RETURN TO NUKE 'EM HIGH: VOLUME 1 (2013)

Having happily munched their way through the free consignment of ‘healthy’ luminescent green tacos, Tromaville High School’s much maligned and bullied glee club mutate into a vicious (yet still harmonising) gang called The Cretins.

You either get Troma films or you don’t.

The fourth instalment in the CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH series is essentially a re-telling of the 1986 original, re-vamped with a high quota of self-aware in-jokes and nods and winks to contemporary culture. It's slapstick meets splatstick - frequently puerile - and with a far higher fart joke quota than MAN OF STEEL.
Following Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion, director and Troma Supremo Lloyd Kaufman has split the film into 2 volumes à la KILL BILL. It’s a bold move for sure, but it does result in a somewhat abrupt ending (albeit with a memorable final image which sets up an intriguing possible direction for volume 2...).

Kaufman also steps in front of the camera to try his hand at some good old-fashioned Laurel and Hardy-type slapstick which nicely counterpoints the more explicit gags and gross-outness.

Asta Paredes (working-class badgirl Chrissy) and Catherine Corcoran (rich-girl Lauren) acquit themselves very well with their ‘opposite’s attract’ scenario and it’s a measure of their likeable performances that they aren’t drowned amid the films tsunami of gory goofiness.
Speaking of gore, Kaufman pulls off some memorably moist moments; one sequence involving a copulating couple that melt into a steaming pile of gloop being a particular highlight. ‘Kevin the Wonder Duck’, whose appearance fee was financed by a Kickstarter campaign, may well think twice about signing up for further Troma productions given the hilariously ludicrous onscreen indignities he is made to suffer (all simulated folks, Mr Kaufman is a active PETA supporter). Then again, I strongly suspect he will return for Volume 2, and make it a double-bill appearance (sorry).

Will this film suddenly convert the uninitiated and the unconvinced into becoming fully paid up members of the Troma fan club? I doubt it. But then again, does MAN OF STEEL have ‘Kevin the Wonder Duck’ – hah – I think not!

****(out of 5*)

Paul Worts