Troma’s latest is disgusting, offensive, ridiculous, tasteless and cheap. There’s no gag too low for it. There’s no violence or nudity too gratuitous for it. It also cracks some very silly jokes about some very sensitive topics. To clarify: this movie is ugly, sick and downright unhealthy.
And I think I laughed about fifty times.
This is a blast. Director Lloyd Kaufman is almost 70, but he’s as angry as ever. This is not a film from a tired old man. He still hates the corporate creeps who infringe on our lives and treat us like idiots. He’s still up for a fart joke or three. He comments on current events and trends and he sides with the rights of young people to be themselves. Like all of his films, this is consistently mislabeled by everybody on Earth as “horror” when it’s really a comedy. It’s serious subject matter under a silly and gory veneer. Subversion is Kaufman’s game and he’s a better filmmaker than most think (some of his best gags are a panorama of weird things happening all over the screen, foreground and background). Also, no matter how gross he gets, Kaufman’s top priority is the laugh and, in the end, one man’s “shocking” is simply another man’s “colorful”.
This is volume 1 of a two-part Troma epic. The story of two teenage lesbian outcasts who make their way through Nuke ‘Em High while mutants who were transformed by the new radioactive “organic” cafeteria food terrorize the school is simply too much for one movie, I guess. Cool with me. Expect the next installment… whenever.