Seriously, these four films are not your everyday fun horror comedies. They are most definitely…imbalanced.
DECAMPITATED (1998)
Decampitated is a low-budget indie slasher comedy that Troma got its hands on, so not surprisingly, it’s a mess. A spoof of backwoods horror, it has a bunch of kids on a camping trip being stalked by a masked killer.
Yep. This is the killer….
If only it were that easy. While there are moments of humor here, the movie just rambles on and on, with the actors running around the woods for an hour and a half, seeming to be murdered, but then reappearing with all their wounds. It’s farcical, slapstick, and totally aimless. The “script” cannot sustain the run time at all.
Not surprisingly, as a Troma film, there’s plenty of wacky gore, some fart humor, and of course, a tranny. And yes, it’s okay to say tranny in the context of a Troma film. Actually, it’s mandatory. In true stereotypical creep fashion, this tranny abducts the hottest member of the group, played by one Jonathon Scott, who did very little after this film. Eventually, the group turns the tables on the tranny, subjecting him to several jabs about his identity. It, like the rest of the movie, isn’t even funny in a crass way. It’s just dumb.
STREET TEAM MASSACRE (2007)
This piece of Troma trash comes from the guys who brought us the gay Bigfoot movie Yeti: A Love Story and features very brief cameos by Roddy Piper and George Hardy of Troll 2! Also present is Lloyd Kaufman, and naturally, he gets anal, talking about douching…and also beats off to gorilla porn.
As for the plot, a promotional team for an energy drink is trying to find the perfect place to do business, and think they’ve found it when they are invited to a big party. Turns out it’s really a small redneck gathering at a barn. But once they start downing the energy drink, the party starts. Everyone turns into flesh hungry cannibal zombies!
A majority of Street Team Massacre feels like typical Troma low-budget camcorder crap, with tons of adolescent jokes and behavior. But once everyone starts turning, the movie really feels like an old school low-budget zombie flick with plenty of cheesy gore, some good humor (I particularly love the outhouse scene), and even a tragic turn of events for the characters. And keep an eye out for the subtle gay moments, including two guys holding hands.
PSYCHO SLEEPOVER (2008)
Troma and the same guys who brought us Street Team Massacre (along with much of the cast) take on classic slumber party slashers. My absolute favorite moment has is the opening, when our main girl Debbie’s boyfriend is trying to get her to give him a blowjob. A few minutes later, she’s chased by a killer clown, her boyfriend is murdered, and we flash to…
One year later…1986! Debbie is still suffering nightmares of the horrific event when she is invited by three girls (actually, two chicks and a guy in drag) to a slumber party.
They watch horror movies, gossip, and then the boys come over. And the most memorable sex scene? A guy jerking off while looking in a mirror.
Unfortunately, dozens of mental patients in various costumes have escaped from a nuthouse and head to the slumber party as well. That’s right. It’s a slumber party slasher with uncountable killers.
It’s as chaotic, raucous, and confusing as you can imagine. There’s cheesy gore galore, including a very unique castration, and even several twists. In fact, they are so twisty I’m not even sure what the actual ending was. Headache inducing for sure.
GROWING OUT (2009)
At first glance, Growing Out seems like a cool premise for what’s going to be a great dark horror comedy. A loser musician gets a job caretaking a one-armed man’s house. He’s instructed to leave a sandwich outside the bedroom door of the man’s never-seen aunt every day. There’s a bizarre man with a growth on his neck living in a trailer home in the yard. There’s a pretty young guitar player in the park…who’s missing a finger…and visits the guy in the trailer home each day.
And then there’s the live hand sticking out of the floor in the basement. The musician discovers he has to feed that too, which causes it to begin growing out of the floor like a flower…budding into an actual man.
The piling on of creepy situations and weird characters in the house is pretty much totally wasted. The movie makes us sit through numerous acoustic guitar and vocal performances by the main character, which painfully drags down the pacing. And while he has a few creepy dreams to throw in some faux scares, the “horror” elements of the film never pan out.
This is pretty much just a movie about a burnout losing his shit. Even the final scene—involving an axe—doesn’t make this anything resembling any subgenre of horror.
