Def by Temptation (1990)

This is one I'd been meaning to do for a long time, and finally covered it on the podcast back on episode 198 with Freddie Young from Full Moon Reviews, so now it's time to get it on the site. In addition to us, Outlaw Vern has covered this, plus Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, Joe Bob's Drive-In Movie Review.

Def by Temptation is about a succubus (Cynthia Bond), who is killing men who are playing women in New York City. Is it such a bad thing if she's only killing cheaters? When minister-in-training Joel (James Bond III, who also wrote and directed) goes to NYC to visit his friend K (Kadeem Hardison), he becomes the succubus's next target, so someone not-so not-innocent is now in danger. Hardison has to stop her, and fortunately he's found an ally in Dougy (Bill Nunn), the worst of the players at the bar who just happens to be an undercover cop who specializes in the occult. Will they be able to work together and save Joel before the succubus gets him?

This was a ton of fun. It's not exactly direct-to-video, because it made about $2 million in the theater, but it feels DTV, if you know what I mean. It's the kind of late-night horror you might see on cable or at the video store, something that only gets better with time. James Bond III does a great job crafting a unique yet fun and scary tale, and the robust supporting cast does their job rounding out the proceedings and adding extra weight that a low-budget horror film from 1990 may not otherwise have. Just the opening alone is fantastic, where a bartender is on the phone, cheating on his girlfriend, spitting the funniest lines in the process. Then when the succubus takes him back to her place to kill him, and he's running around buck-ass naked, it's both hilarious, and you kind of feel bad for him. You get the fun, but you also get the nuance of making sure we want to see the succubus stopped. Just an all-around great time.

I mentioned above that this was one I'd wanted to do for a long time. How long? In the early 2000s, Troma was doing a sale, and I bought Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD, Surf Nazis Must Die, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Toxic Avenger all for $5 a piece. I believe each of those had a trailer for this movie, with Bill Nunn's classic line, "when she drinks that holy water, she's gonna be slobberin' and fartin' and gaggin'." My buddy and I would always say "we have to watch that!", but then I don't know, the beer, the weed, the Taco Bell, the Doritos--maybe a combination of all of them?--would cause us to forget, and the movie never happened for us. This is what makes the world we live in now great. Yes, there are a lot of issues with streaming, but one of the good things is that a movie that once slipped through my fingers might now be available, and while I may need to sit through a series of commercials about online casinos, with my attention span shot anyway, it gives me a chance to look at my phone.

It turns out this is the third Samuel L. Jackson film we've done on the site. In addition to Arena, he was an uncredited extra in The Exterminator, so I need to tag that too. You'd think with how prolific he is, that he'd have more DTV stuff, but if you look at the timeline, he got the role of Nick Fury not long after we started the DTVC, so in that sense it's probably crazier that he did Arena at all than it is that he hasn't done anything else. On the other hand, this is our fourth Kadeem Hardison film, the other three being the Michael Jai White/Asylum Joint Android Cop and two Mark Dacascos films, Instinct to Kill and the all-time classic, Drive. The Jackson we get is rather scant, a bit at the beginning and a bit in the close; but the Hardison is prodigious and he's a lot of fun. A classic for both of them to be sure.

This was distributed by Troma, with Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz as executive producers. When I started this site back in 2007, Troma was a huge part of my DTV watching life, and I figured I'd have more of their films reviewed than any other company--I didn't even have PM on my radar then. But as I've said before, soon after I started, people were reaching out about the action films I was reviewing. At that time there weren't many of us doing low-budget action--and there really aren't many more now--while the horror review ecosystem was much more robust, which meant those reviews were more likely to get lost in the shuffle. Take this film for example, it has 30 critic reviews. For a somewhat obscure low-budget horror flick from 1990, 30 is a lot. A good comp might be One Man Force, a classic that came out in 1989, which only has 10 reviews, of which four are Bulletproof, Comeuppance, Explosive Action, and us. So that means we have nearly 50 PM flicks reviewed, while this is only our 13th Troma flick. I'll see what I can do about getting more up in the near future.

Finally, saxophone great Najee plays himself in this, and also performs a song. What you may not know about me is I'm a huge Smooth Jazz fan, especially if it's saxophone-led, so Najee is one that's right up there for me. I love his cover of Anita Baker's "Sweet Love," and of course, "Tokyo Blue," you could play that whole album, also called Tokyo Blue, it's great top to bottom. Another song is "All I Ever Ask," which isn't bad either, but features Freddie Jackson, who also stars in this as himself. Was this where they met before their collaboration? Another nice hit off that album Just an Illusion, he covers Color Me Badd's "I Adore Mi Amor." If you're not into Smooth Jazz, give it a try, it's not just for Weather Channel's "Weather on the 8s" anymore.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Tubi, which I think is a good deal. It's a horror classic with some great names, really well put together by James Bond III. And also check out the podcast episode Freddie and I did on this, number 198 in the archives.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099395/

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Rowdy Girls (2000)

We continue our 2023 Hall of Fame inductions with one of the all-time greats, and someone who played a big part in my love of DTV films, Shannon Tweed. Now you'd think an erotic thriller would probably be a better bet for her induction post, but I saw this was finally on Tubi, and I thought I'd seen it before and remembered liking Tweed in it, plus it was a Troma flick with another Hall of Famer, Julie Strain, so I figured it would be a good one.

Rowdy Girls has Tweed as a woman in the Wild West who is on the run with some money she stole from someone who'd stolen it from a bank. Disguised as a nun, she's hoping no one will bother her or her money, but she's wrong. First, a young lady on the stage coach with her, (Deanna Brooks), tries to steal it, and then later her coach is waylaid by a gang, which includes Strain. Eventually she and her money are parted, so she teams up with a local deputy whose brother was killed by Strain, and they try to track it down and help him get his revenge. Will they be able to take out these baddies and live happily ever after?

Again, I couldn't remember if I'd seen this before or not, but it was as good as I thought I'd remembered it at least. It felt like a Wynorski film, with all the boobs and buttocks--in fact we also had a stunt buttocks with Strain's then husband, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, having his cheeks pinch hit when the guy playing opposite Strain in a love scene didn't want his buttocks shown on camera--but also felt like the way you'd want Troma to do a Western, so it makes sense that they'd have distributed this. Beyond the T-n'-A, it had a lot of Troma comedy, but also hit all the beats we expect in a Western. The cast also did well matching the tone this was going for, led by Tweed and Strain, who both do equally well baring all in one scene and delivering tongue-in-cheek dialog in another. This is just a fun flick from 2000.

Unlike Danny Trejo who entered the Hall of Fame and the 30 Club at the same time, this is only Tweed's 7th, which I believe puts her with Lisa London and Tina Cote as joint third for most tags as a woman on the DTVC, behind Kathleen Kinmont with 8 and Cynthia Rothrock with 42. This is also her first post since we did Hard Vice in November of 2021. That may make you wonder why she's getting this Hall of Fame nod now, which I get. The main thing is in looking over my own experience with DTV films, erotic thrillers were a big part of that, and I'm planning to do more of them in the future on the site, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this now; but also in looking over her CV, she has a lot of action roles as well, many of which we haven't covered yet, plus she was in one of my favorite comedies ever, Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death. 80s and 90s DTV wouldn't be what they are without her, and I think for that reason alone, this was overdue.

