Welcome back to Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Last week, it just so happened, the month started with a leadoff home run with Tromeo and Juliet, a movie that I believe, by the time we finish this month and I’ve increased my viewership of movies made internally by Troma, will be the best film ever released by the company. I know, I know… Toxie and what have you. There was just something special about Tromeo and Juliet that had my by the balls and shook me about until I cried out for my mommy to save me.

Wait…

Eh… anyway… This week, we’re going back to the 80s when Troma and their fictional hometown of Tromaville was in its infancy. We’re looking at 1986’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High. This horror/sci-fi/comedy was Lloyd Kaufman’s follow-up to his seminal 1984 classic The Toxic Avenger. This time, though, he wasn’t alone. Kaufman shared directing duties with Troma editor Richard W. Haines.

Haines was a 1979 graduate of NYU’s film school. Almost right away, Haines got employed by Troma as an assistant editor for Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day, by the way, was directed by Lloyd Kaufman’s brother Charles. Eventually, Gaines would go on to edit Troma’s Stuck on You!, The Toxic Avenger, and edited this film he co-directed. In between editing the first Toxie flick and making Class of Nuke ‘Em High, he released his directorial debut, the very messy Splatter University. I didn’t have many nice things to say about that movie back when I reviewed it, but upon thinking a little more about this and digging a little more into Haines’ story, I can kind of let it go. It was a movie made, first, in 1981 and only came in a little over an hour. A year later, more footage was filmed to help pad things out. I think there was maybe a little more tinkering done with it before it was finally released 2-3 years after it began production. Sure, I can kind of let go of the negative feelings I have about that one. It was a low budget flick with necessary reshoots and what have you that couldn’t have been easy to make everything fit properly.

Later, Haines would go on to make a cult classic sci-fi satire called Space Avenger (or Alien Space Avenger as it is sometimes known). That was the first venture outside the confines of Troma for Haines. Later, after making a few more low-budget flicks in the 90s, he became a writer. He wrote books about movies as well as became a writer for industry magazines about making films and behind-the-scenes techniques and what have ya. As that new century dawned, aside from continuing to write books and articles, he continued making genre films. One of those films, a horror film called What Really Frightens You ended up having two sequels in the form of novels as he turned to becoming a horror novelist in the 2010s.

As I mentioned previously, Class of Nuke ‘Em High was the follow-up to The Toxic Avenger. Troma was riding pretty high at this point in the mid-80s. Toxie proved to be incredibly popular on cable and home video, especially in the cult film fandom. Riding that high, Nuke ‘Em High used Kaufman’s over-the-top comedic sensibilities and became the next big hit for Troma leading to, again, popularity on home video and cable, particularly on USA Up All Night where it and the first sequel appeared at least a dozen times throughout the first several years of that weekend hosted series.

Alright, ya crumbums, let’s put on our thinking caps, pack our backpacks, sharpen our pencils, and get on the bus because we’re headed to Tromaville High School so we can find out what’s going on at “Nuke ‘Em” High.

Okay, so, as I kind of alluded to earlier, this is less Tromeo and Juliet and a LOT more The Toxic Avenger. I mean, sure, the former is an adaptation of Shakespeare and a very large production that was swinging for the fences. The latter is more in the camp of, well, camp. But, because this is directly coming off of The Toxic Avenger, it also follows a similar concept for the setting of the film, Tromaville.

If you remember from The Toxic Avenger, Tromaville is a New Jersey town that is somewhat unremarkable (aside from the mutant superhero, a definite urban look and feel, and the roving gang of ne’er do wells who run over children in the street, crushing their heads like watermelons) save for one thing. It’s the site of a very large nuclear plant dubbed the Tromaville Nuclear Facility. That’s where you get all the freaks and goop to make your superheroes and stuff from. In other words, it’s 100% a Jersey thing and the creator of the people that Lloyd Kaufman 200% would want to hang out with.

Well, on this day, the plant goes into crisis mode. A leak has sprung that threatens to get into the water and contaminate the whole town. The guy who owns the facility, Mr. Paley, tells the governor that everything is A-OK at the plant. He doesn’t want to do anything that might call attention to the plant and, therefore, have the leak be investigated by the safety commission. That would risk Paley’s plant being shut down for good.

