thought the idea of a Vulcan mating with a human to produce Mr. Spock in Star Trek was “about as likely as the successful mating of a man and a petunia,” and who chastised the genre as a whole for stressing the fiction instead of the science.

Carl Sagan.

“We are asked too much,” said Sagan, whom I’m not trying to villainize, honest, as some of his points were valid. “In a novel of ideas the ideas have to work.” See! There’s one.

When he was young, Theodore Sturgeon had always wanted to be a circus acrobat when he grew up; but a case of chronic rheumatic fever, which attacks the heart, brain and joints with painful inflammation, dashed those childhood dreams.

Theodore Sturgeon.

Undaunted, at the age of 17, Sturgeon would serve as a merchant marine from 1935-1938. He then sold refrigerators door to door, managed a hotel in Jamaica, and served in the army during World War II. After he was mustered out in '44, Sturgeon got a job in advertising as a copywriter, which eventually led to a career in writing science fiction, pulling ideas from his various life experiences and then adding a fantastical spin.

Over the years since, Sturgeon became a well-vetted master of the genre, which is kind of amazing once you consider his limited and highly sporadic output.

But in between interminable bouts of writer's block, the author penned some seminal Sci-Fi pieces, including More than Human (Galaxy Science Fiction, October, 1952), where six individuals mesh together for the next step in human evolution; and To Marry Medusa (Galaxy Science Fiction, August, 1958), which finds the Earth menaced by the spores of an extraterrestrial hive-mind, whose advanced scout finds these Earthlings fairly unsuitable for their group-think way of existence and starts tinkering. (The story was later adapted as a novel under the title The Cosmic Rape.)

Sturgeon is also famous for his contributions to the classic Star Trek (1966-1968) franchise. With his Shore Leave (S01.E15, 1966) and Amok Time (S02.E01, 1967) episodes, the author laid the foundation for the Prime Directive and established several important tenets of Vulcan mythology, including the seminal hand signal salute, the Pon Farr mating ritual, and the phrase of "Live long and prosper."

And like a lot of Star Trek alumni, Sturgeon would pen an episode of Sid and Marty Kroft’s Land of the Lost (1974-1975) along with D.C. Fontana and David Gerold -- as well as famed Sci-Fi authors Larry Niven and Ben Bova. Sturgeon wrote the episode The Pylon Express (S02.E08, 1975). And if you haven’t visited that show since you were a kid, and all you remember are the Sleeztaks, Chaka the Monkey Boy, janky special effects, and the puppet dinosaurs, I recommend a rewatch -- just brace yourselves. Trust me.

Because I bet you don’t remember that at the end of season one (-- penned by Niven and Gerrold), we find out our protagonists, Marshall, Will, and Holly, confronted with the knowledge that they might've been dead all along, killed by the impact of going over that 1000-foot waterfall, and are now trapped in some kind of dinosaur and Sleeztak-infested purgatory (-- and Sleeztaks apparently taste like lobster, according to a displaced Confederate soldier they come across, who ate several of them, apparently), only to find out later they can never escape this fate unless three more people of equal mass enter this pocket universe due to physics and stuff.

And so, as the episode concludes, the loop continues with our heroic trio seemingly escaping this “land of the lost” only to wind up right back on the river again to complete some infernal cosmic loop of unreality that will keep on chugging along for forever 'n' ever and to infinity and beyond. Thus endeth your mindblow of the day.

Two more of Sturgeon’s short stories would be adapted for the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone (1985-1989): A Matter of Minutes (S01.E15, 1986) was based on Yesterday Was Monday, which presupposes that we are all unwitting actors starring in our own biopics; and A Saucer of Loneliness (S02.E01, 1986) sees a homely and lonely woman become a cause celebre when she has a close encounter with a UFO -- but is soon persecuted for messages from the beyond while remaining unfulfilled.

Sturgeon was also famous for establishing what has come to be known as Sturgeon's Law, which can mean either one of two things. In the first interpretation, the author, in defense of his genre, postulated that, yes, "90-percent of Sci-Fi writing is crud, but then 90-percent of everything is crud." The second version is a little more cryptic in that "Nothing is always absolutely so."

