It’s Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Heck yeah, this is looooong overdue. I think the best thing I need to do to start things off here is to admit something. I don’t really have a great deal of history with Troma. I like Lloyd Kaufman. I like what he does to inspire new filmmakers. I like the general absurdity with the Troma films, particularly the ones that they create and make in-house. Sure, I’ve seen a handful of them. Of course, I’ve seen The Toxic Avenger. I grew up with Mother’s Day. Troma’s War? Yeah, I’ve seen it. But I had a little more experience seeing movies distributed by Troma as opposed to the movies they made themselves.

That said, Lloyd Kaufman’s personality is so larger than life that it feels like I’ve seen more from him than I have. So, this month, I wanna fix that. Let’s take a look at some of Troma’s catalog. I think I picked four pretty popular films from Kaufman specifically. We kick things off with his 1996 Shakespeare parody, Tromeo and Juliet.

The original script for Tromeo and Juliet goes back to as early as 1992. That original script was a pet project of Kaufman and a couple other staff writers at Troma, Andy Deemer and Phil Rivo. That original version was written with Shakespearean verse. It also supposedly had the Toxic Avenger as one of the members of the cast. While I don’t want to say this wouldn’t have worked because Kaufman is very good at putting insane ideas on film, that script was overwhelmingly disliked, particularly by Kaufman’s business partner, Michael Herz.

Kaufman pulled back on wanting to do this project. A few years later, Kaufman tried again, but, this time, he decided to give a young screenwriter a job to take a crack at it. That young writer was James Gunn. It’s kind of amazing how quick Gunn rose up the ranks of writers. We’ll talk in just a moment about how he reworked this script into something much closer to what is seen here, but understand that Gunn went from getting hired by Troma to do a rewrite on their oddball Shakesperean movie to, a few years later, making his own superhero movie, a movie I deeply love, The Specials, to doing studio films like Scooby-Doo, the Zack Synder Dawn of the Dead remake, and Slither, all the way into making one of THE most important films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Guardians of the Galaxy, to now being the head honcho of the entire DC Studios venture and about to release Superman.

Gunn has a real knack for characters. Say what you will about the often comedic slant of his films but he works with characters in a way that makes them incredibly relatable. Maybe they react like we would as the audience. Maybe they have a set of morals or ethics that we like to think we have. Maybe they remind you of a guy. Maybe you just want to hang out with them. Whatever the case, Gunn knows how to tie an audience to the characters he’s creating.

In 1995, Gunn was green and kind of an edgy boy. If you were a teenager or an adult in the 90s, you were too. We all were. And, sigh, yes, he was “exposed” in some old tweets to have said some edgy stuff into the 2010s too, but he’s done a ton of growing up since both times. But his edginess was in full force for Tromeo and Juliet. His first crack at the script was to completely re-write that 1992 script. He made Tromeo a crack dealer and Juliet a stripper. It had all sorts of black comedy in it. Another revision followed shortly, this time with Kaufman to help out. They cut down the Shakespearean verse and added more comedy to get it to be juuuust right. That summer, it went into production as one of Troma’s most expensive at a mind-shattering $350,000 budget.

Uh… mind-shattering for Troma.

Now, you might be wondering, like I did, if there was some sort of reason for 1996 to be such a popular year to make Romeo and Juliet adaptations. I mean not only do we have Kaufman and Gunn’s extremely ambitious version, but we also have the version from Baz Luhrmann starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. Now, Kaufman’s Tromeo and Juliet actually premiered at Cannes months before Luhrmann’s extremely 90s Romeo + Juliet saw release, but then Kaufman’s didn’t get wide release until about six months after Luhrmann’s. Whatever the timeline, the mid-90s were a cultural point of convergence for Billy Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy.