So the plan is to just ignore it. In the shadow of the nuclear plant’s smoke stacks is Tromaville High School. The school looks exactly like what you’d expect in Tromaville. It’s full of nerds, normies, and punks. The punks are part of a gang called The Cretins (more on them in a moment). The day starts normally, but one kid, Dewey, drinks from the water fountain in the hall only for the water to turn green. In class, during a routine safety drill in the ironic event there is a runoff of nuclear crap from the plant, Dewey starts freaking out, foaming from the mouth, and tries to kill a classmate.

Before Dewey can kill his classmate, he begins melting from the inside out. He does the thing that almost every Troma movie does and jumps out of the window where he completely and totally melts on the sidewalk. I love that they used the same shot of the guy jumping out of the window as was used in The Toxic Avenger. I also love how many self-defenestrations I’ve seen in Troma movies.

Okay, so investigations are underway. Employees from the plant are now roaming the campus of the high school taking radiation readings. Paley is constantly questioned about a possible connection between the plant and the kid who died. He refuses to take any possible connection seriously. He instead blames what happened to Dewey on the kid’s family owning not one but TWO microwave ovens.

We meet Warren and Chrissy, the kind of typical popular kids at Tromaville High. They are also friends with Eddie, a horndog who is always chasing birds, and Greg, a prankster. At one point, Eddie takes a girl he’s messing around with to the school’s fallout shelter to play a little grab-ass between classes. Nuclear waste seeps in and spills onto the girl causing her to freak out and run off. Chrissy brings up that there have been some pretty weird things going on at the school ever since that plant opened up.

Some of those strange things include what we saw happen to Dewey as well as things that have happened to the faculty. One teacher suddenly lost all her hair. People are acting strange too. As for those gang dudes, the Cretins? Well, it seems as though they were once members of the honor society at school. Chrissy remembers a time in debate class when the Cretins just stopped debating and started beating up the teacher. Now the Cretins terrorize the school by selling drugs and beating people up whenever they feel like it. They also fuck up the school’s bake sale by one of them, named Gonzo, driving his motorcycle into a table with a giant cake on it covering the crowd in icing.

They buy the weed they deal at the nuclear plant. One guy in particular, Ronnie, grows the dope out back. The nuclear radiation makes the weed grow fast. They sell one of the nuclear joints to Eddie. After telling him that these joints make girls go wild, Eddie thinks he should get a joint for Chrissy so she will go to this party which will then convince Warren to go too.

And it works. However, it is part of a plan by Eddie to get Warren’s wilder side out. He cares about studying and getting into college. Chrissy is a goody two-shoes. Eddie and Greg are into partying and being two wild and crazy guys. Warren and Chrissy, separately, both tell their friends that they want to sleep with the other but they both think the other is shy and not sure how to initiate it.

The irradiated joint is forced on Warren and Chrissy. At first, it makes them feel sick. They decide they want to leave the party and go to the Fellini Festival they wanted to go to instead. However, when Chrissy gets upstairs to get their coats to leave, the weed starts working on Chrissy and gets super horny. She comes onto Warren and they bang HARD.

The problem with irradiated pot that makes you super horny, is that it turns you into a monster. Warren’s skin starts developing boils on it while his hair turns gray. His dick then grows into a giant, painful pole while he also grows breasts. Chrissy’s belly starts to enlarge as if she’s suddenly becoming 9 months pregnant. Also, a little worm-like thing sprouts out of her belly button. It turns out to just be a dream or the effects don’t remain permanent.

The next day, Warren is irritated to find out Eddie got the weed from the Cretins. Warren and Chrissy say they both don’t feel so good. In fact, they have both hallucinated. Pissed off about the pot, pissed off about the Cretins being jerkoffs, and generally not sure what the weed is doing to him and Chrissy, Warren wants to do something about the gang. He wants to even the score at the school, but Chrissy wants him to leave it alone and let someone else do it so he doesn’t get hurt.