Thus, the man definitely left his mark; but frankly, you can push all of that stuff to the side. Because, to me, Sturgeon will always and forever be the guy who wrote Killdozer.

Before he got into writing, one of Sturgeon’s jobs after the war was working in construction, including a stint driving a bulldozer on a job in Puerto Rico, which I’m sure helped inspire this nutty tale of sentient homicidal machinery.

Constituting the author's sole output from 1941-1945, Killdozer was written in just nine days and was first published in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (November, 1944). 

Now, in the original short story, the menace did not come from outer space but was terrestrial in origin -- but no less fantastical. In the preamble, Sturgeon postulates that the Earth used to be inhabited by a race of super-intelligent beings, whose advanced machines became possessed by some "intelligent electrons" that caused them to turn on their masters:

“Before the race was the deluge, and before the deluge another race, whose nature it is not for mankind to understand. Not unearthly, not alien, for this was their Earth and their home. 

"There was a war between this race, which was a great one, and another. The other was truly alien, a sentient cloud-form, an intelligent grouping of tangible electrons. It was spawned in mighty machines by some accident of science before our aboriginal conception in its complexities. And the machines, servants of the people, became the people’s masters, and great were the battles that followed. 

"The electron beings had the power to warp the delicate balances of atom-structure, and their life-medium was metal, which they permeated and used to their own ends. Each weapon the people developed was possessed and turned against them, until a time when the remnants of that vast civilization found a defense.”

These beings then created a new element called "Neutronium," which acted as an insulator to keep the malignant electrons at bay. And they used it to insulate their last remaining lab, where they were developing a new kind of super weapon to finally turn the tide of the war -- only they did their jobs too well. As Sturgeon so brilliantly puts it:

“In its shelter, they developed a weapon. What it was we shall never know, and our race will live -- or we shall know, and our race will perish as theirs perished,” which presciently predicted the coming Atomic Age and the nuclear weapons that could turn our planet into a lifeless, radioactive cinder at the turn of a key, a punch of a button, or a computer glitch.

“For, to destroy the enemy, it got out of hand and its measureless power destroyed them with it, and their cities, and their possessed machines. The very earth dissolved in flame, the crust writhed and shook and the oceans boiled. Nothing escaped it, nothing that we know as life, and nothing of the pseudo-life that had evolved within the mysterious force-fields of their incomprehensible machines -- save for one hardy mutant.”

The mutant of which Sturgeon speaks was “an organized electron field possessing intelligence and mobility and a will to destroy, and little else.” Ironically enough, these electrons get trapped within the last remaining chunk of Neutronium. 

And so, the malignant electrons sat dormant for eons as life once more returned to Earth -- until its prison was eventually discovered by some native islanders, who sensed its powerful aura and worshiped it as a god and built a stone temple around the preternatural mineral deposit.

But they were safe from its wrath thanks to the still functioning Neutronium. And even if it did escape, the electrons would prove harmless due to the islanders primitive state and lack of technology.

But then, as mankind advanced through the Industrial Revolution, along came World War II. And when it's long since deserted ancient island refuge was targeted by the Allies as a perfect spot for a strategic airstrip, eight engineers moved in and promptly demolished the temple where the idol was stored:

“Something whooshed out of the black hole where the rocks had been. Something like a fog, but not a fog that could be seen, something huge that could not be measured. With it came a gust of cold which was not cold, and the smell of ozone, and the prickling crackle of a mighty static discharge.

“Tom was fifty feet from the wall before he knew he had moved. He stopped and saw the D7 suddenly buck like a wild stallion, once, and Rivera turning over twice in the air. Tom shouted some meaningless syllable and tore over to the boy, where he sprawled on the rough grass, lifted him in his arms, and ran. Only then did he realize that he was running from the machine.”

See, this violent action inadvertently breached the Neutronium, allowing the deadly electrons to escape, which quickly takes control of Daisy-Etta, the team's bulldozer: a medium D7 Caterpillar, whose moniker is a bastardization of the Spanish translation of D7 / de siete / Daisy-Etta.

