Doctor Movie: Episode 297: Turbo Kid
SPEAKER_1: Wait a minute, I hear something!
SPEAKER_1: Jump back, what's that sound?
SPEAKER_1: It's Doctor Movie, yo!
SPEAKER_1: I thought I was gonna sing some Van Halen, didn't ya?
SPEAKER_1: Bozy, Bozy Pop!
SPEAKER_1: Nope.
SPEAKER_1: Welcome back to the show.
SPEAKER_1: Frog in the throat there.
SPEAKER_1: But another great movie that I just recently rewatched.
SPEAKER_1: I watched it when it first came out.
SPEAKER_1: Kind of haven't seen it since then.
SPEAKER_1: And I think I appreciate it even more now than I did when I first saw it.
SPEAKER_1: And that being the 2015 Turbo Kid.
SPEAKER_1: Wow.
SPEAKER_1: So before we got Stranger Things to kind of force feed us our nostalgia, I tell ya, this movie right here is a huge chunk of the stuff that we grew up with when I say we.
SPEAKER_1: My age group, possibly your age group, the HBO, MTV generation.
SPEAKER_1: This takes a lot of elements from a lot of different 80s movies and puts them together and creates a pretty awesome movie.
SPEAKER_1: Like I said, it's Turbo Kid 2015, sci-fi slash action.
SPEAKER_1: Here's an interesting thing about this.
SPEAKER_1: This was actually pushed to be an episode in the ABCs of Death.
SPEAKER_1: It was gonna be the T, because of Turbo Kid.
SPEAKER_1: And it got dropped from that, but I think some people were so impressed with it that they went ahead and let them make a full, kind of full length movie.
SPEAKER_1: This thing is unrated, so that's kind of different as well.
SPEAKER_1: So when I talk about this, you're going, okay, so what 80s elements are you talking about?
SPEAKER_1: Well, take the traumatic child story from Conan, from Beastmaster, right?
SPEAKER_1: Where you see your parents killed right before you and you kind of vow vengeance.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, we're taking that story line, but let's put it in post-apocalyptic, like, you know, 90% of every 80s movie was at the time.
SPEAKER_1: So you kind of got this Mad Max thing going on.
SPEAKER_1: And, you know, our bad guys are trying to take over land and control the water source.
SPEAKER_1: Hmm, that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, even the Italians ripped that off.
SPEAKER_1: So that kind of gives you the background.
SPEAKER_1: And also, let's add a little BMX bandits in there too, because everybody's source of transportation, unlike the Mad Max movies where they have gasoline, but no water, which is kind of a weird thing.
SPEAKER_1: They don't even have gasoline.
SPEAKER_1: Everybody's riding bicycles and, you know, mainly BMX bikes, right?
SPEAKER_1: So that's kind of a cool thing.
SPEAKER_1: And there's a bit to unpack here.
SPEAKER_1: So let's try to move on here.
SPEAKER_1: This thing is directed by one, two, three, four different people, and I can't say any of them's names.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, I'm not even gonna try it.
SPEAKER_1: I need Duncan McLeish for this, because he would tear these up if you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_1: If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to listen to Podcast Under the Stairs.
SPEAKER_1: Just one of the greatest podcasts ever, just saying.
SPEAKER_1: But yeah, this thing was made for $60,000, which is impressive, really.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, I forgot too, another element.
SPEAKER_1: Take all those elements I'm talking about from the 80s, but then take like early Peter Jackson, like dead alive gore effects, right?
SPEAKER_1: Just over the top, crazy, the story of Ricky type of effects in this movie.
SPEAKER_1: We just, just takes it to another level.
SPEAKER_1: Forgot to throw that in there.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see if we've got a synopsis here.
SPEAKER_1: In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an orphan teen must battle a ruthless warlord to save the girl, the girl of his dreams.
SPEAKER_1: So there you go.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, it's basic to the point, but just done so well.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see some, why to watch?
SPEAKER_1: It's exciting, zany, and unpredictable.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, in pretty much that order.
SPEAKER_1: Turbo Kid feels right, looks right, and sounds right, making it boatloads of fun and very entertaining.
SPEAKER_1: Dude, I mean, again, I was really impressed with this second watch of how much fun this really is.
SPEAKER_1: Says, Turbo Kid is a feel-good, fun ride into an apocalyptic sci-fi foray that comes with heavy dose of nostalgia.
SPEAKER_1: They just basically said in one sentence what I've been saying for the past five minutes.
SPEAKER_1: Kudos to whoever that was.
SPEAKER_1: That was somebody from Letterbox.
SPEAKER_1: The film clearly has a low budget, but it has a great cinematic sense of scope, innovation and fun sense of humor.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, I mean, you know, with post-apocalyptic, you do what they even did back in those days, right?
