1, Troma's most ambitious production to date and a movie so epic and huge that it had to be split into two parts. Which brings me to Kaufman's latest, Return to Nuke 'Em High Vol. The most independent of movie studios continues to step up its game.
Kaufman's last movie, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, was a savage satire of consumerism and fast food culture AND was filled with wall-to-wall original songs. Terror Firmer transformed Kaufman's memoir Everything I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger into a demented and brilliant murder mystery set on a film production. Tromeo & Juliet adapted Shakespeare with a script written that retained the Bard's iambic pentameter. From the mid-'90s forward, Troma's movies became more political, more ambitious, more Tromatic. I listened to the commentaries and watched the epic behind-the-scenes documentaries, which remain some of the very best and most honest depictions of low-budget filmmaking I have ever seen and should be required viewing in film schools across the country.Īnd the movies improved. I read Troma president Lloyd Kaufman's books multiple times. Theirs were among the first DVDs I bought when I first got my player in 1998 (Troma were early adopters, understanding the potential for loading their releases with bonus content). I guess I can't blame them.Īs I grew up, so did Troma.
My friends were only interested in the nudity and gore. I spent my youth tracking the movies down (often on USA Up All Night) and recording them to be played back over and over, trying to show them to my friends and convince them that behind all the nudity, gore and silliness, there was real art. I could think only one thing:Ī Troma fan was born. By the time he was going into detail about how a guy gets his head put under a milkshake maker that gets turned on and turns his face into a pool of mushy goo, I was a goner. He said it was the grossest movie he had ever seen.
He described how children were run over in the streets so that drivers could score points. I can remember being very young and my dad - who has always had a predilection for schlock - telling me about a movie he had watched the night before called The Toxic Avenger. Toxic goo, melting boobs, three-foot penises and duck rape.