And as it runs amok, first breaking its driver's back when he's bucked off, it kills several others:

“Chub and Harris found Dennis. All twelve square feet of him, ground and churned and rolled out into a torn-up patch of earth.”

Initially, the others don’t believe the sole surviving witness to the D7’s carnage and think he killed the others with the bulldozer. And when it becomes obvious that he was telling the truth, one man kinda goes off his spool and tries to strike a deal with the rogue machine, offering it full servitude if Daisy-Etta will spare his life. 

Luckily, saner heads prevail and the "Killdozer" is subdued when the last two survivors lure the machine into the water and zap it with a massive dose of electricity, which disrupts and destroys those electron’s malignant influence and disperses it into the ocean. 

Unsure of how to report this incident and all the casualties without sounding insane, salvation comes with a Japanese air raid, which flattens the island and destroys most of the evidence, giving the survivors an alternate narrative for their superiors. 

Now, some 30 years after its initial publication, TV producer Herbert F. Solow, who had helmed the episodic likes of Mission: Impossible (1966-1973) and Mannix (1967-1975), approached the brass at ABC with a notion that Sturgeon’s Killdozer would make a stellar Made for TV Movie for their network. They agreed, and the rest, as they say, was television infamy.

The Grand Island Independent (September 15, 1967).

Solow was a veteran of Desilu Productions, who had helped shepherd Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek from the vastness of outer space and into your living room. It was Solow’s suggestion to use a Captain’s Log to keep viewers up to speed and treat each episode as an after-action report. And it was here where he first met Sturgeon.

Solow would serve as a production manager on Star Trek, Medical Center (1969-1971) and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969-1971). His first time as a producer was on Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970), which was a theatrical documentary / concert showcase of Presley’s early years in Las Vegas. Solow would follow that up with the telefilm Climb an Angry Mountain (1972), where a city cop (Barry Nelson) and a country sheriff (Fess Parker) clash over how to track down a fugitive in the wilderness.

The Made for TV Movie was nothing new, especially by 1974; but the format really found its legs when Barry Diller, then Vice President of Development at ABC, set up a specific time-slot to showcase them in 1969 as The Movie of the Week.

And since his network was getting absolutely pasted in the ratings by their competitors, with nothing to lose, Diller let his producers run wild with less traditional fare, resulting in tales of horror, science fiction and suspense.

The Los Angeles Times (February 26, 1974).

Killdozer would join an impressive list of such telefilms the network had scheduled for broadcast in 1974. Solow would also produce Heatwave! (1974), a disaster movie, where preternatural temperatures raise havoc in a small Colorado town. We also saw Gloria Swanson’s swan song as the mad matriarch of a family vineyard in Killer Bees (1974), who can telepathically control a swarm of deadly insects.

Meanwhile, a woman is brought back to life after being frozen for 35 years in Live Again, Die Again (1974). In Skyway to Death (1974), an act of sabotage leads to a group of passengers being stranded on a sky-tram with no way to get down. Also, a resurrected gunfighter helps a widow from losing her land in The Hanged Man (1974). And there was a diabolical murder to be solved in Come Die with Me (1974).

For his version of Killdozer (1974), Solow would hire Sturgeon to adapt his own story, who would be assisted by Solow and Ed MacKillip. Given the time and budget constraints, it’s understandable as to why they took that shortcut with the meteorite and skipped the apocalyptic ancient civilization origins of the Neutronium. In fact, Neutronium isn’t even mentioned, and no explanation is ever deduced for the cause of the killdozer’s misbehavior.

To direct, Solow turned to veteran TV director Jerry London, who had worked on things ranging from Hogan’s Heroes (10 episodes), The Partridge Family (6 episodes) and Love, American Style (8 episodes).

London had just completed his first feature, the romantic comedy Games Guys Play (alias Goodnight, Jackie, 1974), before tackling Killdozer. His only other feature would be the Burt Reynolds vehicle Rent-a-Cop (1987), but London’s biggest claim to fame was probably helming the original TV mini-series adaptation of James Clavell’s Shogun (1980).