For our film's other Hall of Famer, we have the great Julie Strain. I checked, and this is only her second film on the site since her induction two years ago, which isn't good that we haven't been doing more of her films. She's fantastic here as the baddie, which was cool, but the better movie for me would've been if she and Tweed were teaming up as bounty hunters taking out a bunch of outlaws, so I wouldn't have had to root for one over the other. As far as getting more Strain up, in our quest to get all of Sidaris's LETHAL Ladies films on the site, we still have three more of those that she's done. From there it'll be a matter of finding films of hers on places like Tubi, but making sure they aren't the edited version. One example is Battle Queen 2020, which is on Tubi, and also has Jeff Wincott in it. The Tubi version cuts 16 minutes off the original. I guess I could review it based off of that one, but I'd rather see a clean, uncut version. That's one thing that's good about Rowdy Girls, as far as I can tell, it's totally unedited. 

While Troma isn't in the Hall of Fame, it's definitely a potential future Hall of Famer. I think the case can be made if The Asylum is in, Troma definitely should be in, which I agree with, the only thing is The Asylum made it in automatically by getting into the 30 Club, and in the process creating the rule for which it's named that Danny Trejo and Scott Adkins also almost got into the Hall of Fame on. The other thing is Troma has more horror, and we don't do as much horror, and they often don't have the names in them that Asylum films do, so we're more likely to cover an Asylum film, which isn't necessarily a good thing, it's more like it's something that's happened without me realizing it, and now we have 34 Asylum films on the site and this is only our 11th Troma flick. If Tubi is going to have more Troma like this though, I have no excuse to do more--plus I could just fork over the $5 a month to get Troma Now and get all the films if they have them on there. One thing I also noticed when I went on their site: it looks like they've moved away from the Hell's Kitchen location, which is sad. If you look at Hell's Kitchen on Google Maps, you'll see how expensive it would be to stay there, so that makes sense. They're currently located in Long Island City in Queens, which is still possible for me to get to from here in Philly, so maybe I'll make the trip up sometime.

Finally, I want to go back to the fact that Kevin Eastman, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, did stunt buttcheek work in this. By 2000 I was not only long done playing with Ninja Turtles, but my dad had thrown all my old figures out--along with my He-Man figures, Star Wars figures, GI Joe figures, etc.--but what I discovered in looking it up on Wikipedia, is Eastman was also done with Ninja Turtles at this time, having sold his share of the franchise to co-creator Peter Laird--who then sold it to Viacom nine years later. For me as a kid in the late 80s, the Ninja Turtles came along at a perfect time, because He-Man had run itself down, and I needed something new to collect. What I didn't realize until I thought about it now for this paragraph, was how this also got me into comic books, because I got the Ninja Turtle comics as well, and saw all the cool Marvel and DC comics next to them on the shelves, which then led to comic books being the next thing I got into collecting when I aged out of the Ninja Turtles; also, I think seeing Elias Coteas in the first Ninja Turtle movie made me a fan of him, which I still am--his part in the Sopranos intervention episode was fantastic, and that's one of my all-time favorite television moments. It's cool how watching some of these movies can bring back nostalgia like that, even if it's in the form of a major media franchise's co-creator acting as a stunt buttocks in a Troma Western starring Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As of my writing, you can get this in the States on Tubi and Plex, plus it might also be on Troma Now if you're subscribed. I had a lot of fun with this, it's exactly what you want from a Troma Western with Shannon Tweed and Julie Strain in it. And here's to Shannon Tweed, of the greats, it's good to finally get her in the Hall of Fame as well.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177185

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My Dinner with Andre (1981)

In the past I used to celebrate my birthday, April Fools' Day, with a post on the site. From 2009 through 2011 I posted movies called "April Fools' Day," and then I guess when I ran out, I stopped worrying about it. But with me posting every Saturday, and with April Fools' falling on a Saturday this year, I thought I'd do something fun to celebrate again. Having exhausted films about April Fools' Day, I decided to post something as a joke, and after this film came up during a recent podcast recording with the guys from Comeuppance, I thought this would be a perfect one to review.

My Dinner with Andre has Wallace Shawn as Wallace, a struggling playwright who goes to a French restaurant after an old friend in the theater world, Andre--played by Andre Gregory--invites him to dinner. Andre has dropped off the radar for a bit, and now he's telling Wallace about all of his experiences. As Wallace listens, he tries to take in everything Andre's telling him, but also respond to some of his revelations with his own weltanschauung. Is an electric blanket a comfort, or an indulgence that prevents one from experiencing life?

I don't really know the answer, but I really enjoyed this. For someone who complains about films not having enough action, or for being over 90 minutes, you wouldn't think I'd enjoy a film like this, but it all really worked for me. I loved Andre's anecdotes. I loved Wallace's responses. I loved the waiter looking askance at them and just wanting to serve them their food, or the rest of the staff closing down the restaurant in the background. I loved the shots of Andre talking and listening to Wallace while his reflection appears in the mirror behind them. The thing is, when I complain about a film having more talking and less action, or being over 90 minutes long, I'm complaining because the talking isn't interesting, or the film has no reason to be longer than 90 minutes. When it's filled with something that interests me, the talking can go on as long as it's sustainable. Roger Ebert in his review made a great point: "In another sense, they are simply carriers for a thrilling drama--a film with more action than 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' What 'My Dinner With Andre' exploits is the well-known ability of the mind to picture a story as it is being told. Both Shawn and Gregory are born storytellers, and as they talk we see their faces, but we picture much more..." And I think that's the ultimate success of My Dinner with Andre, that a film with no action can have so much action.

From an April Fools' perspective, it is fun to throw in a My Dinner with Andre in among Andy Sidaris films, PM actioners, and schlock horror with Julie Strain and Brinke Stevens. The thing is though, from a DTV perspective, My Dinner with Andre only has $5,073 listed on IMDb as the box office gross, which, accurate or not, puts it well under my limit for what I consider DTV enough for the site. Granted, it probably has pulled in more money than that, but the independent spirit is still there. What's fascinating is the different ways the craft of film making is undertaken to give us such extremely different results through the same medium. Here we have Louis Malle meticulously crafting scenes so in the mirrors it looks like we're seeing a busy restaurant in the background. Compare that to Spiro Razatos in a 90s PM flick putting together some of the best action scenes, leading to him being one of the best in the business currently. Film can be so many things, and so while this is an April Fools' post because My Dinner with Andre is so different from the kinds of films we post here, in the end it's all still film and there to be enjoyed.

Recently I had a chance to go to a French restaurant when the president of our product at work took us out to one. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in one, but the idea of it, escargot, red wine, a dish like coq au vin, now combined with the idea in this film of sitting there in a large cardigan sweater talking about whatever, just seems so fantastic. I don't know if this movie would have been as endearing to me if I hadn't been to a French restaurant as recently. Like Wallace Shawn though, I don't have a lot of money, so it would be me taking the subway here in Philly--which isn't as bad as what we see in New York in the early 80s, but it's not fantastic either--and probably hoping someone like Andre Gregory or the president of my product would be treating me. Even going alone, sitting at a table, drinking my wine and eating my way through the courses, sounds nice enough. It's another great piece of why this works, the setting of the French restaurant stands out as an oasis amidst the harshness of New York at that time. To complete the picture we have the waiter, Jean Lenauer, who in his expressions and mannerisms, shows us that as much as this is an oasis for the patrons, it never fully is for him, yet he still takes pride in keeping up the appearance of the oasis for everyone else.

