Picture from johnrieber.com
Strap in, kiddies.
Our movie takes place at Troma High, New Jersey (named after the developing company...ugh) which is right next to, surprise surprise, a nuclear power plant. Being in such direct vicinity of radiation and radioactive waste has caused the normal reactions that B-Movie radioactive goo would cause (as opposed to actual radioactive material) including melting faces, complete 180 personality changes, and toxic sludge leaking in the basement. It gets worse when a group of former honor students who call themselves the Cretons start selling weed that was grown on the lawn of the plant. Hallucinations, toxic waste and a giant monster await the viewer in what is the most tasteless, disgusting, and downright cheap film I have ever seen. To put it bluntly, as B-movies go, it was just stupid.
The story is just non-existent. We’re not here to see a story about the troubles of living next to radioactive waste; we’re here to see our lead shove his fist down the bad-guy’s throat while high on Atomic Weed. We don’t care that the plant is being crooked with the media and hiding information; we care that our main villain just beat up a defenseless woman after they stole her purse. This movie isn’t here to present a narrative, it’s here to shock and disgust you with as many ‘wtf’ moments as it can cram into an hour and thirty minutes. I hated every second of it and found myself painfully indifferent to who would live and would die in this movie.
Though my true indifference came from the fact that I hated everyone in this movie. Our main teenage protagonists are either boring, gullible or, in the case of Harold, so sexually abusive that I he’s unworthy of his junk-set. Our villains are, well, villainous, but in a way that’s just too over the top for this kind of movie. I’d have believed that group of 80’s punks were selling weed and sold some grass that was radioactive poison; I refuse to believe it when said group is so destructive, so violent and so obviously breaking the dress-code and haven’t been expelled.
Because this guy would totally be allowed to keep coming to school:
I mean, who wouldn't trust that face?
Spike is just psychotic and would have been sent to jail ages ago; Gonzo, pictured above, would be carted off to the loony bin easily, and Muffy, who's constantly getting up in guys junk, would have been kicked out and pregnant twice over. It’s like they took the most unlikable cliches about a gang and exaggerated them to become bigger and dumber than they used to be.
Furthermore, and this is the death-knell for any B-movie, it’s just not funny. I may have laughed at one or two moments, but otherwise I couldn’t have been more bored as the movie played. The dialogue is stilted, at best, killing whatever attempts at humor this movie may have had. Beyond that, any comedy this movie could have salvaged was instantly dead the minute the Cretons invade the school and began destroying, shooting, and causing general mayhem. Guns in schools are not, nor will they ever be funny; I don’t even think it was funny back then.
With music that sounds like a STOMP reject, camera that is forever shaking and special effects that make a Punch and Judy show look high tech, I cannot recommend this film in good conscious. Mayhaps if the trash-scene is your thing, but it fails even at that. It’s boring, gross. pointless, and just painfully bad. If you want a funny b-movie, go watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space. If you want a teenage power fantasy, go watch Rock and Roll High School (you’ll get better music while you’re at it).
Man, I need to bounce back from this thing. I wanted to go more obscure, but not anymore. I think I will set myself back to rights by looking at yet another one of my favorite films that just happens to be a cult classic.
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