When projected through a rose tinted lens, eighties pop culture was a glorious thing and is still revered to this day. Everything from the recent It reboot and Stranger Things to shows like The Goldbergs hold the entire decade up on a pedestal, happily mocking fashions while idolizing music and movies that went on to change the entire world.
However, when it comes to eighties worship, nothing hits the sweet spot better than when young filmmakers attempt to recreate some of the weirder, misshapen examples of filmmaking at that time as they attempt to fuse Spielbergian kids movies with the outlandish gore of a Wes Craven or George Romero film.
A good example of this is Steven Kostanski’s gore-gasmic Psycho Goreman, a bombastic blood sprayer that sees a little girl get to command her very own genocidal killing machine – however, nailing that goofy tone with equal aplomb is 2015’s deliriously adorable Turbo Kid.
*Adopts Gravelly Voice* The world has become a post apocalyptic wasteland named… The Wasteland, and the bedraggled dregs of humanity trawl through the endless trash to scrape together a joyless existence as the search for water becomes ever more desperate. This is the future. This is 1997.
In this barren shithole lives the Kid, a plucky orphan, who scavenges in order to live, but also read comics that make him wish he was more like his favorite hero: the Turbo Rider. However, his nomadic existence is rudely interrupted by the sudden arrival of Apple, an insanely cheerful girl armed with pink hair, a pastel-blue jumpsuit and an attitude so overwhelmingly positive she makes a Saturday morning kids TV presenter seem like Robert Smith from The Cure. She immediately adopts the reluctant Kid as her best friend and basically sticks to the guy like glue, slowly brightening up his existence with her inexhaustible enthusiasm and a grin wider than a banana.
Such a healthy outlook on life is certainly refreshing, especially since the Wasteland is ruled by a maniacal despot named Zeus who, with his buzz saw flinging henchman, Skeletron, has figured out a callous solution to the water problem – simply crush people down into pulp and extract the water from what remains.
After running into some of Zeus’ goons, the Kid and Apple are separated, but after stumbling upon a hidden bunker that contains the remains of the real Turbo Rider, he takes the hero’s incredibly destructive wrist gauntlet and vows to save Apple no matter the cost.
He’ll need to get a move on, because cigar chomping, arm wrestling cowboy, Frederick will need all the help he can get taking down Zeus and his gang of freaks. However, Apple has a secret that may prove be be something of a game changer…
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really take to the simple pleasures of Turbo Kid when I first watched, chiefly because I was kind of burnt out from all the other ridiculously violent, eighties pastiches that had come out since riffing on the period had become a thing. And yet, after a much needed rewatch, the movie finally opening itself up to me like the garishly camp petals of an overly kitsch flower. Simply put, Turbo Kid imagines itself not as the sort of life affirming, eighties flick you might have caught either on the big screen or on a home rental, but instead models its deliberately inconsistent plot an tone on the kind of gem you’d probably end up renting in desperation after a three hour search if all the popular films you actually wanted had gone. It’s a scenario that’s long since extinct and something the streaming generation will never truly experience (hopelessly browsing through Tubi from your sofa is about the closest thing I can imagine) and the sizable, Canadian directing team of Françous Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell manage to nail the misshapen randomness incredibly well, choosing not to tap cheap laughs by openly mocking the experience, but instead actively try to recreate it with the odd, knowing glance.
Thus we get a world that has a Mad Max look, the inventive gore of Peter Jackson (love the living totem pole of body parts) and the mindset of a kids cartoon that cherishes Care Bear levels of friendship, even while people are being shredded by whizzing bandsaw blades. It’s all here, masked henchmen in hockey pad, ranting overlords slaughtering peasants in their droves, robot hands, childhood crushes, glorious overusage of the word “rad” and it’s all delivered with a loving knowingness that papers over many of the (presumably) deliberate cracks. The world building is adorable with the retro-futuristic tech of the Kid’s power glove and Apple’s life meter (turns out she’s a robot – spoiler) taking their cues from early Nintendo game consoles while everyone in this desolate future whizzes around on the only primary mode of transport still left – BMXs of course!
Those resistant to the charms of comedic, eighties throwback may be understandably puzzled at the dueling tones of a kids film that features jaws graphically torn loose and people bursting like entrail-stuffed water balloons, but fans will eat it up, especially when any inconsistency in the edit can be simply attributed to the aping of low budget filmmaking.
The cast are game, but some shine more than others. Munro Chambers’ Kid has a good line in confused looks, but unavoidably retains some of that Luke Skywalker, vanilla flavour while Aaron Jeffery’s Frederick kind of gets lost in the shuffle. However, more than counteract this is Michael Ironside, Canada’s patron saint of B-movie villainy, who delivers a nicely OTT do-badder with all the bellowing that comes with it and his henchmen, Skeletron, is also pretty nifty in a Darth Maul kind of way.
However, blowing them all out of the water is Laurence Leboef’s Apple. Dressed like a mixture of Ripley from Aliens and a member of Jem And The Holograms, the actress fills the movie’s brief perfectly, constantly staring adoringly at everything and almost never losing her expression of constant, euphoric joy, she almost single handedly makes the film in a role that could, if played wrong, could have been more annoying than whatever audio torture they’re using in Gitmo Bay these days.
Highly amusing, yet genuinely moving despite being caked in multiple layers of viscera, Turbo Kid may be something of a mystery to those who didn’t receive their formative film training stuck in discount sections of a Blockbuster Video, but to those in the know, it’s a movie that Wars its heart on its sleeve. And on its shoulder. And sprayed up the walls. Pretty much everywhere, really…
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 