SPEAKER_1: You just find some hillsides where some excavation has happened, where you've got a rocky background and isolation out in the middle of nowhere.
SPEAKER_1: You throw some junk on the ground and there you go.
SPEAKER_1: That's all you need.
SPEAKER_1: There you go.
SPEAKER_1: I ruined the secrets to polka music, polka movies, post-apocalyptic movies.
SPEAKER_1: You can make a polka movie if you want to.
SPEAKER_1: Total up to you.
SPEAKER_1: I'm not here to judge.
SPEAKER_1: Well, maybe I am.
SPEAKER_1: I'm doing a podcast about movies, right?
SPEAKER_1: This gets a 6.7 out of 10 on IMDb.
SPEAKER_1: It's got a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.
SPEAKER_1: Somebody gets it, right?
SPEAKER_1: Let's talk about this cast, right?
SPEAKER_1: We have, I mean, what else do you need other than Michael Ironside as our bad guy, right?
SPEAKER_1: Patch over the eye, his name is Zeus.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, seriously, what else do you need?
SPEAKER_1: That's all you need.
SPEAKER_1: Michael Ironside with a patch over his eye in a post-apocalyptic movie.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, it's just where he belongs, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because he was in what, Metal Storm?
SPEAKER_1: Is the bad guy, was it Metal Storm or was it, what was the other one?
SPEAKER_1: Dang, it went blank.
SPEAKER_1: They all kind of run together.
SPEAKER_1: Space Hunter, he was in Space Hunter, I bet.
SPEAKER_1: I think that's the one he was in, yep.
SPEAKER_1: So yeah, again, Michael Ironside, come on.
SPEAKER_1: That's worth the price of admission by itself.
SPEAKER_1: For the most part, you've got a bunch of kind of unknowns.
SPEAKER_1: Our main character is the kid who is Moonroach Chambers, did some TV stuff, he's a Canadian actor.
SPEAKER_1: And then our other character that's worth mentioning is Lawrence LeBouffe, who plays Apple, the girlfriend, who happens to be a robot.
SPEAKER_1: And I love that they don't come up with these crazy cybernetic names.
SPEAKER_1: She's a robot, plain and simple.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, I didn't know you were a robot.
SPEAKER_1: I love that.
SPEAKER_1: I love that calling them, you know, synthetic humans or, you know, you're a robot.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, so let's go ahead and get into this.
SPEAKER_1: Well, I've already told you the storyline.
SPEAKER_1: But you do get some flashbacks.
SPEAKER_1: It starts off, you're following the kid around who's just a teenage kid, lives by himself.
SPEAKER_1: He's isolated down in a tunnel in the ground, which was like a fallout shelter from, you know, the big nuclear bomb explosions or whatever.
SPEAKER_1: He's kind of got it fixed up, and he goes around and finds nostalgic things, and most of it is 80s stuff.
SPEAKER_1: He's finding a View Master, which, you know, View Masters are older.
SPEAKER_1: But he's got like a Walkman.
SPEAKER_1: He's finding cassettes.
SPEAKER_1: You know, it's definitely aiming at an 80s crowd.
SPEAKER_1: And in the process, he's trying to sell this stuff to get money to be able to survive.
SPEAKER_1: And he goes to this place that's kind of a shady area.
SPEAKER_1: And there's a guy in here that's arm wrestling, and they call him the Cowboy.
SPEAKER_1: I forgot to even see who he is.
SPEAKER_1: But he plays a huge part in this movie.
SPEAKER_1: Let's see, where is he at?
SPEAKER_1: I don't see him on here.
SPEAKER_1: That's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_1: A very Indiana Jones, post-apocalyptic kind of hero, right?
SPEAKER_1: They call him the Cowboy.
SPEAKER_1: He's got fringe on his jacket.
SPEAKER_1: And he's awesome.
SPEAKER_1: He's an awesome dude.
SPEAKER_1: Says all the lines at the right time that you want somebody to say.
SPEAKER_1: And you don't know where this is leading, but it ends up being a partnership between the Cowboy and the Kid, trying to right some wrongs here, right?
SPEAKER_1: Cowboy's trying to get vengeance for his brother.
SPEAKER_1: And then Turbo Kid, as things go on, he figures out that Michael Ironside, or Zeus, is the guy that killed his parents.
SPEAKER_1: So he's, you know, it's re-sparked that and he wants to get revenge as well.
SPEAKER_1: And his hero is a comic book character who, it's one of those things where it's almost like it's a real life guy, but they build comics and cartoons and movies about the character that make him even larger than life.
SPEAKER_1: Kind of like, well, kind of like Kiss, kind of like Mr.
SPEAKER_1: T, right?