Aside from simplifying the origin of the bulldozer's malediction into a menace from outer space, they updated the time-frame from the 1940s to the 1970s. And like Howard Hawks' adaptation of Joseph Campbell's Who Goes There?, where he moved the action from the South Pole to the North Pole in The Thing from Another World (1951), London would shift his action from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Beyond that, his adaptation remains fairly faithful to Sturgeon's novella. 

But how hard could that be, considering the gist of the plot is a massive piece of earth-moving equipment gone homicidal? Only here, it’s been upgraded to a D9 bulldozer instead of the smaller D7.

But having the Warco crew on the deserted island to demolish an old World War II facility does tie it to the source material. In fact, one could almost consider the telefilm a sequel to the source novella, where another crew of construction workers unwittingly triggers the doomsday device again. Well, sort of. But not really.

Here, after the D9 first strikes the meteorite, Mac's resulting injuries from that discharge of unknown radiation are extremely grave. He needs a doctor, but medical help can't reach this isolated outpost for at least three days. (Apparently, Warco can't spare a helicopter for just one man.)

Alas, Mac succumbs to his wounds long before then. And after the other men bury him, Kelly writes the whole thing off as a freak accident and sends his grumbling crew back to work right away.

Now, the reason Kelly is such a hard-ass is because he’s on a very short-string with Warco. After years of alcohol abuse hindering his productivity, this demolition job represents his last chance to make good. And while a few men like Chub Foster (Brand) remain loyal, others like Dutch and Dennis Holving (Betz) question his every decision and sobriety, especially after Mac got killed while Kelly was operating the bulldozer.

As work continues, now being one man short, Kelly takes over operating the D9. Before he died, Mac warned Kelly about the strange blue glow, and how it transferred to the bulldozer. And while at first he assumed the dying man was just raving, now, as the machine begins to act up on him, Kelly isn't so sure. 

In fact, one could say the bulldozer has developed a mind of its own as it wrests control from its operator and tries to buck him off. However, Kelly manages to cut the hydraulic lines before it can throw him, which then closes in for the kill until the inflicted damage brings the D9 to a dead halt -- mere inches from crushing him!

After towing the crippled machine back to base-camp, a suspicious Kelly orders Chub to give the D9 a thorough going over. But his mechanic can’t find anything diagnostically wrong with the engine or anything else for that matter. 

Well, except for a strange vibration humming from the bulldozer’s blade. Beyond that, once Chub fixes the damaged hydraulics, it should be good to go; but Kelly still has an uneasy feeling and declares the D9 off-limits indefinitely.

Turns out Kelly was right to be worried, too, as the viewer realizes the D9 has, somehow, become sentient with sociopathic tendencies as it seemingly observes Kelly using the radio and earmarks it as a vital piece of equipment for these meat-sacks.

Meanwhile, Al Beltran (Watson), another crewmember, needs the D9 to complete his assigned task and apparently missed the hands-off memo. Thus, after ignoring Chub’s warnings, Beltran cranks the possessed machine up and puts it into gear. All seems nominal at first, but then the dozer starts behaving rather antisocially.

Soon enough, the machine is a runaway, with poor Beltran impotently stuck in the driver’s seat as it goes berserk, destroying the camp, and strategically takes out that radio. Then, Beltran manages to bail off and finds an apparent hiding spot in some unburied culvert pipe. But as the D9 circles back, this proves no refuge at all but a deathtrap.

And as the D9 runs Beltran over -- several times, Kelly arrives to witness the murderous machine’s rampage; and then watches horrified as it rumbles off into the jungle with chunks of Beltran still stuck in its treads! (I might be embellishing just a bit here.)

In the aftermath, the four remaining men manage to salvage two jeeps, a pickup, and some provisions. The plan is to get to the high ground, where the D9 can’t get at them, and then wait for the supply ship that's due in two days. And their makeshift convoy heads out just in time, too, as the D9 roars out of the trees and angrily demolishes what’s left of the camp.

But then, on their way up to the granite plateau, the D9 -- somehow -- manages to get ahead of them. Topping that feat, it also manages to sneak up and pounce on the truck, rolling it over with its blade, with Chub still trapped inside! The vehicle then explodes before he can get out.