Additionally, the leader of the Cretins, Spike, seems to be able to make normal people into new Cretins. On the way into German class, he hits on the hot German teacher, Ms. Stein, before laying a pretty deep kiss on her. Later, she is making her face up like one of the Cretins and meets him in the bathroom where they fuck.

So it’s about time to really talk about one thing about this movie… The rules of this movie are both very specific but also kind of loosy goosey all at same time. What’s the thing that ties it all together and the answer to the question “What are the rules?” Radiation. The radiation makes good kids into punks. The radiation turns a nerd into a rampaging monster. The radiation can give people special powers as we see when Warren comes home from school and has an effect on all the electronics. If you’re infected, I think you can pass it along like with Spike and the sexy Ms. Stein.

Not all the people in Tromaville are affected the same way either. Some of the pot customers don’t seem to be affected. One kid earlier was shaken down for money he owed Spike for the pot he bought off him but he wasn’t a mutated monster. We’ll soon find out that the hallucinations were not exactly just that but real because Chrissy is pregnant after just making love with Warren once. Plus, that pregnancy is accelerating. Warren has transformed into something of a Hulk-like monster. He’s not permanently a radiation monster. He turns into one and then goes back to normal.

Radiation is kind of a good catch-all for stuff. It’s like Marvel Comics and mutants, right? Mutants are a bunch of “freaks” who can do all sorts of different things. There are not many mutants that share the same powers as another. For chrissakes, there’s a mutant whose only power is that he can understand any language. There is a mutant who is just a blob of liquid. Then there are others who have very useful talents like Wolverine, Beast, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. You get it. It seems as though radiation is just doing the same thing here. At Tromaville High School, each irradiated student gets talents that fit whatever is needed to have a movie and complete a day at school. Spike seems to be beefed up and mean. Muffey is a guy in the midst of a gender transition as he is effeminate and has boobs. Another guy just has one really really long braided ponytail.

Warren? Well, he’s kind of the Incredible Hulk who is going to use his mutation to put the Cretins in their place. He’s got super strength. His skin seems to be able to melt things as he is punched by one of the Cretins and it’s like he punched a vat of toxic waste. Warren kills two of the Cretins and knocks Spike out. Spike tells the gang he thought it looked like Warren who killed the guys. The rest of the gang laughs at the concept.

Warren returns home and has changed back to his normal self. Meanwhile, at cheerleader practice, Chrissy gets sick. When she gets into the bathroom, her tummy starts undulating. She goes into a stall and throws up a little monster. Chrissy is rushed off to the hospital while the little monster worms its way into the pipes and comes across the nuclear waste contaminating the school’s water.

Like I said, Chrissy’s pregnancy was accelerated. The doctor tells her mother that she was full-term and was roughly nine months pregnant. But it would seem as though, based on her condition and everything else, she had a miscarriage. Later, Eddie takes Warren to the science lab to show him a new laser that the teacher just got. I’m gonna guess that will come into play later.

Later yet, Warren interrupts Spike harassing a kid in the bathroom to buy more pot. Seeing the joint that looked like what he thinks poisoned him and Chrissy the previous weekend, he tells the kid to get out of there and starts a fight with the Cretins. A teacher breaks up the fight and gathers up the Cretins to take them to the principal. The principal expels the Cretins which means they no longer have access to their dope customers. The Cretins warn they will be back.

At the plant, workers start to randomly collapse as if they are gasping for air or choking on something. Their reaction to radiation poisoning leads to the plant to basically take over Tromaville High to investigate radiation levels at the school. One of the workers goes into the fallout shelter. There, he runs afoul of Chrissy’s fetus which has mutated further after being exposed to toxic waste.

The Cretins are crashing out on an economic level. Their expulsion has led to a complete collapse in their business. They nearly turn on Spike, but he’s got an idea. At the junkyard, he suggests they need to deal with Warren. In fact, they are standing next to where he thinks they can get rid of our hero. He points out the car-crushing machine as a way to make sure Warren gets dealt with.