With such a prodigious acting career, I was curious if at any point Wallace Shawn had had a film here on the site, but it doesn't look like it. Same with Andre Gregory, but he was closer, having appeared in the Sly Stallone/Wesley Snipes action classic Demolition Man. Louis Malle was someone I was introduced to in high school, when we watched Au Revoir Les Enfants in French class. Later, when I had my Matt, Movie Guy Tumblr, I did a blurb on Elevator to the Gallows, which I watched one Saturday with Mon Oncle and Jules and Jim when I was snowed in. It's a funny thing, Tumblr, I go back to it from time to time, but it's like an old abandoned restaurant or something, posts strewn around like old furniture and cooking equipment, collecting dust, capsules of time. It's not like MySpace though, which no longer exists like it did, Tumblr is there for you to visit, some kind of former digital boom town whose population has shrunk exponentially, but everything remained intact for the rest of the world to experience.

Finally, seeing the Lloyd Kaufman and Troma tags is probably setting off your April Fools' radar, but those are actually legit tags. Louis Malle actually used Lloyd Kaufman and his fledgling Troma production studios to help him with the New York production of the film. Wonders never cease, right? Just three short years later he'd be producing Toxic Avenger. One of the things I realized about the Lloyd Kaufman tag: I tagged him for his appearance in Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, but never went back and tagged the Troma films he was involved in. With that done, he now has 10 tags on the site, though the Troma film with the most views on the site, Buttcrack, is the only one we've covered that he wasn't credited on. So he was credited on My Dinner with Andre, but not Buttcrack. Again, wonders never cease.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get My Dinner with Andre on HBOMax, or you can buy the Criterion DVD. It's a unique film, one that I really enjoyed, but you may not, and that's okay too. Either way, happy April Fools' Day everyone!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082783

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Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's the Fantastic Four (2015)

I don't remember where I first found out about this, I think it was recommended on Amazon Prime, but I knew it was something I had to see.  Recently I had Mitch from The Video Vacuum on the podcast to discuss this film, in addition to the other DTV Marvel movies, and what the genre is like now with all the blockbusters.  You can check out that podcast on our Talk Shoe site, or by searching for us on iTunes.

Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's the Fantastic Four is a documentary that takes us behind the scenes of a movie that was finished, but never officially released, and now lives on in bootlegged versions.  It takes us back to a time when Marvel was hard-up for cash and sold the rights of their films to lesser entities like Cannon.  In this case, a producer had the rights to the Fantastic Four, and wanted to get it made quickly and on the cheap.  That's where Roger Corman came in, and the movie did get made; but before it could be released, it died on the vine, and before we knew it, FOX had the rights and the film was made on the big screen, and the rest was history.

I really enjoyed this.  I think as a comic book fan growing up in the 80s and 90s, this may have captured the feeling of that time better than any of the dramatic adaptations of any of the comics.  The interviews were compelling, the sense of expectation and what this movie could mean for everyone's careers, coupled with the misgivings they had around things like the budget and timeline they were working with, really took us behind the scenes in a way that, at least for me, put a lot of how all this works into a new perspective.  The idea that maybe this low-budget film was being used by Marvel to leverage FOX into a deal, or that perhaps the person who had the rights was using Corman to leverage Marvel to buy him off, and that ultimately it's the actors and crew--and to some extent us as fans--who suffer when the film is shelved and buried.  To my mind, we needed this movie and to hear what the people involved had to say, almost as much as the people involved needed to get their story out.

I have to confess, I haven't seen any of the bootlegged copies of the finished product that are floating around, but I would like to.  From what I've seen, I think it would be a great accompaniment to The Punisher, Captain America, and Nick Fury.  The fact that Marvel, under Disney, is trying to bury these DTV installments is a shame--and shortsighted.  While no one is clamoring for a special edition of the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot that barely covered its budget at the gate, a Shout Factory blu-ray with all the extras for the 1994 version would definitely be a hit--and would also gin up interest in a new incarnation if they ever wanted to try it on the big screen again.  The thing is, I don't know if the Fantastic Four is the kind of thing that can pull in $4 billion worldwide.  Maybe now that Disney has it (I think, right?), a Disney+ series with all the characters they have at their disposal would be way to go.

I don't know if I'd say Roger Corman's reputation takes a hit in this movie, but I don't know that he looks good either, and it was a bit of a disappointment to see that.  I'm going to get into Lloyd Kaufman's small part in this later, but it's almost like he predicted what was going to happen here.  At the very least, Corman lost control of this picture, and I think that's what happens when you take on someone else's property.  For us, the idea of The Fantastic Four being shot on the Carnosaur set is too amazing for words, but it sounds like when Stan Lee saw it, he crapped himself.  Anyway, the way the documentary paints it--or at least the impression I got--is that Corman was substantially compensated for the trouble he went to in producing this and subsequently allowing it to be buried, but he wasn't exactly forthright with the cast and crew about that.  If that's the case, I don't know if it takes some of the shine off Corman as a low-budget producer, but it does give us a more realistic understanding of the business he's in and the decisions he has to make.

One of the things Mitch and I discussed on the podcast was if there was a place for the DTV comic book movie in the modern blockbuster environment, and I think there is.  I don't know if the Fantastic Four is it, but I think with the way DTV and straight to streaming has become bigger and includes bigger names, there are a lot of Marvel and DC properties that would work in the modern DTV world.  Moon Knight is one I've brought up before, with Dolph Lundgren at the helm--though Scott Adkins would work too.  With all the DTV work Nicolas Cage has been doing, Ghost Rider seems to be another obvious one.  She-Hulk is one that hasn't been done yet, and while I wouldn't see a big screen market for her, a DTV film using a WWE star the way WWE has taken over DTV properties like The Marine sequels would work.  Winter Soldier is another that could be done well, especially in an Eastern European setting, where a lot of DTV films are shot.  Finally, what about some of the X products?  Maybe a Domino DTV flick that slots in between Deadpool sequels?  One thing that may hurt us with possible new DTV comic book flicks though is the success of The Joker.  A $55 million budget that was turned into over $1 billion worldwide at the gate might have studios thinking with the right story and talent, they don't need to spend $500 million and have to make $4 billion to be a success. 

Finally, I wanted to talk about Lloyd Kaufman's small part at the beginning of the film.  We find out that Kaufman and Troma were also approached for the Fantastic Four adaptation, and Kaufman turned it down.  His reasoning was, what's in it for us?  We have our own brand, and our own characters, I don't see the benefit in us trying to make a film for someone else with someone else's characters.  As I mentioned above, I wonder if he foresaw the trouble that Corman ended up having--at the very least, he knew he would be beholden to someone else creatively, and he didn't want that.  As much as Corman and the 1994 Fantastic Four that never happened get to the heart of what DTV films are all about, there are very few who embody the spirit more than Kaufman, and this appearance and his explanation on why he declined to work on this project really showed why he's so great.  Here's to you Mr. Kaufman, you're one of the good ones.

