A film about a series of hilariously grotesque murders on a B-movie film set certainly isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. But if you’ve ever enjoyed the gross-out stylings of early Peter Jackson or the whack-a-mole, no-holds-barred comedy of South Park then this is a good jumping on point to embrace the long, storied history of Troma Entertainment.
Troma has been making exploitation movies since the 70s, with more cult horror classics under its belt than Freddie Krueger has kills. The independent studio’s main flirtation with the mainstream came via the Toxic Avenger series, as gory and gross as anything else it produced, but somehow deemed suitable for a children’s TV spin-off in the 90s when everything from MC Hammer’s magic shoes to the California Raisins were worthy of animated immortality. To be clear: Troma is definitely not suitable for kids.
I first came across Terror Firmer by accident on TV late one night, as a too-young-for-this teenager. A more perfect way to stumble upon the works of director (and studio co-founder) Lloyd Kaufman I could not imagine. In many ways it is the ur-Troma, a distillation and compilation of everything great (and not so great) about its brand of movie-making.
Set during the filming of a low-budget exploitation movie in New York being directed by an insane blind director (played by Kaufman), it was loosely based on the book All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger which was co-written by Kaufman and James Gunn, just a few years before he wrote Scooby Doo. It’s no wonder that Gunn’s sense of humour nearly cost him his place in the big time, when old tweets saw him fired (then rehired) by Disney.
The Troma film within a Troma film gives plenty of opportunities for in-jokes – and no chance is passed up. The succession of nodding winks to the company’s past will mostly be lost on Troma virgins (Toxie pops up, as does the Penis Monster from Tromeo and Juliet), but the gags pour forth at such a rate that there’s bound to be something in there to tickle you.
If nothing else, this will show you what these films are all about. The kills performed by the homicidal “hermaphrodite” (more on this later …) are so over the top, so creative, and often so disgusting that it can be hard to turn away. The sight of Troma mainstay Joe Fleishaker being consumed by an escalator has long stuck in my mind (always do up your shoelaces before getting on a subway, children).
The plot, for what it is, centres around the on-set love triangle between production assistant Jennifer, boom-operator Casey and special effects man Jerry – all as various characters are being bumped off by an apparently female serial killer. Anyone who’s seen the cover image will know that there’s more to Casey than meets the eye, and it is the apparently dull, but actually sexually conflicted and intersex Casey, as played by Will Keenan, that is revealed as the homicidal maniac terrorising the film within a film’s production.
While Keenan’s performance is appropriately over-the-top and deranged, the disgust at a character with two sets of genitals hasn’t aged well. While in the 90s even mainstream hits like Ace Ventura were happy to poke fun at trans or intersex characters (even if Jim Carrey might claim the joke was supposed to be on the bigotry of the titular detective), that sort of humour doesn’t sit well these days – if it ever did. There’s a similar level of disgust displayed by characters in Terror Firmer when Casey’s secret is both figuratively and literally exposed – so are we supposed to laugh at the over the top reaction (“look at how stupid their disgust is”) or join in laughing at what’s in the underwear of the intersex murderer? Is this a parody of the trans-killer trope which is all too-prevalent in horror or just another example of it? That’s not clear.
This scattergun approach to comedy, where everything is free to be poked fun at, will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the work of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. No surprise then that they are also Troma alums. The unease is all part and parcel of the Troma experience, it’s offensive and it’s supposed to be – if there’s a line to be crossed, then it will be joyfully skipped over. As Jerry tells Casey during the film: “You can do whatever you want to at Troma … It’s this shit in which the best chaos emerges. Sometimes pissing people off is the only reason to get them to look at shit.”
Whether or not you have the stomach for it will determine how much enjoyment you get out of these films. But rest assured, if you can get through Terror Firmer you can get through anything, and there’s a vast back catalogue to check out.
Terror Firmer is available on Amazon Prime in the UK and US
This article was amended on 1 June as the film was loosely based on a book co-written by James Gunn, not co-directed by him