Real quick, I did want to mention a few members of the cast before we dove in. As Juliet, we have Jane Jensen. If you’re as big a comic book fan as I am, you might recognize her without realizing it. Jensen wasn’t just an actress here and there. She is also a musician and has provided music for this movie as well as other Troma films and for Slither no less. She went to college in Chicago where she was a dorm neighbor to master comic book artist Alex Ross. She even posed as a photographic model for Ross who often used friends to get poses and likenesses for the various comic heroes he painted. Two other recognizable names in the cast are 90s scream queens Tiffany Shepis and Debbie Rochon in bit parts. Both Gunn brothers, James and Sean, appear in the movie. There’s a character named London Arbuckle, who not only has my surname but also is based on the Count Paris character in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

But maybe the most recognizable name in all the cast is the guy listed as The Narrator. If you’re a hard-rockin’ music fan, then you’d definitely recognize the name of rock god Lemmy Kilmister, best known as Lemmy. Lemmy was born in 1945 in Stoke-on-Trent, which, interestingly, is also where Robbie Williams is from as well as Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash was raised. There are several other musicians from the area as well as there being a pretty deep music scene. But anyway, Lemmy is probably best known for being the bassist, vocalist, and co-songwriter of Motörhead.

Aaaand Troma does not disappoint us with the first shot of their William Shakespeare adaptation…

Attached to that hanging squirrel is the note that reads “Monty Q Sucks.” We then get right into introducing everyone thanks to Lemmy standing in Times Square. He tells us that our tale is set in Manhattan. There is the House of Que (the Montagues – get it, MONTY Q?) and the House of Capulet. The head man in the Hosue of Que is, well… He’s a black man who appears to be quite comfy sitting on the floor hugging his old style film camera and balling his eyes out. The Capulets are upper class. One of Juliet’s cousins has a staff that has Hitler’s head on it.

Lemmy bemoans the violence between the Ques and the Capulets. One of the Capulets ripped the ears off one of the Ques, then punched THROUGH his fucking face to pull his brain out. Sammy Capulet, played by Sean Gunn, is kooky and likes just firing machine guns everywhere. One guy throws a girl and shoots her in her box. Anyway, Juliet is basically kept locked away in her bedroom while Tromeo has to live in a crappy-ass apartment.

Act I picks up at a club where Sammy and Georgie Capulet are partying. She gets pissed that Sammy knocked out who she says is the “best fuck” in the club. He says he’s got some meth in his underwear they can go to the men’s room and snort it. He also makes a pass on Georgie, his sister. He figures with all the depraved shit in the world, if they only throw in a little incest, they could rule a world that is completely debased. Georgie is also insane. She keeps punching Sammy in the gut whenever she gets a little too worked up. She especially gets violent whenever the Ques are mentioned. In fact, both of them get really violent whenever they think about the Ques.

Speaking of the Ques, we move to a tattoo and piercing parlor where we meet the fresh-faced Tromeo and his best friend Murray. Tromeo works there with his cousin Benny. Murray, like Sammy and Georgie on the other side, says he still gets a boner whenever he tussles with the Capulets. I recommend he see someone about that because that’s probably pretty unhealthy (mentally or physically), but he also gives us a little insight into Tromeo’s personality kink. He falls hard for girls. He has a current girlfriend right now that Murray thinks has him pretty whipped. On top of that, he expects Tromeo to find a new girl in a week or so that will have him even more deeply pussy-whipped.

Murray and Benny go to the same club as Sammy and Georgie. Of course, Sammy and Murray are excited to fuck each other up. Their fight starts in one portion of the club. Then it moves to another part. And then another part. They even bust into the business office where a guy tells his girlfriend that his manager will show up in five minutes but he’ll “only need two to get off” with her.

Again… I think people probably need to either cut back on violent porn or see a doctor for some of their issues.

In the office, Murray demands Sammy apologize for giving him the finger. Sammy retorts that he didn’t give him the finger because he still has all his fingers. Murray rectifies that by using the office’s paper cutter to cut two of his fingers off.

Meanwhile… Tromeo’s current girlfriend is Rosie. He expected to hang out with Rosie instead of going to the club. When he calls Rosie, he interrupts her fucking another guy, she even says to the guy he does this better than Tromeo does. Tromeo is so naive about his girlfriend that he doesn’t even know she is getting plowed while she’s on the phone with him. She claims she’s busy making a costume for Cappy Capulet’s big costume party. She’s been invited. She wants to go regardless of the feud.

