Dixon's team includes Sam Smith, a disguise expert (whose unconventional disguises include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Adolf Hitler); scuba diver Greg Colburn; Olympic swimmer Gretta Attenbaum; and parachute-toting soldier Wilbur Finletter.
Smith is sent out to infiltrate the tomatoes at a campfire, eventually blowing his cover while eating a hotdog and asking if anyone could "pass the ketchup".
Meanwhile, the President sends Richardson to the fictitious ad agency Mind Makers, where executive Ted Swan spends vast amounts of money to develop virtually worthless ploys, including a bumper sticker with "STP" for "Stop Tomato Program" on it, a satirical reference to both the real "whip inflation now" campaign with its widely ridiculed "WIN" slogan and STP motor oil decals and bumper stickers, which were commonplace in the 1970s.
A senate subcommittee meeting is held where one secret pamphlet is leaked to a newspaper editor, who sends society writer Lois Fairchild on the story.
Gretta is killed, and further regression has led leaders to bring in tanks and soldiers to the West Coast in a battle that leaves the American forces in shambles.
Dixon, picking up some strewn records, realizes that he has seen the tomatoes retreat at the sound of the song "Puberty Love" but had not put two and two together until now.
"Puberty Love" is played over the loudspeaker, causing the tomatoes to shrink and allowing the various people at the stadium to stomp on them repeatedly.
[5] The crash was caught on film, as the cameras were rolling at the time, and later worked into the final product with added dialogue about a "kamikaze tomato" hitting the helicopter.
The theme song, written by DeBello, describes the tomatoes' rampages through the world, describing that they have killed a man named Herman Farbage while he was taking out the garbage, that the mayor is on vacation to get out of stopping them, that they have scared off the National Guard, and that they have even eaten the narrator's sister.
This theme song is used in different variations over the course of the series, here simply sounding like the score of an old monster movie with lyrics and a more catchy tune.
[9] Eric Henderson, reviewing the DVD edition for Slant Magazine in 2003 opined that "even more so than the Samuel Arkoff-like opportunism of the producers, and more so than some of the worst framing this side of Coleman Francis, the really frustrating thing about Tomatoes is the toothlessness of its satire.
And that's a major missed opportunity, considering that the irony of using a stereotypically foreign genre (Japanese monster movies) against a parody of America's jingoistic reliance on military power (the Army is useless against the giant tomatoes) should've been a comedic gold mine.
"[10] Rue Morgue writer Michael Gingold later wrote, in a review of the Blu-ray edition in 2018, that "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes may be one of history's most misunderstood films.
It has often been celebrated as a prime example of 'so bad it's funny' cinema, when in fact it's an attempt at intentional comedy that is, at best, a scattershot success.
[7] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 9 out of 100 based on 5 critic reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike".
[citation needed] American composer and orchestrator Gordon Goodwin, one of the original composers for the film, later wrote an Emmy-nominated, big-band piece inspired by the music for this film, to be played with his jazz ensemble Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band.