troma

The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

Published on September 5, 2025September 11, 2025 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to another trip to Tromaville, New Jersey, for a brand new B-Movie Enema review!

Back for Christmas 2022, I took a trip to everyone’s nuclear waste-ridden town to discuss Lloyd Kaufman’s original superhero, The Toxic Avenger. That 1984 breakout hit for Kaufman’s Troma Entertainment was brash, offensive, slapdash, but brilliant in many ways. The sheer irreverence in Kaufman’s style of comedy is in full display here. That wasn’t Lloyd’s first film he directed, and it certainly was not his first comedy, but this was the one that skyrocketed Troma into the vocabulary for all those exploitation, trash cinema fans scouring the video store shelves looking for some depraved weekend entertainment in the 80s.

Funny enough, Lloyd Kaufman’s sex comedies between 1979 and 1983 all had titles with exclamation points: Squeeze Play!, Waitress!, Stuck on You!, and The First Turn-On! You gotta love Lloyd’s commitment to the schtick. Then again, considering how bombastic his mannerisms and the way he speaks, I have to assume he shouted the titles he wanted to put on his movies, and the guy who made the title cards just thought that was part of the title.

Eh… Anyway, considering a bigger budget remake of the original The Toxic Avenger is now hitting theaters across the country, starring a for-real Emmy Award-winning actor, Peter Dinklage, I figured it’s time to revisit the world of Toxie. This week, we’re going to look at the 1989 sequel to the original, The Toxic Avenger Part II.

(Oh, and my official review of the new Toxic Avenger movie? It’s a lot of fun and has a surprising amount of heart but keeps the counterculture vibes of Lloyd’s original intact. 4 out of 5 stars!)

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Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

Published on April 25, 2025May 1, 2025 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the final week of Troma Month!

This month has been a fun one, hasn’t it? Whether it’s a love letter to Kaufman’s appreciation of William Shakespeare in the romance Tromeo and Juliet, or the earlier Tromaville kids run amok horror Class of Nuke ‘Em High, or the most Troma film of them all, Terror Firmer… It’s been a good time visiting these classics from the 80s and 90s master of gross-out comedy, horror, and comedy-horror, Lloyd Kaufman. But now, we bring things to a close with another dark comedy-horror from the man himself. However, this time, we have a bit of a twist.

This time we have a musical.

Yes, it’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. This time around, Kaufman has a little uncredited help from one of the co-writers of the film, Gabriel Friedman. Friedman would go on to be a producer for specials for the cable channels E! and G4, as well as for online series like The IGN Show. In fact, he mostly worked on a lot of specials and behind-the-scenes stuff, including making-of documentaries for Troma films like Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie. His writing credits are mostly for Troma films like this one, Make Your Own Damn Movie!, the aforementioned fourth Toxie flick, and Lloyd Kaufman’s most recent, #ShakespearesShitstorm.

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Terror Firmer (1999)

Published on April 18, 2025April 24, 2025 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back! It’s the third week of Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema and it’s time to go back, sorta, to the James Gunn well. This week, I’m gonna be talking about 1999’s Terror Firmer.

What do I mean about this sorta going back to the James Gunn well? That’s because, to a certain extent, Lloyd Kaufman, along with co-writers Douglas Buck and Patrick Cassidy, based this movie’s script, albeit loosely, on the 1998 book All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger. That book was co-written by Kaufman and James Gunn.

I made the comment last week, in my review for Class of Nuke ‘Em High, that I kind of put Kaufman in the same camp as Roger Corman. Corman, back in the 50s and 60s, were cranking out cheap B-movies quickly. However, quickly those movies were, and however cheaply they were made, most (especially in today’s film culture) could not look at those movies and think they weren’t made professionally. Maybe the monster was kind of goofy, but you couldn’t argue that the cast was well-directed and doing their jobs professionally.

I bring up that commentary I made because Roger Corman wrote the introduction to the book this is sort of based on.

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Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986)

Published on April 11, 2025April 17, 2025 by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

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.

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Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

Published on April 4, 2025April 10, 2025 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

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Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

Published on March 7, 2025March 13, 2025 by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

You know… It’s 2025. That means we’re soon a full 80 years since Nazi Germany was bumped off in the incredibly high-stakes game of Real Life Risk. We should feel really good about the concept of a pretty shit ideology like fascism or Nazism is long gone, right? I mean, I’m glad I can lay my head down on my pillow each and every night knowing that, as an American, I will never have to worry about some sort of terrible natural disaster hitting California and leaving it open to still operating Neo Nazi and far-right agitators to run amok. It sure is great to be 80 years removed from those possibilities, right?

What’s this I see in the news and on social media sites everywhere? California is consistently on fire and always open for a possible cataclysmic earthquake… The government is being run by people with fewer scruples than brain cells… The richest man in the world sure looks like he gave a Nazi salute behind a podium featuring the Presidential Seal of the United States of America… There seems to be no real response or much resistance from a pretty damn weak and limp-wristed Democratic Party in the face of this rising tide of extremist policy and pretty bad actors now running the government…

Well, FUCK. Anyway, here’s a review for 1987’s Surf Nazis Must Die.

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The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Published on December 22, 2023December 28, 2023 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

He was 98 lbs. of solid nerd until he became… THE TOXIC AVENGER!

Welcome to a brand-spankin’ new B-Movie Enema. As it were, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, my Enemaniacs! To celebrate, let’s visit Tromaville, New Jersey, the home of everyone’s B-movie uncle, Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman and his producing partner Michael Herz co-directed this breakout film for Troma Entertainment.

Now, I’ve covered several movies released by Troma from within the distribution arm of Kaufman and Herz’s entertainment company. I’ve even covered a few other movies that featured Kaufman as an actor. Only once, though, did I ever cover a film actually funded, made, and released by the Troma team. I’ve not brought this one up for quite some time. It used to be one that I would reference often, and definitely compare to when I’d see a movie of a particular level of quality. Do you guys remember which one that was?

That one is the cinematic diarrhea disaster that was Pot Zombies.

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The Last Horror Film (a.k.a Fanatic, 1982)

Published on January 13, 2023January 19, 2023 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and our special January theme month, David Winters Winter.

This week, we’re going a little earlier in the 80s to see what David Winters would do in the horror slasher genre with The Last Horror Film. This movie also goes by the title Fanatic. In fact, my DVD that I have of the movie comes with that second title. I’m not sure if this was something that played in theaters with Fanatic, or if that’s just the home video distribution title from Troma Entertainment.

Either way, The Last Horror Film co-stars musician Judd Hamilton who also co-wrote the movie and co-produced the film with Winters. Hamilton was the brother of Dan Hamilton of Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds who had the 70s hit “Don’t Pull Your Love”. Judd did a little bit of surf music to rock to country. He was married to the lovely Caroline Munro from 1970 to 1982.

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