Back at the Capulet estate, Cappy hears Murray and Benny outside singing a song calling him a dick. He tells his wife, Ingrid, he wants to Jackson Pollack the streets with their guts and fires his crossbow/pistol at them, but they get away. After she mentions something “they” maybe shouldn’t have done, Cappy reminds her it was “her” fuckup and beats the hell out of her while Juliet, locked in her room, is visited by the Capulet’s family chef, Ness (Debbie Rochon).

Yeah, so Tromeo has unrequited love from Rosie because she fucks other guys. Juliet is so locked away by Cappy and Ingrid and her only sexual release comes from a lesbian affair with Ness. But that’s not all. Juliet has already been promised to the beef magnate Geoffrey Arbuckle… Er… I mean London Arbuckle. She, naturally does not love London. Maybe she loves Geoffrey?

I could be into that. She’s a friend of Alex Ross. I am a fan of Alex Ross. She’s also incredibly cute. I am not a beef magnate but I recently beefed… Uh… I digress.

So, yeah, this is the setup that sort of follows the original Romeo and Juliet pretty closely. In that, Romeo was originally in love with Rosaline. Juliet was betrothed to Count Paris. There is an intense rivalry between the two families. I… I don’t think anyone ripped off the ears of someone in the opposite family nor do I think a woman got any box trauma done to her. Basically the roads are leading to the Capulet costume party where Tromeo and Juliet will eventually begin their star-crossed affair.

This is also Troma, so there’s going to be lots more nudity and lurid shit happening. For example, while Juliet and Ness get each other off in a hot-ass lesbian sex scene, Tromeo plays various CD-Rom porn parodies of Shakespeare plays and jerks off to the scenario of true love.

As for the backstory of the rivalry between the Ques and the Capulets? Well, it all started when the two patriarchs were friends. Monty Que was a filmmaker. He made artsy sex films. Cappy Capulet had a studio that produced sex films. The two started a partnership that seemed to be a match made in heaven. However, as Benny puts it, he thinks there was some sort of backdoor blackmail going on in this partnership that ruined Monty. Also, while all of this was going down, Cappy made a pass at Monty’s wife and ran off with her. That wife is Ingrid and Benny thinks she’s just as shitty as Cappy himself. Shortly after that, Monty met Tromeo’s mother and that basically sets up the present.

Also… Juliet has nightmares of giant dick monsters.

Murray and Sammy’s fight gets the cops involved. Detective Ernie Scalus would like for Monty and Cappy to work their shit out. If the feud ends, maybe, just maybe, he won’t have any more messes to clean up. But, see, the cease fire of the police station is immediately broken when they go outside. Cappy wants to kill Benny and Monty right there. Sammy decides to be insane and sticks his head into the car window where Benny rolls up the window, trapping Sammy. Then, Benny hits the gas and eventually dumps Sammy off so that his face hits a fire hydrant.

Act II begins with excitement building for Cappy’s Halloween in July masquerade party. Murray is planning on tagging along with Tromeo. Tromeo wants to go because Rosie was invited and he hasn’t seen her for a bit. Lemmy lets us know that Tromeo is currently suffering from a pretty bad case of blue balls too, so I’m guessing that also has something to do with his desire to go to the party of his family’s hated rival. Murray’s goals are a little more simple, but no less potentially sexual in nature. He just wants to start some shit.

Before the party, we meet Juliet’s betrothed, London Arbuckle. He’s a freak. I mean, as an Arbuckle, I could have told you he was going to be portrayed as a freak. It’s kind of in our name and blood. Anyway, he is, as I previously mentioned, a meat magnate. He’s excited to turn anything into a meaty snack, including a gross giant maggot thing that somehow got into his factory. He is particularly excited to show Juliet a new invention of his, raisin loaf. You see, it’s like olive loaf… but with raisins. He really likes this invention.

Juliet looks at him like all girls as cute as she is looks at an Arbuckle.

