Turbo Kid 2015

Q+A with Ant Timpson & Tim Riley and star Edwin Wright at the Civic screening.

A raucous retro action-comedy that delivers fun and gore by the bucket-load, this debut feature from Quebecois filmmaking collective RKSS (Francois Simard and siblings Anouk and Yoann-Karl Whissell) pays homage to such VHS-era favourites as BMX Bandits and Mad Max, as well as their cheeky straight-to-video knock-offs.

Turbo Kid takes us back to the future, 1997 to be exact, where the evil overlord Zeus (played with malevolent relish by genre stalwart Michael Ironside) controls the only remaining supply of water in a post-nuclear dystopian wasteland. The comic book-obsessed Kid scavenges in the ruins for goods to trade with other survivors for water, but instead ends up finding a new bestie, a preternaturally enthusiastic pink-haired girl named Apple. BMX-riding goons in the employ of Zeus maraud around the landscape abducting vulnerable survivors. When Apple is kidnapped, the Kid must draw on his superhero know-how and the power of an ancient artifact to rescue her and dispense some turbocharged blood-spattered revenge on the bad guys. — MM

“A post-apocalyptic adventure that might well have been made in the early 80s and discovered when the world’s last VHS store emptied its storage locker… Turbo Kid mixes innocent kid-stuff action with the kind of outlandish gore many of the era’s teens covertly devoured on video. A pitch-perfect pastiche that never mocks its inspirations, the picture is silly fun to warm the hearts of aging fanboys and delight hipsters who weren’t yet born the first time.” — John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter