Elaine Peake

THE KABOOM BOYS (2015 - 2017)
Film by Hedgerow Productions screenwriter THE KABOOM BOYS tells the dramatic true World War II story of EDWARD, a United States Army Bomb  Disposal (BD) captain, his squad of misfits and their quest for redemption.  EDWARD’s dreams fade fast as his once bright future slowly dims in a Great Depression-era coal mining town. Toiling endlessly in two dead-end jobs, EDWARD is desperate to break free of a suffocating relationship with his high school sweetheart so he can become a real man. Ashamed and humiliated he’s been branded with a 4-F army rating, EDWARD decides the war is his only way out so he volunteers for BD, despite its 10-week life expectancy. During World War II the Allies drop 3.4 million tons of bombs throughout Europe, many of  which never detonate. High Command considers BD men disposable but THE KABOOM  BOYS sense of duty compels them to risk it all to combat Nazi terror. THE KABOOM BOYS work hard and play hard, not knowing if the next enticing woman they kiss or the drink they down will be their last. Eager to face whatever daunting missions come their way, the squad makes the impossible possible, like: ~ when EDWARD and his right-hand-man BILL diffuse fourteen bombs on a flaming B-17 that crash lands onto an insanely busy runway;  ~ when crossing the English Channel to Utah Beach, EDWARD risks court-martial, refusing to disembark his men for fear they’ll drown like so many men before them already tragically have;  ~ when EDWARD must defuse a 50 kilo bomb dug deep into the earth at the center of a surgical unit packed with seriously wounded soldiers because the Head Surgeon refuses to evacuate, saying even more men will die if they’re moved; ~ when EDWARD and BILL search a bombed-out booby-trapped chateau and BILL reveals to EDWARD his paralyzing undiagnosed PTSD; ~ when an overflowing munitions pile ignites, disintegrating BILL, and, then fierce words are exchanged between EDWARD and CHARLIE, the quizzical high school drop out who blames the untimely death on EDWARD’s inexperience as a leader. Was it a terrible mishap or a premeditated suicide? Out of the horror of war THE KABOOM BOYS develop a quest to reach the thousand-year-old abbey-fortress MONT SAINT-MICHEL. Thirty-one hundred feet into the clouds, nuns and monks pray for the war to end while at sea level townspeople live in constant fear of the Nazis. Fast-moving, fifty-foot tidal waters surround the massive rock cutting it off from the mainland and, that’s where EDWARD and his squad witness a miracle. Ordered on a bittersweet mission to MONT SAINT-MICHEL to detonate several bombs, THE KABOOM BOYS face death yet again as one becomes a man and another is saved. THE KABOOM BOYS is the story of the dangers they face, the bombs they render safe and the lives forever changed.