Juliet is a vegetarian, so not only is she a lesbian and not so sure about being with any man she’s also going to marry a meat magnate while being a strict vegetarian.

At the masquerade party, Tromeo and Murray show up to attend the party. Right away, Tromeo goes looking for Rosie. When he finds her, he discovers a guy named Pluto eating her out. Pluto is also missing a finger. That’s totally a Lloyd Kaufman thing right? We already know how awkward it is to shake a guy’s hand while he’s missing a finger. Lloyd likely knows that too. Also, missing a middle finger will, I suppose, make it easier to do the “two in the pink, one in the stink” thing. Yeah… Lloyd was like, “You know what will make this worse for Tromeo? His girlfriend is getting railed by a muscle man who is also missing a finger so when he offers to shake Tromeo’s hand, it will be extra weird and gross!”

Murray suggests they go steal from the Capulets. That always lifts Tromeo’s spirits. Tromeo isn’t feeling it and just mopes around. That is until he lays eyes upon Juliet.

BUT THAT GODDAMNED ARBUCKLE!

Seriously, this interfering goofball is making me hate my own family lineage and surname. At least Murray ends up finding some stuff to loot. One of those things discovered is a picture of Monty and Ingrid with an infant. I’m sure we’ll be coming back around to that later.

On the dancefloor, Tromeo spots that Arbuckle keeps stepping on Juliet’s toes while they dance. He actually comes off kind of slick while wearing a giant fluffy cow costume. He reveals his name is Tromeo. He claims he’s a longtime friend of the Capulets. At this point, and as it always is, the girl is really desperate to get away from an Arbuckle so she is more than happy for the cow named Tromeo to take the next dance. She asks Tromeo if she can see her face and he reveals it to Juliet and it makes certain bits of her nether regions vibrate appreciatively. As they dance against the night sky, and seemingly all alone in their own little world, they kiss.

That is broken by Juliet’s cousins arriving and revealing to her he is the son of Monty Que.

Juliet gets wrecked by the concept that her only love is born from her family’s hate. She even rejects the affections of Ness. The next morning, Juliet is surprised by Tromeo in her room. He sucks her toes and tells her that their love will conquer hate. But she suddenly grows pregnant. Tromeo rips open her womb to reveal it is full of popcorn!

She wakes up to find her father in some pretty tiny briefs in her bed. He inappropriately comments on how she is a slut and probably dreaming of being fucked in the butt because he was possibly shoving a curler into her poop chute. He drags her out of bed by the hair and takes her to a room he chains her in for punishment because she was screaming in her sleep.

Unbeknownst to Juliet and Cappy, Tromeo managed to sneak into the Capulet house. While he makes his way upstairs, Ness tells him where Juliet is and how she also feels the love for her he does, but she helps Tromeo find Juliet. Juliet invites Tromeo into her glass cage. He worries about her father being passed out right outside, but she says he never comes back until after the Regis and Kathy Lee Show. Oh, and he soundproofed the room when she was little to keep the neighbors from hearing her scream.

He comes into Juliet’s box and then cums into Juliet’s box.

(I mean… I had to make that joke. He gets inside there and they get naked and they bang HARD. Inside her box. While inside her box. See?!? How can I not use that? This is artistic Lloyd Kaufman at work here. You see, she’s inside a plexiglass box, chained by her father trying to control her urges. She cannot control her urges any more or less than anyone else can when they experience love. That’s a perfect allegory for her sexual awakening that happens in her womb. She needs her real box to be satisfied regardless if her metaphoric box is satisfying her father’s need to control her. I don’t think I’m making this point that well, but all I know is it is goddamned beautiful. So beautiful, Juliet’s lesbian lover is shedding tears.)

Also, let’s give it up to Debbie Rochon doing wonderful work here. Everyone in this movie is pretty great. Obviously, we were being led by the nose to pay a lot of attention to the hot lesbian action, but Rochon is doing good support work. Also doing great work in a supporting role is Valentine Miele as Murray. Just about everything he does or says is hilarious. Naturally, our leads, Jane Jensen and Will Keenan, are fantastic as our very likable star-crossed lovers. James Gunn gave everyone juicy stuff to do and say while Lloyd Kaufman directed the balls off this movie.

