Short Film - Turbo Killer

Steve Taylor-Bryant watched the short film Turbo Killer from ‘Strange Worlds’ Programme at London Film Festival...

A sci-fi take on The Fast and the Furious in a grindhouse style with a score by Carpenter Brut.

Not sure that you can do a version of The Fast and the Furious in four minutes? No, neither was I hence why I watched something that I probably wouldn’t have gone for otherwise. I like the Fast and Furious films, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t what comes to mind when I think of a festival as prestigious as the London Film Festival.

First of all, using all of my eloquent journalistic words to describe what I watched, wow. Just wow. No, honestly wow just about covers it. I’m not convinced what I saw was a sci-fi take on the Fast and Furious films, more the pop video lovechild of Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie. The music was so over the top that I loved it at once, layers of keyboards that may be too cheesy for some films, just suited the action on screen perfectly. For a film that I presume was supposed to look as dated as a seventies B-movie, the effects were pretty good and the four actors whose names I caught, Joelle Berckmans, Noemie Stevens, Guillaume Faure, and Marc –Antoine Frederic, were a compelling watch. I am not, in fact from, the world’s leading authority on Grindhouse but I know what I like and believe me when I tell you I really liked Turbo Killer.

Seth Ickerman and Carpenter Brut aren’t names I am familiar with, that’s not to say they haven’t done any great work before and a quick IMDb search tells me that Ickerman is actually Raphael Hernandez, but I will certainly keep my eyes out for their work in the future. What worked well in the four minute pop video I am sure would find an audience in a longer format but whilst we wait for that to happen try and find four minutes to watch Turbo Killer. It’s as great as its title suggests.

Image - LFF