I can't recommend this enough.  If you have Prime, I would check it out, or even rent it if you need to, it's really worth it.  In terms of the podcast, that was also a great episode worth checking out.  Mitch and I did almost 2 hours on the subject of comic book movies, so if you're traveling for the holidays, load it up have it on in the background while you're on the road/in the air/ridin' that train, high on cocaine, etc.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3113456

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)

In the late 90s/early 2000s my buddy and I were on a Troma kick, and this one was swept into that net.  Not long after, in the early days of DVD, Troma's website had a massive sale, and I got this new for only $5.  Not to give this review away in the first paragraph, but as you can imagine it's a prodigious part of my collection.  Also, our friend Fred at Full Moon Reviews did this one too, so you can go there to check out what he thinks (and see my comment on the post where I lament how long it had been since I'd seen this movie!).

Class of Nuke 'Em High is a Troma joint about a high school that is very close to a poorly run nuclear power plant.  That leads to some very bad side effects, including the transformation of the honor society into a vicious drug dealing gang that's terrorizing the school.  When they sell a joint made with atomic weed to the friend of the school's most popular couple, Chrissy and Warren, and Chrissy and Warren are coerced by said friend into smoking it, all hell breaks loose.  Warren and Chrissy have sex, and she ends up giving birth to an atomic hell beast, at the same time more nuclear waste is infesting the school, and the principal expels the gang, who now want revenge.  All of these things are on a collision course to wackiness!



This is pretty fantastic.  I'd put it up there as far as Troma films go with The Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, and Surf Nazis Must Die.  It has the great humor, the great social commentary, and the great gore you want from Troma.  It also had fantastic music, including a performance by the Smithereens.  Now, 27 years later, it has the added bonus of the nostalgia factor, which wasn't really as much in play when we first saw it in the 90s.  What's funny though, is how much of it is still relevant today too.  The horrible tragedy in West, Texas is a deadly reminder of what big corporations dealing in hazardous material can do when worrying more about the bottom line than the people who live in the communities nearby.  It's as if in 27 years the problems of corporate greed and pollution have gotten worse, which means, beyond the fact that the state of modern horror is abysmal and we need Lloyd Kaufman now more than ever to save us there, we also need his brand of political commentary to keep fighting the good fight.

The thing we expect from Troma above everything else is over the top gore, and I think this delivers.  It's not quite Toxie, but it's not afraid to gross you out.  Then, when we get to the ridiculous ending with the nuclear hell beast, the film has build up such a large reservoir of fist pumps, that we'll accept anything at that point, and the hell beast feels like the film's logical conclusion.  It's perfect for a bad movie night selection, because it has no lulls, there's a constant source of stimulus, but then it delivers that fantastic ending that gets everyone to the credits happy and either glad they got together for bad movie night, or excited to take a quick break and see what the next film has in store.  This is where the I think a lot of modern horror movies miss the mark.  It's like they're pandering to the faux-horror aficionado who watches these films on his/her own and tries to wax intellectual about their minutiae, while forgetting about everyone else who loves this kind of thing too.  Kaufman and Troma make the movie we want, the big group picture that we can all have fun with, and it's refreshing to watch.



The Smithereens make an appearance in this movie, meaning this is the second film we've had here that's featured them, the other being the Albert Pyun film Dangerously Close.  Both films came out in 1986 too, which is interesting.  We think of progressive or alternative rock in the modern context as this thing that's always been there, especially post Seattle and the early 90s, and we think of it in that manifestation; but in 1986, 120 Minutes was still a fringe show, and bands like The Smithereens were moving the movement into something resembling the mainstream.  To some degree now, that late-80s era of progressive rock has been swallowed up by the later movements of the 90s, which is too bad, because The Smithereens remind us that there was a lot of good music in that pre-90s scene.

The late, great Pat Ryan plays the nuclear power plant manager, and he's as sleazy as ever.  What a great character actor he was, and it's a shame he only had 9 credits before he passed away at only 44 years old.  What's great about him in a film like this, is that he's a definite baddie, but he manages to play it both over the top and realistic at the same time.  Like, it's kind of absurd the way he talks about covering up waste spills, but you can also see as he does it how, say, a BP oil exec might do similar damage control after the massive Gulf Oil Spill.  He was perfect for Kaufman and Troma's brand of comedic social commentary.  Here's to you Pat Ryan, you were one of the great ones.



Finally, you might notice a container of Popeye's Chicken on the table that the girls are eating at.  You may also know from having rocked with the DTVC for some time that I am a Boston Red Sox fan, and as a Red Sox fan, Popeye's Chicken will always have a special place in our team's history.  There is a Popeye's Chicken right up the street from Fenway Park, you pass it on the way there from the Kenmore T-stop, and this Popeye's Chicken played a key role in what was the biggest tank job in the history of baseball.  The Red Sox were in first place by ten games on September 1 of 2011, and in that last month of the season they only won 7 games, and were caught by both the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays, missing the playoffs entirely by losing on the last game of the season.  In the aftermath, it came out that the starting pitchers were partaking in beer and fried chicken from, you guessed it, Popeye's, from which they became overweight and pitched poorly, contributing to the team's collapse.  I haven't been to the infamous Popeye's, but the word on the street is that former Sox pitcher Josh Beckett has his picture on the wall.

All right, enough baseball, let's wrap this up.  I have it on an old DVD, which is a great way to go.  You could also do used VHS if you were so inclined.  As of this posting though it's also on Watch Instantly, making that an easy choice.  A definite watch for Troma fans and anyone looking for a great bad movie night choice.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090849/

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)

We finish our look at the Toxic Avenger sequels, as forced by Netflix when I had to watch them all before they dumped them from Watch Instantly on the first of the year, with Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV. This is one I'm glad I fit in, because it looks like the Hulu one is the R rated version. I haven't watched that one, but I'm guessing it's the R rated one because it's 20 minutes shorter than the one Netflix had. Good thing I made the unrated one happen, because I can only imagine how neutered the R rated version would be.

Citizen Toxie: Toxic Avenger IV starts off with our hero Toxie and his trusted sidekick Lardass trying to save a classroom of developmentally delayed students from a gang of thugs wearing diapers. When the gang sets off a bomb, Lardass tries to eat it in order to save everyone, but he fails, and the explosion creates a dimensional rift, sending our hero to Amortville, a twisted alternate dimension version of Tromaville, and his counterpart from there, Noxie, into Tromaville. Can Toxie get back to our dimension before Noxie destroys Tromaville and Toxie's reputation with it?



This is the everything but the kitchen sink sequel you either really wanted or have no stomach for-- and then there's me, somewhere in the middle but leaning more towards the really wanted end of the spectrum. On the one hand, especially early on, they leaned on a lot of jokes about crap and people that are learning disabled, the kind of thing that's just really lazy more than anything, and that was a disappointment; but like all the others, once it hits its stride, we're treated to another great combination of social commentary, hilarious satire, and gross-out gore that's a staple of great Troma. Not to mention, this had some sweet celebrity cameos. I had a few qualms outside of the beginning, in particular they wasted Sgt. Kabukiman by having him be just a drunk, but otherwise, this was a fun and entertaining way to wrap up the series.

