What’s going on at Nuke ‘Em High? Several mutations, plenty of sex, a gratuitous bikini party (which is the best kind of bikini party), lots of gross-out violence and some very Reagan-era angst about toxic waste. It would be a lot more quaint today if not for the usual Troma freak show happening in every scene.
The plot (if you can call it that): Radiation from the nuclear power plant next to Tromaville High is doing weird stuff to the kids, such as turning the biggest nerds into a violent gang of painted-up punks, causing green goo to gush from peoples’ orifices, and making the nicest girl in class cough up a little stop-motion monster that eventually turns into a giant slime beast after she flushes it down the toilet.
There’s only one solution to this mess: Blow up the high school. That’s what happens in every other good high school movie and Troma is not about to miss their chance. The anarchy here has aged well. This is every bit as brain-damaged in 2017 as it was in 1986. It’s one of the films that defined Troma for a generation of kids who managed to catch it on VHS (EVERY video store in the 80s and 90s had Troma movies, usually in the horror section, though the fans know that these are comedies) or late night cable TV while their parents were asleep. Troma stopped more channel surfers back in the day than old batteries in the remote.