Turbo Kid bathes its audience in a delightfully retro, VHS-inspired story with lashings of blood and humour. Its synthesised score, BMX bikes, and 80s-inspired horror-comedy take the audience back to those glorious days of straight-to-VHS treasures, as we enter a post-apocalyptic 1997.
As a film-obsessed teenager of the late 1980s and early 90s, I found my local video rental store to be a magical movie cave filled with wonder and potential. The endless shelves of shiny VHS boxes provided a pick-and-mix heaven as I spent whole afternoons searching for my Saturday night entertainment.
After much deliberation, I would leave the shop, cradling my precious tapes with a large bar of Dairy Milk chocolate for the viewing ahead, my Saturday night sorted. Like many teenagers of my era, I found straight-to-VHS films rich pickings, with their low-budget effects and rushed releases, either striking gold or sinking like a stone.
Turbo Kid bathes its audience in a delightfully retro, VHS-inspired story with lashings of blood and humour. Its synthesised score, BMX bikes, and 80s-inspired horror-comedy take the audience back to those glorious days of straight-to-VHS treasures, as we enter a post-apocalyptic 1997. In this ravaged world, global warming has killed off the majority of the human race, and the survivors live in tin sheds and underground bunkers, drinking water made from the juicing of other humans.
In this devilish world, we meet our BMX-riding hero (Munro Chambers), a teenager who scavenges pop culture relics. But the kid’s life is about to change forever when he meets a peculiar girl named Apple, and crosses paths with a sadistic gangster named Zeus (Michael Ironside). Turbo Kid embraces retro action, guts and gore with pride while paying homage to the best in ’80s fantasy horror. It is, like many of those straight-to-VHS treasures I used to cradle on my way out of the video store, the perfect Saturday night treat.
Follow Us