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The Appropriate Tune - "Nuke Em High" by Ethan & The Coup
It’s been a while since we’ve taken a look into the wacky world of Troma, hasn’t it? Now granted that’s pretty easy to do, given that many of the films associated with Troma Entertainment are Z-grade schlock who try so hard to be camp that it swings back around and becomes embarrassing. I can’t really hate on them though; Besides the fact that shitting on Troma for being cheap garbage is like shitting on the sun for being bright, they were there when a young Thunderbird was on the cusp of my writing-about-movies destiny, and so nostalgia is a definite. Perhaps the genre-centric direction of the blog is because of Troma? Nah, probably not, but in my flurry of movie selection whimsy I decided to rewatch a Troma film that I actually remember being pretty good. Then again anything looks good after you’ve sat through Sgt. Kabukiman, so I guess we’ll see if the memory holds up.
Released in 1986, Class of Nuke’em High was written by Richard W. Haines, Lloyd Kaufman, Mark Rudnitsky and Stuart Strutin, directed by Haines, Kaufman and Michael Herz, and produced by Herz, Kaufman and James Treadwell. Gil Brenton stars as Warren Brandt, your typical white-meat American teenager just trying to keep his nose clean and maybe get some from his girlfriend Chrissy (Janelle Brady) while attending Tromaville High School. Tromaville High, too, is your typical white-meat American High School; It has its overly-hormonal teenagers, its gangbangers, and it just so happens to be a quarter mile downwind from a nuclear power plant so shoddily maintained they think OSHA is Oprah’s cousin. Sure there’s toxic waste bubbling out of the ground and maybe a kid melted that one time, who can possibly worry about that when there’s parties and unprotected sex to be had? When that nuclear sludge gets into the weed supply however, it sets into motion a chain of events that could spell disaster for the students and faculty of Tromaville High School. More like Nuke’em High, am I right? Yes I am, because that’s the title of the movie.
There was of course no shortage of high school comedies in the 80’s, that was practically its Golden Age, but of course Troma’s whole gimmick is about giving a 10 when it calls for a 5. You ask for a punk and Nuke’em High gives you the cast of Mad Max, you call for a death scene and Nuke’em High has people getting their heads exploded, and their parties look like something out of a Fellini movie (their words, not mine). Much like its sister film The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke’emHigh has this kind of chaotic screwball energy to it where it never makes the audience wait too long for something to happen, and even in the ancillary scenes there’s usually something going on in the background to keep your eyes busy. If Animal House were written by the folks of Mad Magazine, that’s what this movie feels like.
The other thing that connects it to The Toxic Avenger and separates it from a lot of the Troma fare is that overall it’s a well made film. While intentionally crude it never fully leaps into the cold waters of bad taste like Kabukiman, and while presenting itself as dumb it manages to skewer the romanticization of high school and nuclear energy policies in a way that hits more than it misses. This is due partly to the material and also the cast, who might not be Oscar-worthy but always feel exactly like the model version of their respective stereotype. I especially liked the late Pat Ryan here as the villainous plant manager Mr. Finley. He played a similar character in The Toxic Avenger a few years before and to me he was as big a part of that movie’s success as Toxie himself. A proper B-movie actor, who also kind of looks like early MadTV era Will Sasso.
It wouldn’t be a proper B-movie without some of them there special effects, and in true Trome fashion Nuke’em High delivers on that. Gushing pustules of mysterious fluid, distended body parts, exploding heads, all the things you shouldn’t type into a pornhub search bar in a way that looks like actual time and effort was put in. We even get a radioactive semen monster (watch and find out) at the end that I think could stand with any other sci-fi or horror movie of the day. Of course you never actually see the monster do anything besides moving its head, any kills being performed by claws and a tail that conveniently arrive from off screen, but the overall design is solid and shows Troma’s dedication to the absurd despite the film already being ridiculous enough.
I also unironically love the soundtrack. The Smithereens had released their debut album Especially for You the year this film came out, and it’s surreal to see the group responsible for the proto-’Come As You Are’ ballad ‘Blood and Roses’ having a cameo in a Troma film for some reason. The Nuke’em High theme song is also a banger; It was going on 10 years since I had last seen this film before the review, and yet I still found myself humming the tune from time to time, it’s almost annoying how catchy it is.
Class of Nuke’em High is schlock. Troma markets it as schlock, and in both form and content its schlock. Yet despite being rough around the edges I never found myself bored at any point. It’s entertaining; the kind of gonzo film that through our modern lens we envision all of 80s pop culture to be, though the truth is a lot more mundane. The Class of Nuke’em High gets the recommendation: it’s definitely not a movie for the kids or the easily offended, but if you have a couple friends and more than a couple beers over one night and pop this in I think you’ll manage to have a good time. As long as you avoid the weed that is.
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