Screened as part of NZIFF 2015

Turbo Kid 2015

Directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell Incredibly Strange

In the post-apocalyptic future of 1997, Turbo Kid must face down an evil warlord and rescue the girl of his dreams. This retro sci-fi delight is packed with heart, humour and non-stop geysers of blood.

Jul 25

Embassy Theatre

Jul 30

Paramount

Aug 01

Light House Cinema Petone

Aug 02

The Roxy Cinema 1

95 minutes CinemaScope / DCP

Producers

Anne-Marie Gélinas
,
Ant Timpson
,
Benoit Beaulieu
,
Tim Riley

Photography

Jean-Philippe Bernier

Editor

Luke Haigh

Production designer

Sylvain Lemaitre

Costume designer

Éric Poirier

Music

Le Matos

With

Munro Chambers (the Kid)
,
Laurence Leboeuf (Apple)
,
Aaron Jeffery (Frederic)
,
Edwin Wright (Skeletron)
,
Romano Orzari (Bagu)
,
Michael Ironside (Zeus)

Festivals

Sundance
,
SXSW 2015

Elsewhere

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