Meanwhile, the others safely reach the high ground. Here, they finally acknowledge that something preternatural is going on with the D9. But as they wait and debate on the root cause of their problem, Dutch starts to lose it a little:

He can’t quite accept the fact that a bulldozer has come to life and is apparently hell-bent on killing them all. He also asks a pertinent question, How do you kill a machine that big? (Well, you could try cutting the hydraulic lines again. Just spitballing here. And won't it eventually run out of fuel?)

The following morning, the unstable Dutch, who had been drinking all night, decides to go for a swim. Stealing a jeep, he heads for the beach; but when Dutch hits the sand, he runs right into the D9.

And after a brief Mexican standoff, the jeep stalls out, leaving Dutch to avert his eyes before the bulldozer flattens him.

Kelly and Holving watch as their friend gets squished, and then the dastardly D9 sets its anthropomorphic headlights on them! 

The men quickly retreat and manage to get to Holving's excavator, which they use to battle the D9 to a standstill.

Unfortunately, the excavator wasn't designed to take that kind of abuse for very long. Luckily, Kelly has a plan. 

The plan being while Holving keeps the bulldozer distracted with the excavator, he'll rig-up an electric fly-trap that would make Dewey Martin and Ken Tobey proud.

With the trap set, Kelly offers himself up as bait; and once he lures the D9 to the right spot, Holvig throws the switch, sending the D9 into some hammy death throes that rival King Kong's right before he tumbled off the Empire State Building:

First, the D9 starts to glow and hum again, and then it starts to shudder and convulse. Then the glow starts to diminish until it disperses as the deadly "killdozer" finally falls silent.

As for Kelly and Holving? Well, after a hard day of fighting killer earth-moving equipment, by god, it’s Miller Time! We freeze frame as Kelly tosses his helmet into the air and the credits roll, leading us to ... The End.

Look, Killdozer is pretty terrible, I get that, I really do, but it still holds a very special significance for me.

See, Killdozer was the first [quote/] Creature Feature [/unquote] that I ever remember watching when I was finally allowed to stay up and watch the Late Late Show with my older siblings back in the mid-1970s. A right of passage I’m sure we’ve all been through.

If fleeting memories serve, it was a rebroadcast after going into syndication on the CBS Late Movie when I was, like, five or six? And while I’m not sure what Carl Sagan would’ve thought of Killdozer when it premiered, younger me thought it was just the greatest thing of ever. And who knows, Sagan might’ve appreciated that the alien lifeform was a bunch of sentient non corporeal electrons and not the usual humanoids with a third eye or gangly antenna.

Strangely, despite the lasting impression, I hadn’t seen it since -- or even really thought about the telefilm -- until I saw an old newspaper ad for Killdozer on the burgeoning internet back in the late 1990s in an Ask Jeeves search, which triggered a few memories and prompted a trip to eBay, where I found a VHS bootleg up for auction and managed a last-second win.

Now, the only thing I really remembered about the adaptation was that Robert Urich was in it, and the fact that he died so quickly. This was a major disappointment because, at the time, I was a huge S.W.A.T. fanatic. (Man I loved the theme to that show.)

The only other vivid memory was a scene where the anthropomorphized bulldozer rocked its blade back and forth after it murdered somebody, and I could have sworn that it had some kind of menacing mechanical laugh as the thing did its dirty deeds.

And so, I watched it again, was a little disappointed over how badly the film had aged, and then wrote it all up for a review on the mothership back around April, 2000. And while researching for that review, I uncovered the original source material and who wrote it. 

But despite two decades worth of searching used bookstores, I failed to find a hard copy of Sturgeon’s story to actually read it.

But! In the interim, I did manage to snag a copy of Marvel Comics’ adaptation of Killdozer, as part of their Sci-Fi anthology series, Worlds Unknown (No.6, April, 1974). The series would also adapt A. E. van Vogt's Black Destroyer, which inspired IT! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), and Harry Bates' Farewell to the Master, which was adapted to film as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Written by Gerry Conway with art by Dick Ayers and Ernie Chan, their adaptation of Killdozer was a delightful consolation prize, which pulled material from both the source novella and the telefilm. (The art above depicting Sturgeon's ancient civilization at war with the machines was cribbed from these pages.)

