The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Class of Nuke’em High (1986), directed by Richard W. Haines, Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman

 

The Trailer

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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.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Tromeo & Juliet (1997), directed by Lloyd Kaufman

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Sex & Outrage", by Motorhead

     In the world of theater, there are few names as influential as that of William Shakespeare. Poet, wordsmith, playwright par excellence, Shakespeare is responsible for some of the seminal written works not only of the English language, but of the entirety of recorded history. Hamlet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, pieces of art that have survived the test of time, reproduced, replayed and reinterpreted thousands of time since they were written, and on and on for the foreseeable future. Name drop Tennessee Williams or Goethe to the average man on the street and all you’re gonna get is a blank stare, but they even catch a glimpse of a skull and the first thing on their lips is gonna be ‘alas, poor yorick’. That’s the power of Shakespeare, baby.

     By contrast, there are few names in the world of film that are less influential than that of Troma. Established in the 1970s by founders Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman as a truly independent movie distribution company, one that shunned Hollywood in favor of artistic freedom, Troma almost immediately became known less for being an alternate avenue for aspiring filmmakers and more for being purveyors of...well, let’s say shit. Generally movies that, due to lacking the funds, writing, acting, and pretty much everything else that Hollywood has, instead spend their time on cartoonish violence, gratuitous nudity and yawn-inducing shock jock style offensive humor. That’s not to say I’ve never seen a good movie with the Troma label (looking at you, Cannibal! The Musical) , or that I don’t support their mission, but some of the worst fucking movies I’ve ever seen are also part of the Troma family (looking at you, Dr. Fugazzi), and on the whole you’re probably going to find a lot more turds than you do hidden gems. They’re better than those tools who put out ‘Transmorphers’ and ‘Atlantic Rim’, at the very least.

     Thus it was inevitable that these two meet.

     Directed by Lloyd Kaufman and written by James Gunn, who you might remember from Slither or some movies you’ve never heard of about a talking tree or something, Tromeo And Juliet is obviously based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the classic tale of two teenagers who fall in love at first sight, despite their families being locked in a bitter and bloody rivalry, which ultimately ends in tragedy. At least that’s generally how the story goes, but after infected by the touch of Troma things end up a little bit different. The Montagues is now the Que family, headed by the inebriated and flatulent disgraced porno director Monty Que, Lord Capulet is a sadistic wife beater and attempted rapist with an explosive crossbow, Juliet’s Nurse is now Ness, a chick with a thing for lip piercings and fish tacos, and Tybalt/Tyrone carries a walking stick with Hitler’s face on it. Oh and the Chorus has been replaced by Leemy fuckin’ Kilmister of Motorhead (they also provided a song for the soundtrack), who seems to be almost but not quite interested in what’s actually saying. Throw in a fart noise every now and then and you’ve got yourself a movie, apparently.

     Normally when I cover movies I end up feeling bad if the article is too short, because it feels like I’m shortchanging you readers or not adequately defining my opinion, but I just can’t find much to say about this one. It’s a movie that sort of follows the story of Romeo and Juliet with a bunch of shit in so it can seem ‘over-the-top’ and ‘outrageous’, but ultimately comes as desperate and tedious. Does the film need a close-up shot of someone getting a nipple piercing? How about a softcore porn scene between Juliet and Ness with intermittent cuts of Tromeo having the saddest wank session ever seen to some late 90’s porno games? Where would the audience be without that side-splitting ‘Friar John is a child molester’ joke? I mean no one has ever made a joke about Catholic priests molesting children before, so Tromeo And Juliet is really treading new ground here. Move aside Will Ferrell, here’s the new face of comedy.

     Not to disparage Lloyd and James, because I’m sure they’re long past giving a shit about this movie, but I think there’s an important thing to note here: Sometimes, less is indeed more. I know that this is Troma, so you’re encouraged to throw as much shit at the wall as possible, but TAJ does it so often with no real cooling off period that I burned out long before the halfway point. Also, in case the above implication wasn’t clear, this movie just isn’t funny. Maybe if this was my first Troma movie ever this maelstrom of boobs and fake blood would seem like a novelty, like screwball 80s comedies taken to its logical conclusion, but once you’ve seen more than one you realize pretty much all they have. Aside from a scant couple moments where they play around with the play’s dialogue and a phone sex scene I didn't even come to anything beyond a smirk this the whole thing, and you can blame the internet or adult swim for desensitizing me to this kind of thing, but I’m telling you straight from the heart that it’s just stupid. Yes, stupid things can be funny, often are funny, but it takes a firm hand to keep stupid from drifting from ‘funny’ into ‘annoying’. By the time Tromeo And Juliet whips out the bull penis, it’s already smashed into the guardrail.

     The Lemmy cameo is fun, the music is pretty good, but Tromeo And Juliet just doesn’t do it for me. Could be that I’m just an old stick in the mud though, so feel free to check it out yourself. Hell, if you’re looking to make your night a Troma night, I’ll throw in a few recs for Cannibal! The Musical, The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke’em High and Story of A Junkie. Just make sure that no one in the room is lactose intolerant, because there’s going to be a lot of cheese. Cheese and exposed breasts, which I wouldn’t be surprised to discover is the name of a Troma franchise.