The next morning, Tromeo gets out just in time before her father returns. Juliet explains that they have a huge hurdle to leap over – she’s arranged to be married to Arbuckle (damn you, Arbuckle!). Tromeo has a great idea… They will get married before she is given away to London Arbuckle. Juliet cannot be married if she is already married to someone else. Juliet calls things off with London Arbuckle while Tromeo arranges things with the local priest to get married tonight.

Tromeo and Juliet get married as they planned. Everything seems to be coming up Troma for the couple. They make out on the streets of New York. They make out at the New York Public Library. They fuck outside the New York Public Library. They get matching tattoos. However, the day, like all good things, has to come to an end. They say their goodbyes to keep their ruse going.

Meanwhile that motherfucker Arbuckle is taking the break-up with Juliet about as well as a guy like him would take. He bashes his head against a gutted pig in his factory. He then stabs himself over and over with a meat hook. Meanwhile, Juliet’s cousins, led by Tyrone Capulet, discover that Juliet is in love with a Que. They go to the tattoo parlor to have a word with members of the Que family and try to find Tromeo. Murray antagonizes Tyrone by calling him just about everything you can think of. After Tromeo makes himself known and Tyrone turns to confront this interloper in his family, Murray pisses on Tyrone’s butt.

That might just be the greatest of all insults. Of all things you can do to someone, peeing on their butt while they are engaged with another person in terse conversation? That’s the most degrading thing you could do to that guy. Sadly, a fight breaks out, and that Hitler club Tyrone carries around? Yeah, it’s something that really gets into Murray’s head.

This is a really great scene. When I say Lloyd Kaufman directed the balls off this movie, this is an example of this. Murray talks about once stepping on a nail as a kid and he never thought anything would hurt as bad as that but he was wrong. Both actors are acting their tits off (eh, I already said someone was doing the balls off a thing so…).

Tromeo gets fuckin’ pissed at Tyrone and tracks him down and starts beating the shit out of him. Before Tyrone can stab Tromeo, a series of events happens that spells the end of Tyrone. A car driving by has a ladder sticking out of it that Tyrone gets stuck on. Since Tromeo was holding his arm to prevent being stabbed, his arm is ripped off. Later, the car with the ladder slams on the brakes before getting a flatbed truck towing a car which decapitates him. His head falls onto a car with a family inside causing them to crash in a spectacular fashion while the two small kids play with Tyrone’s head.

Shit is hitting the fan all over the place. Detective Scalus finds out that Tromeo killed Tyrone. Meanwhile, back at Cappy’s place, Georgie tells Cappy and Ingrid that Juliet is fucking Tromeo and she broke off the engagement to Arbuckle. Cappy kicks the shit out of Juliet and tells her she has to get back with Arbuckle while the cops bust into Que’s place to arrest him. A bruised and battered Juliet goes to the priest for help. Tromeo is being hidden at the church. The priest has one more idea of how she can get out of her engagement to Arbuckle. He wants her to see him before she leaves. Tromeo plans to abscond from New York. He knows the cops and the Capulets will be after him.

Now, speaking of our priest, he does indeed have an idea for Juliet. He knows of a man named Fu Chang. Fu Chang runs an opium den but that’s not important right now. What is important is that he is an herbalist. Fu Chang may be the one guy who can figure out a way to get Juliet out of this engagement. Why would the priest go so far out on a limb for Tromeo and Juliet? Well, he too knows what it’s like to be in love. We see a flashback of the priest dancing with his love, a young child.

Juliet goes to see Fu Chang. He provides her with a green potion. He says it should scare any meat freak away from her. You see, whatever that potion is, it will mess up her outer appearance. At first, she thinks Fu Chang ripped her off with colored water. But she begins puking up thick green goop. She then thinks she will die and sees Tyrone, Murray, and Sammy. They all ask how special she must be to find the greatest love of all while they pay for it with their lives. However, the potion starts working and she gets all sorts of gross growths on her face.