One thing that hit me as I was watching this was how many of the references were time specific, and what that will mean for people who watch this ten years from now that were born in the early 2000s. The school shootings, the man who was dragged behind a truck to his death in Texas-- even the Twin Towers, which were a huge symbol because this film was first screened in New York in November of 2001, and Lloyd Kaufman decided to keep the images of the WTC in the film, something that garnered a huge ovation from the crowd. It's going to be up to people our age to watch these movies with that generation and explain these things, but I think that will be part of the experience, to say where we were when 9/11 happened, or what the climate was like in this country in the late 90s when Columbine happened.



Where do I start with the celebrity cameos? I guess with Corey Feldman, who plays an ob-gyn, and is listed in the credits under the name "Kinky Finkelstein". Lemmy is also back with a small cameo. Ron Jeremy played the town mayor. Then we had Joe Fleishaker, who, instead of having a cameo in this one like he did the others, has a bigger part as both Lardass, and then as the physicist that gets Toxie home. Is it right that I consider Joe Fleishaker to be a celebrity? (Maybe not, considering I initially fell for the Michael Herz ruse and thought that's what his name was...) One celebrity that didn't make it in though: Hugh Hefner, whose Playboy Mansion was used for the Citizen Kane shots, and who himself had some scenes, but they were cut out after his lawyers sent Troma a ceases and desist letter.

As the title suggests, this movie pokes fun at a lot of classics, in particular what is often held up as the greatest of all time, Citizen Kane. If you're expecting me to go on a rant about how Citizen Kane is overrated, you won't get it, because I love it and believe it's deserving of its status; but I liked that Kaufman and co. had a lot of fun Troma-tizing it. If anyone is going to poke fun at Citizen Kane, it has to be Troma, and I liked that they did it as well as I hoped. (I can't mention some of the other classics they poked fun at, because it'll give away too much of the movie.)



Finally, I left a celebrity cameo out of my list above, because I wanted to save it for here. The Sklar Brothers play Tromaville news anchormen (they're credited as Foofy and Skippy Applebaum). They used to do a show on ESPN Classic called Cheap Seats, where they'd watch videos of old, off-beat sporting events that used to air on ESPN or ABC Wild World of Sports, like celebrity fishing tournaments hosted by Steve Garvey, or early 80s professional wrestling. They'd mock the events MST3K style, and mix in some sketches. Anyone who's been rockin' with us for a while knows I love sports, and their sense of humor was pretty close to mine, so it was a great match. It was really cool to see them in this, plus, they were pretty funny too.

I don't know what to do about recommending this, because it looks like the Hulu one is edited-- pretty heavily too if it's 20 minutes shorter. In that case, look for a DVD. The best way to describe this is that it's a real Troma movie for real Troma fans, so if Troma's more hit and miss for you, you may not want to bother; but if you're a huge Troma honk (then you've probably already seen this, but if not) I'd go out and make this happen, because this movie has your name written all over it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212879/

The Toxic Avenger III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)

Sometimes it's a dilemma to figure out how to attack these movies in order to write a proper review. What to focus on, what to leave out, what themes I want to draw from. Take this film and the one before it, Toxic Avenger II. Knowing that much of this film was taken from the four hours of film that was shot for part 2, the question was, do I do them both together? do I do them both in separate reviews on the same night? how much do I mention the fact that so much of part 2 was in part 3 in the part 2 review, which, ultimately kills the part 3 review? So I decided not to mention it at all in the part 2 post, which inevitably leads to the deluge of "hey, you know part 2 and 3 were shot at the same time" comments in my inbox that I see first thing in the morning when I'm cranky before I've had my coffee, so I fire off a cranky response about how "yes, I'm aware of that, I too read the imdb page for the movie, hence the link at the bottom of the post", but that gives the comments page an angry tenor, something I don't want, so I have to go through and delete things. It's all a pain in the ass, all because Lloyd Kaufman didn't know when to quit in part 2, and then tried to make lemonade out of some lemons for part 3. [End Rant.]

Toxic Avenger III picks up where part 2 left off. Again, Tromaville is basking in the warm glow of it's lack of crime, which is bad for Toxie because there isn't much else he can do for work other than fight crime. Depressed, feeling useless, and living off his blind wife's welfare checks, he then finds out an operation can cure her blindness, if he only had the money. Enter Apocalypse Inc., who offer Toxie a job in public relations for a salary that will cover said operation. Now, with the toughest crime fighter on their side, they force Tromaville to succumb to their evil ends, while Toxie is loving his life as a rich Yuppie. Only his wife can make him see the error of his ways. (No pun intended.)



For a potential lemonade out of lemons movie, this isn't bad. It's another step down from part two, but not as big a drop as the one from The Toxic Avenger down to part 2. And like part 2, once it starts going, it really hits its stride. I loved Toxie as a Yuppie, wearing his Izod/Lacoste polo, calling his wife "babe", penciling her in for brunch. The Faustian bargain with the Devil was great too, with Rick Collins turning in an excellent performance. And of course, there were some great kills and classic Kaufman commentary on big business and it's toxic control over our society. All in all a fun Troma flick.

I think what you have with both of these movies is a lot of people-- Lloyd Kaufman chief among them-- with a bunch of stuff they want to get off their chests, plus a lot of classic movies and modern movies they want to poke fun at, and they ended up with four hours of footage. From there it was probably just a matter of taking what they could after they'd made part 2, and keeping it as a head start/the bulk to part 3. This isn't like Kill Bill, which is essentially one movie broken into two because no movie audience would go see a nearly five-hour long film (though I did just that at a local indie theater that showed both Kill Bills together in one night), these are two separate movies with the second made up of a lot of unused footage from the one before it.



I gotta go back to the Toxie in the Izod (now Lacoste) polo. That 80s Wall Street Yuppie was such symbol in the 80s, and the disdain with which Kaufman and the other Troma folks felt for this symbol is just dripping off their satirization. There's also a clear message that these people do the work of the Devil. While Toxie works for Apocalypse Inc., he never physically attacks anyone, never gives any cops a double arm amputation, nothing violent like that; instead he revels in kicking old ladies out of their homes, and cherishes making money and being trendy above anything else. This focus on white collar nonviolent crime being the work of the Devil was a very astute choice on the part of Kaufman and everyone involved.

I really liked this matte painting here. With the advent of computers, the matte painting in films has gone nearly extinct, which I think is too bad, though I think a big part of that too is the fact that most films are shot on digital cameras nowadays, and I imagine a matte painting would look more obvious in digital than it would on film or video. The cost and time though are the bigger issues. Why pay an artist to create a huge landscape when a computer can do it in less time, for less money, and render it with more visible perspective.



Because I wasn't that old in 1988-89 (9-10), it's hard to go back and recall what the atmosphere was like in this country as Martin Scorsese was releasing The Last Temptation of Christ. I remember the outrage and the protests, but also that there was a fair amount of good buzz surrounding it too. It would be much later in life that I would buy the Criterion DVD of it used, and see that one: it was a very good movie; and two: there really shouldn't have been any fuss, that people were just being overly sensitive. While The Toxic Avenger III is more Faust in story than it is Last Temptation of Christ, the name is more indicative of the time it was released.