Spike leads the Cretins to the school. First, they need to force the principal to set off the emergency evacuation alarm. Second, the Cretins kidnap Chrissy and take her to the fallout shelter to lure Warren to them. The school is evacuated, but Warren tries to find Chrissy.

The Cretins deliver Chrissy’s bloodied necklace and tell Warren she is in the basement waiting for him. He goes after her while the Cretins ride their motorcycles through the halls and vandalize the school. Warren gets to the fallout shelter where Spike is waiting for him. Spike plans on killing Chrissy in front of Warren. But before any harm can be done to Chrissy, the mutated monster she miscarried comes out and starts going on a killing rampage.

So, yeah, the final 15 minutes are basically chaos. The monster baby starts picking off the Cretins one by one. I like that you think Warren would be the big hero, but aside from that one time in which he hulked out and killed those two in the street, he was fairly ineffectual against the gang. Meanwhile, he had sex with his cutie pie girlfriend, got her pregnant while they were affected by a radioactive joint, and had a baby that was a monster just a few days later. It’s that monster that decides to deal with the gang because the gang threatened its mommy and daddy. Actually, then again, it also attacked its mommy and daddy. So… yeah.

And, hey! that laser is back! I figured that would play into this conclusion. After the baby monster killed all the Cretins in the school, and before it could kill Chrissy, Warren grabs the laser and blasts it to kill it. You definitely gotta like Chekhov’s Laser Thingy in the Science Lab.

I also like there is an entirely new Cretin introduced in this final act and the sexy ass Ms. Stein was no longer found anywhere. I feel like Jennifer Baptist, who played Ms. Stein, probably was no longer available. So, they had a new redheaded member of the gang, Taru. She’s the one who holds onto Chrissy with Spike. I don’t remember seeing Taru at any point before this and the whole time after he seemingly “infected” Ms. Stein, she was always hanging out with the gang and Spike.

Actually, it could be the other way around. Taru was played by Lauren Heather McMahon. Maybe she was originally supposed to play a greater part, along the lines of how often we see Ms. Stein, but she was unavailable and they had already shot the end when we do see her. I dunno. I just like suddenly being introduced to a completely new member of the motley crew and she likes torture and girl-on-girl shit.

Oh yeah… The movie is still going. So Warren escapes the school with Chrissy while the monster baby is continuously being zapped by the laser thing. Meanwhile, Paley has shown up because the nuclear radiation warning alarm is going off at the school. He goes inside to get to the bottom of everything. Paley ignores Warren’s warnings (his Warrenings?) about what’s inside. After Warren and Chrissy get outside the school explodes. Everyone celebrates the school being closed for remodeling.

As a construction team works on the remains of the school, the monster baby has reverted back to its original form and crawls out of the rubble.

Class of Nuke ‘Em High is another pretty darn good Troma release. It’s got some neat makeup on the Cretins. The monster effects are pretty good. When there are effects for melting people or injuries, it all looks great. The movie in general looks good for such a small budget. I think something no one should sleep on is that Lloyd Kaufman and Troma knew how to make a movie that was about as well made as it could be on the budget and the can-do gumption of the crew.

When it comes to Kaufman, I think of him as the 80s and 90s version of Roger Corman. He can make a movie fast. He can make it cheap. While it will have a vague look of something fast and cheap, it will still feel professional. Like with last week’s movie, the soundtrack is great and the actors know exactly what they are asked to bring. Janelle Brady and Gil Brenton are both really good as Chrissy and Warren. While they fade into the background after the midway point of the movie, I also like James Nugent Vernon as Eddie and Gary Rosenblatt as Greg. Obviously, all the Cretins, but especially Robert Prichard’s Spike, are bringing the fun. They are reveling in being baddies. Whenever I saw a Troma film in the past, I never complained about either the acting or directing. Kaufman knows how to get what he wants from his cast and that’s continued here on from last week.

So, yeah, another pretty good one in the books. Let’s see if we can go 3-for-3 in Troma Month next week! Come on back to B-Movie Enema for Lloyd Kaufman’s 1999 horror comedy Terror Firmer. Until then, be careful about that pot your buddy is trying to give you. You might just end up fathering a giant radioactive monster baby with your girlfriend.