Having run out of frightening ideas, much of the early 1990s horror turned to campy, crappy, and crude horror and exploitation comedy. And nobody did it better than Fred Olen Ray and Troma!
EVIL TOONS (1992)
Fred Olen Ray managed to get David Carradine, Dick Miller, and Arte Johnson to appear in this ridiculous flick about a bunch of chicks cleaning up an old house—and unleashing a big hairy cartoon monster from a demonic book.
That’s pretty much the plot. The four main chicks spend much of the movie in nothing but thongs, but that somehow doesn’t stop them from being rather funny and entertaining. But the show is ultimately stolen by the cartoon monster, done Who Framed Roger Rabbit? style within the live action film.
Tragically, this pervy cartoon character is only featured for a few minutes when he is first released from the book and then again in the last few minutes of the film, when he unleashes a series of funny one-liners.
Truth is, the cartoon monster possesses one of the chicks who then runs around in her thong biting everyone in the neck with her cool new demon teeth. She also rips the shirts off any chicks she attacks.
Any men in the movie just have short cameos, and even b-movie queen Michelle Bauer makes a pointless, tit-flashing cameo. Actually, it’s rather pointy.
Evil Toons is pure stupid fun and is the perfect flick if you’re in a nostalgic mood.
TROMEO & JULIET (1996)
Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma crew remake Shakespeare’s classic and set it in modern New York. It’s like West Side Story all over again! NOT!
Tromeo & Juliet is exactly what you’d expect—crass, gross, gory, sexually perverse. So if you’re into that sort of schlock, this is the perfect way to learn the story of the tragic lovers—although, by today’s standards, it’s all pretty routine.
The biggest problem with the movie is that it runs way too long at an hour and forty-seven minutes. Sorry, but Troma films should barely top an hour and fifteen minutes. Anything longer than that and it all just starts to wear thin.
With Tromeo & Juliet you get:
- Will Keenan, most recently of the horror comedy Chop, as Tromeo.
- Lemmy of Motorhead as the narrator.
- Debbie Rochon as Juliet’s sister/lesbian lover.
- Tiffany Shepis’s movie debut if you watch close enough.
- Nipple piercing.
- Fart and shit humor and sound effects.
- Tromeo beating off to marriage porn.
- A penis monster.
- A drag queen at a party scene.
- Water sports and dismemberment during the gang fight.
- A gay kiss between Tromeo and his best friend.
- An Asian herbalist…who’s black.
- A boy-loving priest.
- Vomit spewing.
- A zombie pig Juliet (?).
- Tromeo’s butt.
It all sounds awesome, right? It would have been better if it had been crammed into an hour and fifteen minutes. But I must say, the twist ending (yes, the story of Romeo & Juliet gets a twist) is so ridiculously Troma that it makes up for the excessive running time. Although, you can pretty much predict the turn of events….