Meanwhile, around March of 2010, while shooting the breeze with a coworker, our conversation turned to Conan O’Brien’s taking over The Tonight Show. Here, I was told Team Coco had a segment that was a riff on Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, where the host would recommend a movie to the masses. And his inaugural pick was -- wait for it -- Killdozer.

This news got a huge laugh out of me, and when my friend asked what was so funny, I told him that was probably my copy of Killdozer Conan was watching and sharing. It’s true. Well, it could’ve been.

Now, to get the full picture of this strange and ultimately tragic story, we're gonna have to back up and start with an April, 2000, interview Conan did with actor Robert Urich on Late Night, which focused on the actor’s association with the dubious movie in question:

Like a lot of us, Conan had watched Killdozer back in the ‘70s, too; and also like a lot of us, this wonderful piece of inexplicable cinema struck such a primal chord that it got permanently stuck in his brain.

Remember, this was nearly 25 years ago and the internet was still in its dial-up infancy and just beginning to stretch its legs, and things like YouTube, Dailymotion and Tubi were a mere pipe-dream; a time when a person really had to dig to find these old TV obscurities, and often pay out the nose once you found them. In fact, the amount of coin I paid for my VHS bootleg copy of Killdozer back in the day, frankly, I'm a little too embarrassed to reveal.

So, imagine my surprise one Thursday morning not long after I initially posted that first review, when I received an email from a Sharon Hardy, who claimed she was a junior producer for Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

(L-R) O'Brien and Hardy circa 2016 during the "Foodie Incident."

Apparently, Urich was set to return for the following Tuesday’s show and they wanted to embarrass him a little by showing clips from Killdozer. And to do that, Sharon wanted to know if I could get her a copy of the film. (Told you it was a different time.)

After a few email exchanges established Sharon’s bona fides, after some negotiations, I agreed to dub a copy for the cost of the blank tape and shipping and an autographed picture of Conan.

With that, I sent the dub via priority mail to guarantee receipt by Monday, the day before taping, and then proceeded to tell everyone I knew what had happened. After the weekend passed, I got a confirmation email on Monday, saying they'd received the tape and payment and the promised souvenirs were on their way back to me.

Fairly excited over this near brush with celebrity (-- believe me, it’s the closest I will ever come), when I got off work Monday night I went out and bought another blank tape to preserve Tuesday’s episode of Late Night for my own personal posterity. That’s right. Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, was gonna be a big day indeed.

Needless to say, the interview never happened, the tape I sent was left unused. It didn't really matter anymore in the grand scheme of things given the tragedy of the day and its aftermath. (For a full accounting of this tale, click here.)

Shortly after, Robert Urich lost his fight with cancer and passed away. Conan eventually came back. We all came back. Time passed. I kept writing film reviews. And eventually, Conan got promoted, which brings us full circle back to Killdozer.

The Berkeley Gazette (February 2, 1974).

There is a happy ending to all of this, too. At least on my end. As I prepped for this overhaul, and went looking for a picture of the pertinent cover of Astounding Science Fiction, I found one for sale on eBay, dirt cheap, and snagged it. FINALLY! And after reading the source material, I think I understand what drew Solow to the property to begin with even though the premise was a tad … wonky.

In front of the camera, the cast was led by the always reliable Clint Walker. Standing at 6-foot-6 and weighing in at 235 pounds, Walker’s acting career began playing (not) Tarzan in Jungle Gents (1954), which found the Bowery Boys lost in Africa. “They were taking (not) Jane back to New York with them,” said Walker (The Omaha World Herald, August 29, 1974). “So I came out of the jungle beating on my chest and yelling. I think one of my lines -- it was my first speaking part -- was ‘(Not) Jane stay.’”

Better parts would follow as Walker played the lead character on Cheyenne (1955-1962) after he was spotted playing a Captain of the Pharaoh's Guard in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), and had starred in several more feature films, including None But the Brave (1965), Night of the Grizzly (1966), and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

“I believe in action movies,” said Walker (ibid). “I don’t like a lot of words. I think a picture is more interesting if it tells the story by action, more interesting than a lot of yak.”

