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Nothing Personal
Live through this Saturday night
Courtney Love's directorial debut -- in glorious plaid! Patenstein? Count Patula? The Wolfpat? Pollsters say Buchanan's more trick than treat.
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[10/29/99]

People Feature
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People Feature
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Fred Tomaselli's work offers the experience of taking drugs in the safest possible way -- through the eyes.
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Nothing Personal
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At a DC Vote shindig, Kemp mingles like he means it; Patricia Arquette reinvents her breasts. And lady of the Senate? Jesse Helms, once, twice, three times a doofus. Plus: Barbara Bush thinks Pat deserves a spanking.
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[10/28/99]

Column
Bring me the fat head of Elton John
Young men once fretted over sculpting the future, not whether they were going to get a sweaty power-handshake. What happened?
By Cintra Wilson
[10/28/99]

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Lloyd Kaufman, director, writer, producer and co-founder of the infamous Troma Studios, is describing his new picture, "Terror Firmer," which opens Friday at Laemmle's in Los Angeles.

But I'm confused about the last thing he said. "Defeatist?" I ask.

Kaufman pauses, then clarifies. "No. Her fetus being pulled from her stomach. De-fetused."

Aha.

Founded in 1974 by Kaufman and partner Michael Herz, Troma Studios is the oldest -- and most controversial -- independent film studio in existence. Filmmakers as diverse as Quentin Tarantino, Trey Parker ("South Park") and Sam Raimi ("For Love of the Game") were inspired by Troma. Actors such as Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, Billy Bob Thornton and Samuel L. Jackson got their start there. And titles such as "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown," "Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator" and "A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell" fill the studio's shelves.

"You cannot endure for 25 years without doing something that touches people," says Kaufman of these films. "With all due respect, when the dust clears, our movies are classics. Our movies are great art." Kaufman points out that -- just like Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buņuel in the 1920s -- "films I wrote and directed were extremely upsetting 20 years ago. Now they're being shown in museums."

Troma is primarily regarded as a horror factory, but its main function has been, as Kaufman puts it, to act as "a Cuisinart of genres." Gory 1980s horror flicks like "Nightmare on Elm Street" had started to take on a slightly comic tone. Being "an extreme movie studio," Kaufman and Herz took this trend to its logical cinematic extreme, and made the slapstick, ultra-violent horror-comedy "The Toxic Avenger." This comedy-horror hybrid is thriving today, as evidenced by the success of the "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" franchises.

"The Toxic Avenger" is the story of Melvin Junko, a wimpy health club janitor who falls (after a cruel prank goes awry) into a vat of toxic waste and mutates into the repulsive yet heroic Toxic Avenger (or "Toxie," as he's affectionately called). Toxie has been used as a symbol for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Armed Forces and the Green Party -- and has spawned three sequels, comic books, trading cards, video games, action figures, lunch boxes and even a Saturday morning cartoon show, "The Toxic Crusaders."

How many X-Rated films can you say that about?

"We made 'The Toxic Avenger' partly because we saw a headline in the Hollywood Reporter that said, 'Horror films are dead.' Horror films never die. Sometimes Hollywood just has an attitude that horror is beneath them and their $100 million explosion movies," says Kaufman.

"Troma films will frighten you, but not in the way 'Halloween' frightens you. Our movies stretch you in every direction -- you're scared, you're shocked, you're laughing your head off, you cry ... It literally Tromatizes you, it makes your emotions into stretchable rubber."

Case in point: the 1996 underground hit "Tromeo and Juliet." In the first 15 minutes, it boasts nipple piercing, dismemberment, Internet porn, phone sex, lesbian sex, masturbation, farting, incest, bondage, splattered brains and cigarette-smoking vaginas -- all the things that make Shakespeare great. Yet each act of Tromatic degradation is somehow less insulting than a single Bruce Willis gunshot.

"They're low-budget spoofs of everything," explains Stephen Holden of the New York Times. "With the sensibilities of Mad magazine, they're making fun of themselves and making fun of the audience at the same time that they are using some of the images that are popular in exploitation movies."

Such movies fill the 500-strong Troma library. This includes the reviled 1975 film "Bloodsucking Freaks." This very nasty, very repugnant "comedy" could've easily been titled "101 Ways to Torture and Mutilate Naked Women." Not surprisingly, it sparked a national campaign of protest from Women Against Pornography.

"It's probably the most horrifying movie ever made," admits Kaufman today. "I think if it came around again, we would not get involved because it's so misogynistic. I think I've been enlightened by the women's movement. I must tell you, though, that 'The Toxic Avenger' sells about 2,000 tapes every month, and 'Bloodsucking Freaks' is not far behind."

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