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Reviews
Return to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 (2013)
Troma warmed up
I'm a fan of a lot of Troma movies. Lloyd Kaufman's sense of humor, his critical views on late capitalist society (seriously) and the gross-out gore often really hit the spot for me.
The upside of "Return to Nuke 'Em High" is that quite a bit of that old spirit is alive and kicking. The initial scene (couple has sex and gets gorily dismembered/dissolved) shows this - but is already a bit off. Troma always employed shameless overacting, but here and elsewhere it is taken too far into pure parody.
Troma also always accepted that some jokes would fall flat (OK, that a lot of jokes would be duds), but made up for it with sheer numbers and total insanity what it threw at you. Here, the hit ratio is lower than usual, though.
Troma was further always about the gratuitous nudity, and there is quite a bit here as well. However, the lesbian sex scene between the two (very likable) female leads was neither hot nor funny (and the use of soft-focus was way off if this was in any way intended to play on "Blue is the warmest color").
What's new for Troma is splitting a movie into two parts - and it's not a welcome change. Troma used to be about packing as much into a movie as possible, and here the lackluster pacing is somewhat explained by the "to be continued" (though, kudos for stopping at a shower scene!).
The verdict: If you're a Troma-aficionado, then by all means watch this. It's certainly not their worst release ever. I just found watching it quite a bit less fun than expected, so don't expect too much. If you don't know what Troma is, then watch at least "The Toxic Avenger" (I & IV) and "Troma's War", as both are better movies, before this.
The Final Girls (2015)
harmless fun for slasher fans
Strictly for fans of slasher movies (and meta-movies, if that is a meta- genre by now), this is an overall enjoyable ride through the clichés of slasher camp movies. The overall construct (today's teens get stuck in an 80ies slasher movie) is neat and played well - including the use of black and white flashbacks which first intrude unexpectedly and are then actively used by the protagonists. The acting of the "movie characters" is pleasantly bad and overdone, and the cast generally is good.
Bonus points for not leaving it at the overall construct, but adding a framing story of loss and giving us a (minimal) reason to care for some characters.
Deductions for the lack of gratuitous nudity, sex and actual gore. Come on, it you want to stay true to the genre, then those are a requirement! (If you want to update this, why not throw in some male nudity to balance things out? Not what I'm thrilled by, but better to have sex-balanced smut than none!)
Nurse 3-D (2013)
not fun enough for what it wants to be
Nurses in skimpy uniforms, a killer with a childhood trauma - and lots of blood. Should be fun, right? Fun in that old-fashioned exploitation way - gratuitous nudity, predictable scare scenes, dumb dialogue, overplayed reveals etc.
There's quite a bit of sex, but there's really nothing sexy here (or otherwise smutty in an enjoyable good way). The blood and gore are just lame (digital, for the most part, and not done particularly well), with a large emphasis on spurting blood. Worst of all, the story and its telling neither conform enough to genre patterns to be really interesting to fans nor do they stand up on their own.
There is no overarching plan or style here: The colors are overblown without this leading to an actual distinctive look. No character is developed enough for the viewer to care, yet the entire thing is not gonzo enough to get away on its thrills alone. There is no arch of suspense at any point.
In the end, unless you are a genre completist, go google some best-of lists in the horror genre and watch something off these instead. There are certainly much better options. (If you just want cheap blood, gore and female breasts, then there are numerous Troma titles available legally on Youtube which are so much more fun than this.)
The Editor (2014)
One giant giallo in-joke - which wore thin for me
This only makes sense if you are a fan of Italian "giallo" movies (Argento, Fulci, Bava etc.) If you have watched a lot of these then you will immediately feel familiar with the visual style, the soundtrack, the acting, the bad dialogue overdubs, the often wooden acting. Production-wise, this is a faithful recreation of the originals, and generally competently executed.
The problem is that it somewhat stops there. It wants to be both a homage and a prohibited-by-IMDb-term-for-urine-take at the same time, but for me failed at both. There are plenty of good scenes, but the number of direct quotes and allusions to old movies means that it is stylistically to uneven to fully enjoy as a homage, and the jokes mostly fell flat for me.
My advice: Give this a try if you're a giallo fan, but have one of the originals ready in case the joke runs out halfway for you. Otherwise: Stay well away - this will be completely incomprehensible to you.