SPEAKER_1: He had cartoons, comics, he was in the wrestling thing, but at the end of the day, he's, you know, he's Mr.
SPEAKER_1: T.
SPEAKER_1: He's actually a nice guy, you know?
SPEAKER_1: So this thing is, they've blown this guy out to be this massive hero, and as this movie progresses on, during one of the battles, the kid falls into this shell of a ship, like a spaceship, and he goes down to the captain's seat, and lo and behold, it's his hero, and he's dead.
SPEAKER_1: But he's still got all the cool gadgets and the armor and all the stuff that's in every book and every, you know, everything that he's got.
SPEAKER_1: So now the kid has his hero's armor, his weapon, which is like a power glove, the old Nintendo power glove, but it powers up, and he can like shoot lasers out of it, and if he hits you with it, you just explode.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, so it's got all these cool graphics, and just out of nowhere, this girl shows up, wants to be his friend.
SPEAKER_1: He's kind of falling for her, and like I said, he finds out she's a robot, but it didn't change anything.
SPEAKER_1: He still cares about her.
SPEAKER_1: You get lots of bicycle chases.
SPEAKER_1: You get some arena-style fighting, almost kind of Escape from New York kind of things going on where they throw everybody down in a pit and have to fight their way out.
SPEAKER_1: You get some good battles.
SPEAKER_1: You got a secondary henchman that works for Michael Ironside or Zeus, who's got this kind of skeletal face, but it's a metal mask.
SPEAKER_1: It's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_1: And he's got this contraption that's on his hand or his arm that can shoot out radial saw blades and chop people's heads off and stuff.
SPEAKER_1: I'm telling you, it's got everything that a young boy from the 80s that grew up watching these movies loves.
SPEAKER_1: And the gore, like I said, is just insane.
SPEAKER_1: It's over the top, even to the point to where there's one guy that Turbo Kid is fighting and he hits him in the midsection, and it pretty much explodes the guy in half, and both body parts fly up in the air, and the legs, you know, the part that's cut off, like, sticks on a guy's head, and then the upper torso sticks on another person's head.
SPEAKER_1: So now you got these bodies walking around with these upper, you know, body parts flopping around.
SPEAKER_1: And it's gross and entertaining and fun all at the same time.
SPEAKER_1: This movie's just fun.
SPEAKER_1: It's just absolutely fun.
SPEAKER_1: And it goes by really quick.
SPEAKER_1: You get a flashback of why Michael Ironside has the patch over his eye.
SPEAKER_1: And at the end, it comes down to, you know, they kidnap the girl.
SPEAKER_1: They end up basically killing her.
SPEAKER_1: But that doesn't mean things are over, because remember, she's a robot.
SPEAKER_1: But the cowboy and the Turbo Kid decide to team up and go face the whole bad guy squad.
SPEAKER_1: And they've got a secret weapon.
SPEAKER_1: They've got like some kind of nuclear shell that they've got with a timer on it.
SPEAKER_1: So they're trying to get all the bad guys together in one area.
SPEAKER_1: And when this thing explodes, it's going to take them all out.
SPEAKER_1: And I'm going to leave it there, because if you haven't seen this, you got to.
SPEAKER_1: You got to see this one.
SPEAKER_1: It's on Tubi.
SPEAKER_1: You can watch it for free.
SPEAKER_1: Don't delay.
SPEAKER_1: This thing is way too fun to miss.
SPEAKER_1: And again, if you liked any of the movies that I mentioned earlier, you're going to like this one.
SPEAKER_1: It's fun.
SPEAKER_1: It's cheesy.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't take itself serious.
SPEAKER_1: It doesn't try to explain a bunch.
SPEAKER_1: It's perfect.
SPEAKER_1: It's a perfect movie.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, for what it is, it's great.
SPEAKER_1: So I give this a real solid 4 out of 5.
SPEAKER_1: Almost a 5 out of 5.
SPEAKER_1: Maybe it's given a 4.5.
SPEAKER_1: I really enjoy this movie.
SPEAKER_1: I can rewatch this one pretty often.
SPEAKER_1: So there you go, folks.
SPEAKER_1: That's my take on this one.
SPEAKER_1: Do yourself a favor.
SPEAKER_1: Check it out.
SPEAKER_1: Let me know if you're a fan of this movie, because I know you're out there.
SPEAKER_1: And yeah, we'll see where this leads.
SPEAKER_1: Does this lead to some other movies that kind of fit this genre?
SPEAKER_1: I hope so.
SPEAKER_1: Because I like a lot of the post-apocalyptic things, even if they're bad.
SPEAKER_1: They're just kind of fun.
SPEAKER_1: Alright, folks, that's it for this one.
SPEAKER_1: We will rock you.
SPEAKER_1: I mean, we will check you later.