I think this movie's about as good as part 2: starts off slowly, eventually hits its stride, and has its moments. Neither are as good as part 1, so again, if you haven't seen part 1, see that first, and then see part 2 before part 3, because they do follow one another story-wise. You can either see it for free right now on Hulu, or pick it up off the Troma website.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098502/

The Toxic Avenger II (1989)

I've always had the long term goal of reviewing all of the Toxic Avenger flicks here at the DTVC, but when Netflix let me know they were dumping them all before the New Year, that long term goal became an immediate one. Turns out I didn't need to rush: all three of the sequels are on Hulu.

Toxic Avenger II takes place five years after The Toxic Avenger. Tromaville is now completely safe and free from crime, which upsets the evil Apocalypse Corporation, who wants to convert the town into a toxic waste dump. Problem is, they can't possibly fulfill their evil ends with Toxie in town. So they get him to go to Japan on a search for his father, and in his absence, they begin their evil take over. Will Toxie figure out their scheme in time to save Tromaville?



Unlike the first one, which was a true classic, this one started out slowly, and really doesn't find its stride until the action moves to Japan. It had more zany slapstick type stuff, with silly sound effects and Airplane!-eque sight gags, things that I don't exactly associate with Troma, but more with Troma imitators; but once we see Toxie interacting with the Japanese people, that kind of stuff works better and is more entertaining. I wouldn't put this as one of Troma's best, but it's still pretty sweet.

The other thing though is I think the film was more classic Troma when the scene shifted to Japan. It was like Troma invades Japan, Godzilla style (they even joke about that), and it had everything you could imagine in combining the two. You had people sliced up by sushi chefs, naked women, sumo wrestling, Kabuki dancers, and Toxie meeting up with some random dancers on the street dressed like Greasers. This is the part of the film where it makes its money.



One guy we know that's a money maker is DTVC favorite, Michael Jai White, who has a small role as one of Apocalypse's goons. This is actually his first credited role, though he's credited sans "Jai". One thing about his role in this one and part 3, is that he gets to flex both his comedy and his martial arts skills, which we don't see that often-- probably best seen in Black Dynamite. Even though it's only a small part, any Michael Jai White is good.

The Apocalypse Inc. chairman is played by Troma mainstay Rick Collins. In the (scant) trivia section of his imdb page, he's listed as being one of only two people that appeared in all four Toxic Avenger movies. I thought the other one was Mr. Joe Fleishaker, who has very small parts in 2 and 3, then a bigger part as Lardass in part 4, but apparently he wasn't in part 1. Now I'm stumped. Maybe the archive footage of Melvin counts?



Finally, what Toxic Avenger would be complete without some McDonald's sightings and commentary. Not only did we see more vintage Quarter Pounder Styrofoam containers, but there was also a shot of a Tokyo McDonald's. Then there was the name of Toxie's dad: Big Mac. I think in this one there was a much more concerted effort to depict McDonald's as a major corporate entity that is ultimately a toxic influence on our society. As a big McDonald's guy, I'm probably a prime example of why they're right.

You can either check this out on Hulu, or scoop it at the Troma website if you want to add it to your collection. No matter what, if you haven't seen the first one yet, do that first, then take this one in. Like most sequels, it's a step down from the original, but still good enough.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098503/

Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

I had been meaning to watch this movie for a long time. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, and a huge Troma fan, so this seemed like a perfect pairing. I remember seeing trailers for it on other Troma flicks I watched, with Motorhead's "Sacrifice" playing in the background, and thinking it looked pretty sweet, but for some reason or another I just never got around to it. Now Netflix, as they often do, are putting my feet to the fire and dumping this one from Watch Instantly, so I made it happen before they did.

Tromeo and Juliet is a brutal-punk Troma take on the Bard's classic tale of love found and love lost under tragic circumstances. In this one, our hero, Tromeo, is the son of Monty Que, who was at one time in a partnership with the depraved Cappy Capulet, the two making high quality porno flicks. But Cappy betrayed Monty, and the two families have been feuding ever since. Now Cappy, who abuses his daughter Juliet and expects her to marry a billionaire meat packing company owner, is not too stoked to discover that she's in love with our hero. As things come to a head between the two families, can their love survive?



This, maybe more than any Troma film I've seen, pushes that envelope into bad taste as often as possible. At no point do they let you off easy. It's as if Lloyd Kaufman has a bone to pick with, maybe not Shakespeare, but this idea that some forms of art and culture are placed above others, so from his standpoint he wants to say "I'll show you what low-quality entertainment is!" I think, because it's Lloyd Kaufman and it's Troma, it works, but I'm not so sure anyone else could pull this off, and I wouldn't want to see them try. And it's not just the blood and guts factor, there are jokes about priest molestation and parental abuse that will probably test your sensibilities more than seeing someone's fingers chopped off of eye gouged out. This isn't simply a Shakespeare/Troma mash-up, this is Lloyd Kaufman sinking his teeth into Shakespeare, biting off a chunk, and spitting it out. And I dug it.

This is, as far as I can remember, the second Romeo and Juliet based movie we've seen here, the other being Ring of Fire with Don "The Dragon" Wilson, which, as you may remember, wasn't as good as this. I love seeing Shakespeare adapted in modern art, especially in something like Tromeo and Juliet that really plays with the elements, twisting this or that, while keeping this or that intact. Do I put this up there with Ran or Throne of Blood as far as Shakespeare adaptations go? Personally yes, though obviously on an objective level it's hard to put Lloyd Kaufman and Kurosawa in the same sentence with a straight face.



Right away, when you think music in Tromeo and Juliet, you think Lemmy (who was also the film's narrator) and Motorhead with "Sacrifice", which was pretty awesome. But this soundtrack also features songs by Sublime, Supernova, and my personal favorite, The Wesley Willis Fiasco. My buddy's sister saw Wesley Willis at our local small club, The Elvis Room, which was open in the 90s. She said he ordered a pizza from Dominoes while he played. Unfortunately, Willis is no longer with us, so here's to you Wesley Willis, rock over London, rock on Chicago, Pontiac, we are building excitement.

I don't know why, but people in animal suits are hilarious to me. In the famous masquerade ball scene, Tromeo went dressed like a cow, and had a dance with Juliet. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. If I ever date a girl that has a fetish for people in these suits, it could be a problem, especially the head portion. It's that blank stare with a goofy grin I think that gets me the most. About six or seven years ago the AHL all-star game was in Portland, ME, so my buddies and I went, and as you can imagine, that was mascot city, every team was represented. Anyway, this one T-Bone for the San Antonio team had an angry look on its face, and when my buddy was going up the stairs past him, he pantomimed like he was kicking my buddy in the ass, which was even funnier with the angry look on his face. Thinking about it now as I write it I'm laughing.