Brother, Arbuckles are a lonely sort. He will not be scared off by something ugly if it means he won’t have to deal with this world alone.

London sees Juliet and freaks out over her appearance. She then says she loves him so much and that she needs him to tell her that love goes deeper than the “hide”. She then reveals that she has a giant penis too. After all, London always told Juliet he loved The Crying Game. To escape her, London jumps out of her bedroom window to his death.

Cappy comes into her room, accuses her of wearing makeup, and starts beating her again. As Tromeo and the priest arrive to save her, Cappy says he is going to kill and fuck her at the same time. Tromeo busts in and starts beating up Cappy. Tromeo and Juliet kiss and she returns to normal. Meanwhile, Cappy retrieves his crossbow and plans to kill Tromeo, but Juliet gets her revenge on her fucker of a father by first burning his face with her hair curler. Then, she shoves bobby pins into his ears. Next, she blows hot air from her hair dryer down his throat.

Then Tromeo gets in on the fun. First, he shoves tampons up Cappy’s nose. Then he smacks him across the face with Juliet’s giant college book of Shakespeare. Juliet then smashes her computer monitor over Cappy’s head. But before they can escape, Cappy is able to pursue them and forces them into her punishment room where he plans to lock them into her box and turn that into their coffin.

But there’s one thing he didn’t take into consideration… He’s wearing a computer monitor that isn’t plugged in. What might happen if, say, Juliet plugs it into the socket just beneath the box? The answer is “cool shit” will happen.

Cappy’s head both melts and explodes. Tromeo and Juliet seem to be free of Cap’s tyranny. Meanwhile, the priest provides Detective Scalus with enough evidence and alibis to cover for a self-defense explanation. Cap’s death is also self-defense. Everything seems to be headed for nothing but happiness, sunshine, and rainbows.

As they are about to leave for their new life, Ingrid and Monty stop them to explain Tromeo’s true parentage. Tromeo was really Cap and Ingrid’s son. First, Ingrid told Monty that Tromeo was his. Then, when she wanted to divorce Monty to run off with Cap, she then revealed that Tromeo was Cap’s. Finally, to be able to keep and raise Tromeo as his own, Monty was forced to sign over the part of the movie business he was in with Cap and never reveal the truth to Tromeo.

It might have slipped Tromeo’s notice that Monty is black.

Juliet says, “Fuck it.” Yup. It’s a hot incest time in the old town tonight! Oddly, it does follow up with the early part of the movie when Sammy wanted to fuck his sister Georgie. Anyway, six years later, Tromeo and Juliet are happily married with a family of their own. Of course, they are hideous freaks but at least Juliet is still hot after pumping out three little squirts.

Well, the baby is actually normal for now.

This movie is pretty great. This could have completely fallen apart if any less of a writer and director were involved. The jokes are funny. The drama is well-acted. The soundtrack is fantastic. Everything about this movie just works, man. It’s perfectly 90s but also has a timeless feel to it. I said the actors were pretty great, but we really cannot sleep on these lead performances by Jensen and Keenan. Will Keenan would go on to do more Troma stuff. In fact, we’ll see him again before the end of this month. He also worked as a writer and producer. Jane Jensen mostly focused on her music career but still appeared in a few things here and there including one of the shorts made by Will Keenan. She also had a role in It Came from Trafalgar by director Solomon Mortamur filmed in the town of Trafalgar, Indiana about 40 minutes south of me.

But hot damn! Troma Month is off and running with the best possible first entry I could ask for. The rest of the month will have a lot to live up to to even be in the same ballpark as Tromeo and Juliet. So, I figure the best possible way to try to live up to this movie’s greatness, let’s do one of the all-time classics of Troma. Yup, we’re going to journey to the year 1986, a full decade before this week’s movie, to join the Class of Nuke ‘Em High!

To end this on another high note, check out this boppin’ “Tromeo and Juliet Theme” from Willie Wisely.