The Orlando Sentinel (February 19, 1956).

But Walker’s career was nearly derailed and his life almost ended when he suffered a freak accident while skiing in 1971, which found him impaled on his own ski pole with a punctured heart. “I bent the pole to a right angle, that’s how hard I hit it,” said Walker (ibid). “But I’m fine. I can do anything. Except the doctors tell me I’m not supposed to stick any more poles in my chest.

After recovering from the accident, Walker put together a string of five telefilms for ABC’s The Movie of the Week: three westerns, Yuma (1971), The Bounty Man (1972), and Hardcase (1972), where a man finds out his wife sold off his ranch and ran away with a Mexican revolutionary; and two terror films, Killdozer and Scream of the Wolf (1974), which was Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson’s follow up to The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973).

The New York Daily News (January 16, 1974).

In Scream of the Wolf, the story focuses on the probability that a werewolf is laying siege on a small California town, killing several citizens. And as the bodies and the baffling evidence keep piling up around him, a novelist (Peter Graves) suspects his old hunting buddy / Nietzsche enthusiast with a Count Zaroff complex (Walker) might be the culprit.

Alas, Graves pales when stacked up against Darren McGavin's Kolchak, but Walker was kind of amazing as the dead-eyed sociopath, who feels mankind has been down out of the trees for too long. So, yeah, Scream of the Wolf was less about the supernatural and more of a social commentary, resulting in a set-up that is a ton of fun but whose Scooby-Doo resolution kinda fizzles and splutters.

Now, I normally have pretty good luck revisiting things from my childhood, but this time the cinema gods came up snake-eyes as Killdozer teeters precariously on the precipice of being too boring -- the ultimate sin any movie can commit.

Walker is his usual stoic self, but he’s just walking through the motions while the rest of the cast -- Neville Brand, Carl Betz and James Wainwright -- do an amiable enough job. They all try hard, but the script allows for too many occasions where the D9 would go on a rampage and kill someone, then wander off, followed by the crew just sitting around, carrying on, as if nothing ever happened.

In his review for the Los Angeles Times (February 2, 1974), Kevin Thomas, usually a patron saint for this kind of schlock, wasn’t all that impressed either. “Obviously some dramatic premises are better than others, but more often than not the way they’re developed is much more important than what they are,” said Thomas.

“That some sort of possibly magnetic or radioactive rock could be hurtled from outer space and eventually wreak havoc with a construction crew on a desert island may sound a bit preposterous. But this wouldn’t matter at all if the crew reacted credibly (or at least dynamically) to the lethal crisis caused by that rock.”

The New York Daily News (February 2, 1974).

Thomas also rightfully pointed out that it wasn’t until the last few minutes of the film’s climax that Killdozer had any real juice. And this lack of urgency is what ultimately sinks the film.

Said Thomas, “That they don’t react to it as an all-out annihilator lots earlier in the show makes them seem a bit slow. [And] all the time wasted so lethargically in establishing [all the characters] might’ve been much better spent in presenting the men actively pitting their ingenuity against the ‘killdozer.’”

Thomas called London’s direction strictly routine and Sturgeon and MacKillop’s script flaccid and the film’s real drawback. And the only positive thing the critic came away with was the film’s remarkable stunts. “Killdozer is technically lots more impressive than it is dramatic,” said Thomas. “The bulldozer run amok seems to come alive, like a dinosaur.”

The stunt coordinator on the film was our old friend Cary Loftin, who we discussed at length in the second part of our review of Framed (1975). A 38-year veteran in the field, Loftin had recently pulled off the same kind of mechanical menace with the demonic semi truck in Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971).

For Killdozer, Loftin “secreted a blind driver in a compartment of the bulldozer to operate it by radio instruction.” A veteran stunt driver with cars and trucks, Loftin described this assignment as a difficult one, saying (The Wichita Eagle, February 17, 1974), “It is much harder to maneuver such slow, heavy equipment.”

And this difficulty and a lack of precision led to several harrowing incidents during the production. “I had to crawl into a length of construction pipe closed at the far end and watch that machine coming until it stopped about two inches from me,” said James Watson Jr., who played Beltran (Ibid).