Finally, to kill the silliness a bit, I figured I'd go all cultural anthropologist on you, because this movie deals with incest taboos, specifically brother-sister relations. Other than the Hawaiian royal family, there has never been a culture in human history that didn't have an incest taboo forbidding brothers and sisters from hooking up. You'd think that was a biological imperative-- we erroneously think all incest taboos have a biological imperative behind them-- but that's not the case. If it had a biological basis, long lost siblings would still have the same aversion to one-another that ones that grew up together did-- and adopted siblings that grew up together wouldn't still have that aversion. It's a familiarity thing, and Shakespeare understood our attraction to the unfamiliar and demonstrated it to us perfectly in Romeo and Juliet; whereas Kaufman didn't quite get it-- he still has the basic erroneous idea of what incest taboos are based on biology--, but I liked that he included the incest taboo as another way that children of the 90s were finding to rebel, making fun of our attempts to find more and more forms of taboo.

By the time most of you read this review, this movie will no longer be available on Watch Instantly, so you'll have to track it down on DVD, which isn't that hard. Also, you can get it on Blu-Ray, though I have no idea what the Blu-Ray entails. Either way, this is worth checking out, it's a gory, gross, over-the-top good time. Shakespeare would've been proud-- or maybe not.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114733/

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

I don't remember when I first saw The Toxic Avenger. I couldn't have been that old though, late middle school maybe. This is one I've been meaning to do for sometime, and I considered doing it as a milestone post, but figured why wait, we got it now, let's fire it up and make it happen.

The Toxic Avenger takes place in Tromaville, NJ, a New York suburb that has the distinction of being the toxic waste capital of the world. It's there that our hero Melvin works at the Tromaville gym, and after a practical joke gone bad, he finds himself diving head first into a drum of toxic waste. He's then transformed into a hideous monster with superhuman strength and an ability to sense when evil is being done. Unfortunately for the town's mayor, the idea of a monster cleaning up the town's crime problem is a problem for him, because he's Tromaville's most prolific criminal. Can our hero prevail when even the national guard has been called in to stop him?



You don't need me to tell you how great this is. As a send up of the action and superhero genres it's excellent, plus you have all the gore you expect and want from Troma. I loved the love story between Toxie and the blind girl, especially when she's remodeling his toxic waste dump shack. The brutality is so over the top that I couldn't help but laugh at that too, like the Clockwork Orange homage when a thug beats an old lady with her cane while humming "Singin' in the Rain"; or the twelve-year-old kid that's run over by some kids playing a game where objects are worth points, a la Death Race. This is a true classic, and has only gotten better over time.

I wish I had seen this right before I watched Sgt. Kabukiman with Lloyd Kaufman's commentary, because it would've given me a better perspective on what Kaufman was going for with Kabukiman versus what other people involved with that project wanted him to do. When Toxie takes out baddies, he's pretty brutal, and they come up with all kinds of creative ways to off people. It's a little different from The Exterminator though, because this brutality is meant to be funny-- or funnier. When I see things in Sgt. Kabukiman like the hooker and pimp turned into bloody sushi, in the context of The Toxic Avenger, it's a much milder version of a guy getting his hands stuffed in a deep fryer or having his eyes poked out. There's something about the way Troma does this kind of thing that works though.



Long time readers and action fans will recognize this fellow right here dressed like an extra from the Frank Gorshin episode of Star Trek. That's right, it's Patrick Kilpatrick. He's only in this one scene as part of a trio of men robbing a taco restaurant. This is his first listed role on imdb, so it's great that we get to see where it all started from for him. The film's other highly recognizable face is that of late character actor Pat Ryan. He plays the evil mayor. It's too bad he passed away in 1991, because he had so many sleazebag roles in low-budget films left in him.

One scene I got a kick out of was when the poor man's Corey Feldman they had as one of the workout thugs put a garter snake in an aerobics instructor's shirt. Growing up in Maine, the garter snake was a regular part of the summer, and we used to catch them and act like the snake wranglers we saw on TV. I remember one of our cats brought one in the house, and before I had a chance to stop it, the thing had coiled itself inside the electric baseboard heater. It was a baby one, but still, it was a pain to get it out. It was only later in life that I learned that not all people grew up with these snake experiences, and most find the idea of any snakes, even garter snakes, to be abhorrent. I still hate spiders though, so I guess I'm not a total dude.



Finally, anyone who's been rockin' with us for sometime would know about my love of McDonald's, so it should come as no surprised that I'd be stoked to see what looks like a Quarter Pounder with Cheese vintage Styrofoam container. I think the Styrofoam container had another ten years in it for McDonald's before they went the cardboard route, which is too bad. Remember the bright blue one for the Fillet-o-Fish? It was like a greenish-blue. What was the McD.L.T? A white one, right? Remember the McD.L.T.? "Hot on the hot side, cold on the cold side."

Okay, enough reminiscing about McDonald's-- especially since I don't get any ad revenue from them. This movie is currently on Watch Instantly here in the States, and while that's a great way to check it out, you should eventually consider purchasing the director's cut, because it's in widescreen and has all kinds of goodies. This is one of those ones that's well deserving of its classic status.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090190/

Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1990)

We've hit another milestone here at the DTVC, 750 posts, and in honor of that, I saved one of my all time favorites to review, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. I actually saw this one later on in my B-movie watching career, finding it with a buddy at our local video store in 2000. Not only did we quickly attach two VCRs together to make ourselves a copy because we enjoyed it so much, a couple years later when I bought a DVD player after graduating from college, I went to the Troma website and picked this up as one of the first DVDs in my new collection. A true classic, and thoroughly worthy of a milestone like this.

Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. follows police detective Harry Griswold, who is sent to investigate the grisly murder of a family, including the wife who was thrown out of a building. In her hands were tickets to a local Kabuki show, so he attends. As luck would have it, the place is attacked by machine gun toting thugs, Griswold tries to fight back, and in the scuffle finds himself on top of one of the actors, an old Japanese man who kisses him before he dies. That's when strange things start happening to him. The old man's granddaughter informs him that he's been imbued with the superhero spirit of the Kabuki warrior, and he uses that power to clean up the city. The only problem is the evil businessman who perpetrated the initial attack is still out there, and he and Griswold are on a collision course to wackiness.



This is Troma at it's best. It pushes the envelope in all the right ways, is funny, gory, and a lot of fun. It's really the Lloyd Kaufman take on the action hero film and the detective Noir, and it's everything you'd want and expect for that. When I first saw this, I was still pretty new to Troma, so for me it was just this 90-minute awesomefest where I felt like Mr. Kaufman, Michael Herz, and the whole Troma team had invaded my brain and made the exact movie I wanted to see. Even better, on the DVD you get Lloyd Kaufman's commentary, which just adds another level as he tells all kinds of stories about what went on as they were filming. This is a classic, pure and simple.

Part of the reason why I didn't start including Troma films until recently is that I felt they weren't exactly DTV. They have more of an independent movie spirit, and this one is a great example of that. Kaufman said they screened this at Cannes 5 years in a row or something, and they tried like troopers to get it a wide theatrical distribution here in the States, but it never came off. I guess, though, in that vein, it truly is a DTV flick, because it tried to get a theatrical release, but ultimately had to settle for the US video market. Either way, this movie, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., because of the special place it has in my heart, wasn't going to be reviewed any earlier than 750 anyway-- it needed to be saved for this milestone post.



