BMX bandits
Days of ’80s futures past…
TURBO KID 15
OUT 5 OCTOBER DVD, BD
If movies have taught us anything about the end of the world lately, it’s that it’ll be chaotic, violent, and there’s a chance Elizabeth Banks will turn up with a dead animal on her head. On that basis, Turbo Kid scores two out of three, but it’s far from a conventional post-apoca-pic. Grubby, lean and twinkly-eyed, its vision of a post-nuclear 1997 puts it firmly in Mad Max territory. Meanwhile, its love of ’80s genre flicks buzzes through the synth soundtrack and BMX battles – there’s even a retro villain in the form of Michael Ironside’s deliciously nasty one-eyed overlord.
Canadian directors Anouk Whissell, Francois Simard and Yoann-Karl Whissel, collectively known as RKSS (Road Kill Super Stars), also tip their crash helmets to old Italian B-movies and The Terminator, but their feature debut remains as triumphantly uncynical as its hero. Obsessed with ’80s paraphernalia and comic-book hero Turbo Man, The Kid (Munro Chambers) is scrounging a living in a wasteland ruled by the tyrannical Zeus (Ironside) when he stumbles across chirpy Apple (Laurence Lebeouf). When their friendship is threatened by Zeus and his lackeys, the pair attempt to take him down for good.
The resulting geysers of blood ensure that there’s humour in the horror, and Chambers and Lebeouf are both hugely likeable, gifting Turbo Kid the kind of sweetness that so many genre-riffing nostalgia trips lack. Working as both parody and science fiction proper, it’s an outrageous, ready-made cult hit. Even better, RKSS have promised it’s just the first in a trilogy.