“That was probably my scariest bit as an actor. I began to look at that 'dozer as if it was some kind of prehistoric animal. It was a strange experience for all of us, sharing billing with that monster.”

Filming on Killdozer began the last week of December, 1973. It was filmed near Newhall, California, which is a little northwest of Los Angeles; and shooting would continue into early January for 20 days in total. Somewhat astoundingly, the film would be edited and scored and make its broadcast debut less than a month later, having its world premiere on Saturday, February 2, 1974, as part of ABC’s Movie of the Week Saturday Suspense Edition.

The Akron Beacon Journal (October 6, 1973).

“The idea behind ABC Saturday Suspense Movie is to put a flock of good folks in such dire straits that the viewer agonizes along with them in their efforts to escape the peril that threatens to destroy them,” observed Tom Riste (The Arizona Daily Star, February 9, 1974).

“There have been some very good ones in the genre: there was the tongue in cheek Alpha Caper (1973), with Henry Fonda, and Money to Burn (1973), with E.G. Marshall. Both were excellent movies -- well written, well executed and well acted by the principals,” said Riste.

The Cincinnati Post (January 19, 1974).

Those were followed by a variety of others, including (a TV remake of) Double Indemnity (1973), Skyway to Death (1974) and You’ll Never See Me Again (1973), where a husband is suspected of murder after his wife seemingly disappears off the face of the earth. Said Riste, “If these were not up to the high quality of the first two, they were still above average interest.”

But several others -- Maneater (1973), where two couples are terrorized by a couple of tigers set upon them by their crazed trainer, the aforementioned Heatwave and Killdozer -- demanded “a certain credulity from the viewer,” thought Triste. “In other words, they were not completely logical.”

Over the years since it first aired, Killdozer has garnered a bit of a cult following -- thanks in no small part to O’Brien constantly trumpeting its outlandish premise. 

And while I have no proof, I have no doubt Sturgeon’s story had served as the basis for the Stephen King short story Trucks, which was first published in Cavalier Magazine (June, 1973) and later collected in Night Shift (1978).

The same way I have no doubt this telefilm had an influence on King’s cocaine-fueled directorial debut, Maximum Overdrive (1986), which was an adaptation of Trucks, where the Earth passes through a mysterious cloud of radiation that turns all machines homicidal -- only King substituted in a steam roller for the film’s most gruesome kill. 

And in 2004, a man in Granby, Colorado, fueled by a feud, paranoia, and persecutory delusions, built an armored mobile pillbox out of a bulldozer, which he then used to go on a two hour rampage, where he demolished half the town to get back at his alleged persecutors. 

Luckily, no one was killed except the driver, who committed suicide instead of surrendering after his bulldozer broke down. The resulting media coverage started colloquially comparing the man’s deadly attack to the old telefilm, and even referred to the converted bulldozer as a Killdozer.

If you’d like to know more about this bizarre incident, I would highly recommend Paul Solet’s documentary on the subject called Tread (2019), a fascinating profile of one man’s narcissism and his descent into madness.

Now, the internet tells me the top speed of a D9 Caterpillar bulldozer is a little over seven miles per hour, and the average adult can jog at a little over 8 miles an hour. Do you see where I’m going here? Yeah.

For the record, I can accept the fact that a malicious meteor crashed on Earth and somehow managed to take control of a bulldozer, causing it to kill people. Sure, why not. 

But a fifty-ton piece of diesel powered machinery that can constantly sneak up on said people to squish them?

I don’t think anybody can drink enough to make that plausible. Believe me, I tried. *hic*  And doggone it, the Killdozer didn’t laugh -- not even once! *sigh*

Originally posted on April 6, 2000, at 3B Theater.

Killdozer (1974) Universal TV :: American Broadcasting Company (ABC) / P: Herbert F. Solow / D: Jerry London / W: Ed MacKillop, Herbert F. Solow, Theodore Sturgeon (novella) / C: Terry K. Meade / E: Bud Hoffman, Fabien Tordjmann / M: Gil Mellé / S: Clint Walker, Robert Urich, Carl Betz, Neville Brand, James Wainwright, James A. Watson Jr.