One of the things we learn in the commentary is how the film's Japanese backers-- which included Namco, makers of my favorite video game ever, Galaga-- thought Troma were making a family friendly superhero movie that could be turned into cartoons and a bigger consumer franchise. Even Rick Giansi, who played Sgt. Kabukiman, told Kaufman about how kids would come to the shoots and get all excited when they saw him in costume. As we know, Lloyd had other ideas, and this wasn't exactly the next Batman. I loved though how they made fun of classic superhero conventions, like those in Batman, and Superman too with Kabukiman and Lotus flying over the city. For me this movie is almost perfect, so I'm glad they didn't try to make the next Batman-- though I'd love to have bought into a whole Kabukiman franchise.

Another hallmark of Troma films is the social critique they insert into the movies, and this wasn't short on that either. Especially big in 1990 was the "Buy American" fear mongering that went around based on the perceived Japanese business takeover of the American market. For Kabukiman, it's all about merging the two lifestyles, not picking one over the other, which was a very different tune to the one that politicians were singing, in particular in New York, where Rockefeller Center had been recently bought by Japanese businessmen. Kaufman and co. were also quick to make sure they made fun of both cultures equally, which I liked. Then there was the case of the Central Park jogger, a woman who was brutally raped and beaten almost to the point of death, which Kaufman draws on when Griswold's partner is brutally attacked on a run in the park, and when Kabukiman kicks their asses, the thugs are seen as the victims. These are often subtle additions, but they make the Troma film that much more than just an out and out schlockfest.



Susan Byun is the only person in this as far as I can tell that we've seen anywhere else before. She was in the Gary Daniels film Deadly Target. I don't know what happened to her, because other than a few more DTV roles and some small parts in TV shows, she didn't do much else, and hasn't done anything since 1998. She's pretty enough, and is a solid actress, so maybe she just got sick of it. Maybe there weren't enough well-rounded roles for Asian women out there either. In Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. she plays the granddaughter/trainer/love interest, and does all really well, especially when she has to do it in that Troma tongue-in-cheek style. She also looks really hot in her skimpy black dresses. Ladies, one of the fastest ways to a man's heart is the skimpy black dress, and it works no matter what your figure. It's like the socialism of outfits.

One of the scenes that floored me when I first saw it was when Griswold thinks he's transforming into Kabukiman, but instead turns into a party clown. The whole thing is ridiculous, down to him escaping on a kid's bike that gets run over by a truck and converted into a unicycle. He's breathing fire, pulling lengths of knotted hankies out of his sleeves, firing glitter at the baddies, and then the whole thing ends with one car flipping over and exploding, and another crashing into a dry cleaning business. One of my mine and my buddy's favorite lines comes in the aftermath, when the cops swoop in, thinking Griswold as the clown perpetrated the crimes. He tells them who he his, and one of the cops says "holy shit it is Griswold!" There's nothing like a good clown scene that works, followed by a cop using profanity in a moment of shock.



Despite how perfect this movie has always been to me, one scene that always stood out like a sore thumb was this one here, where Kabukiman kills a prostitute and her pimp by cutting them into a roll of sushi. I don't know, it just seemed a little macabre compared to the rest of the tone of the film. As it turned out, I wasn't the only one who thought so. In the commentary Lloyd Kaufman said that Rick Giansi was also against it, saying it betrayed the kind of character they were going for with Kabukiman, but Kaufman kept it for the dark humor aspect of it-- which I get and do love actually--, only to find in screenings that that scene didn't play well. The one he cut as a favor to Giansi instead of this was one where Kabukiman turned a rope into a snake and had it go up some bad guy's butt to kill him. I'm laughing even as I type that, so it's too bad that didn't make it in.

But everything else that did make it in makes this plenty worth it. I went to the Troma website to check this out, and it looks like they're selling the same DVD I bought over ten years ago, which is great (as of this posting it's out of stock, but I can't imagine that will be the case forever). The other thing about that DVD is it's region free, so everyone everywhere can see it. I suggest you do, because this is a totally fun time. I posted about twenty additional screen shots on the image page, plus I embedded the music video of the Sgt. Kabukiman theme song from YouTube. All worth checking out too.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117609/

Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

I know what you're thinking: "Poirier, you're like 725 posts and over four years into this blog, and this is your first Troma flick? What's wrong with you?" Honestly, I don't know. I wanted to wait on them initially, because most of them I see more as independent films than DTV-- Surf Nazis Must Die for instance screened at Cannes. Then you may remember in 2010 the readers voted to do Hong Kong films instead of Troma for a multi-week feature I did. After that I went on hiatus, and when I came back, I wanted to concentrate on some of the great bad action of the 80s and 90s, just to get my passion back for the blog. Now it's September 2011, and I think it's time to break the seal and start hitting some of these bad boys which were so influential to me growing up, and made me love low-budget cinema; and I can't think of a better place to start than Surf Nazis Must Die.

Surf Nazis Must Die takes place in an LA ravaged by an enormous earthquake. In the aftermath, gangs have taken over the beaches, and one gang in particular, the Surf Nazis, are extremely vicious and equally ambitious. As they assert their brutal hold over the shore, they kill a man named Leroy, and his mother living in a nursing home is pissed. It proves to be a fatal error on their part.



I loved this one. For sheer gore fans, this probably won't cut it-- think of it as the anti Hobo with a Shotgun-- but it works as an exploitation flick, and the gore will get there, you just need to wait until the end. I like that, that they don't spend all their nickels at once, but they also don't bore you as they're readying us to spend them. Great sets, great costumes, great music, cool characters, sinister villains, and some really exceptional surfing scenes. For any new directors looking to do a modern take on exploitation, look no further than right here.

One interesting plot device that I liked here was that we saw much more of the villains-- the Surf Nazis-- than we did of the heroine, Mrs. Washington. It made for an interesting dynamic, because we certainly weren't rooting for the Surf Nazis, but the beats in the film kind of played out where we were seeing scenes and character development with the baddies that we'd be expecting the heroine to go through. Especially the end scene, where Mrs. Washington is chasing Adolf and his girl, it's like the roles are reversed.



As I mentioned above, the surfing scenes in this are great. We find out in one of the featurettes that they were shot by a professional surfing cinematographer, and they were done in Hawai'i instead of California, where the rest of the film was shot. That too added a different element, made it more like exploitation films from the past, where a gang rode motorcycles or surfed or did some other kind of marginal sport, and parts of the film would be dedicated just to them plying their craft.

Speaking of the Troma DVD, it has all kinds of great stuff, from deleted scenes, to interviews with director and producer. For a movie like this, the story about the process is always almost as fun as the movie itself. I got the DVD on sale from Troma's website in 2000 for like $5, and looking at their website, that's still the DVD they offer, only now it's $6. Not a bad deal.



Do you recognize the handsome devil on the right? It's DTVC favorite Ted Prior! He has no real speaking line, doesn't run around without his shirt and shoes killing people, and definitely no scalping. It was just a cool novelty, he played a member of one of the rival gangs, the Designer Wave, and in fact, I didn't notice him until I saw his name in the credits. See kids, it pays to stay for the credits.

As I mentioned above, the DVD from the Troma website for $6 pre-shipping is the way to go. Don't download it to iTunes, don't stream it on Hulu, don't let your VHS nostalgia get the best of you. The DVD has all the extras, it's the director's cut, why mess around?

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094077/