All I Need to Know about Film Making from the Toxic Avenger

The maker of such class B motion pictures as The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet presents a manual for aspiring independent horror filmmakers on a tight budget and recounts his own strange career. Original.

"When in doubt, vomit green foam" is the motto of the B-movie empire, Troma Studios, the brainchild of Kaufman and Michael Herz, whose exploitation hits, Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High and Tromeo & Juliet, today clutter the midnight movie section of most video rental shops. Here, Kaufman traces his lifelong dedication to big-screen gore, disfigurement, mutation and raunchy sex from his days in the Yale film society as a disaffected undergrad in the mid-1960s (where he made a feature-length film that consisted mainly of a braless woman jogging) to his present career as a leading impresario of bad taste. After a stint with Cannon, a low-budget studio in New York City, Kaufman launched Troma out of a broom closet he rented from McCall's magazine in 1974, while taking mainstream Hollywood jobs on the side, including acting as pre-production supervisor on Rocky. The Toxic Avenger, produced in 1982, catapulted Troma into the international limelight and has since become an icon of fringe cinema, spawning merchandise, a Saturday morning cartoon and hours and hours of ongoing late-night cable exposure. Not content to recount his story in linear fashion, Kaufman free-associates on such topics as the "erotic components of colostomy bags" and the pitfalls of Hollywood cinema. Kaufman's gross-out humor and rambling style will wear thin for all but the most devoted Troma fans, but his perspective on independent film production stands to benefit low-budget auteurs everywhere. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Troma studio and Kaufman, its founder, probably go unreferenced in most libraries' film history collections. Let that be no disincentive to acquiring this account of a prolific and spirited producer of schlock cinema. From the Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke 'em High series to the more recent Tromeo & Juliet and Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy, Troma has delivered the goods as far as grotesque costumes, maniacal (or nonexistent) plots, and gratuitous partial nudity are concerned. Kaufman and writing buddy Gunn's sprightly overview of Kaufman's "art" is perforce a case history from a segment of the U.S. film industry whose most famous denizens are John (Pink Flamingos) Waters and Russ (The Vixens) Meyer and whose wares exemplify sexploitation, perhaps, but hardly hard core porn. Featuring glimpses of the early careers of Billy Bob Thornton, Melissa Tomei, and others who have gone on to bigger things; claims of influence on big time film directors; and Troma's patented assortment of nymphomaniacs, surf Nazis, and sleazy monsters, this is not-to-be-missed pop culture stuff. Mike Tribby