Terror Firmer



In 1998 the Penguin Putman book company was foolish enough to commission Lloyd Kaufman, head of the infamous independent schlock movie company Troma, to write a book giving tips and advice about independent film making. What they got was Everything I Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger a highly entertaining and witty autobiography of Kaufman and a detailed look at his career in the movie industry which arguably far funnier and more intelligent than any movie he’s ever been involved with. Ever. When Terror Firmer was announced, claiming not only to be Kaufman’s magnum opus, but was also based upon his book, it sounded like perhaps the ultimate Troma flick. As the Troma hype machine started kicking into overdrive when the unrated director’s cut was released on DVD, well I couldn’t help myself.

A woman in a mini-skirt and sunglasses is killing people in hideous, awful ways. First she rips off a guy’s leg and beats him to death with it, then she attacks a pregnant woman and removes her unborn child, her third victim is found in a massive pile of breakfast cereal – it really is a cereal killer! GEDDIT? Cue dreadfully forced and insincere laughter! The murderer is moving close to the set of a Troma movie however, and closer to our main characters! There’s Casey (Will Keenan, Tromeo and Juliet) who is forever walking around with a boom mic looking handsome, Jennifer (Alyce LaTourelle) an aspiring director working as a PA on the movie and has a thing for Casey, Christine (Debbie Rochon!) the star of the movie, Jerry (Trent Haaga, love the name!) the special effects and props guy who has a thing for Jennifer, and Larry Benjamin (Lloyd Kaufman) the blind movie director.

Lloyd Kaufman plays a blind director surprisingly well, though judging from his other movies he plays blind directors behind the camera too.

One by one, people connected to the movie start dying as a result of the mysterious woman – the Toddster (TODDSTEEEERRR!!!) is stabbed to death with a broken bong, a really fat movie investor (played by annoying Troma regular Joe Fleishaker) is stuffed into an escalator and disembowelled, a guy has a big light fall on his head and electrocute him, a fat naked guy has a car dropped on his head, it’s a mess. All the while, they’re trying to make a movie, and a love triangle develops between Casey, Jennifer, and Jerry. Even with the police involved nobody knows who is committing the murders, or who might die next due to the killer or merely through the insane working conditions on the movie set. We also get a couple of annoying lapses in logic (yeah, yeah, I know it’s a Troma movie) and about 300,000 other wacky characters in various bit parts, just in case you still hadn’t totally lost track of what’s going on yet.

If you’ve seen any Troma movies you know the deal here – lots of nudity, really bad gore effects, toilet humour, and utter inane and ridiculous performances and stories. The Toxic Avenger series did it, the Class of Nuke ‘Em High series did it, it’s the Troma trademark. The whole point of a Troma movie is excess – an excessive amount of goofiness, gore and nudity thrown at the viewer like some sort of audio/visual food fight. One problem however, this time Lloyd Kaufman and co. have just gone WAY too far. This director’s cut, clocks in at nearly two hours long and goes beyond mere goofy Tromatic excess (I don’t believe I just said ‘Tromatic’, I’ve been TROMATIZED!). While there are flashes of the things that actually made Troma movies fun, Kaufman was clearly trying to make a film which was more than goofy violence and nudity, it seems he wanted to disturb too. This is where the film falls down for me, much of the violence crosses the line from merely being over the top and dumb fun, to becoming mean spirited and unnecessary. If anything, their special effects are getting better and that’s a BAD thing, it makes everything that much more gruesome and nasty, and there’s little of the knowing gooey humour you could normally associate with Troma movies. The film also suffers from just being too darn long, seeing as this is the directors cut, Kaufman has shown very little restraint and bombards us with endless scenes of the film crew talking pointlessly, and philosophising about Troma and its movies. While this isn’t so bad to start with, after a while they start coming off as so incredibly hackneyed and drawn out they just get in the way of the plot.

The crazy non-Tromaness doesn’t stop there however, because while it’s missing the sense of fun and quick pace of other Troma movies, on the hand it has the finest performances to share a movie with the Toxic Avenger and a penis monster. Trent Haaga, in his first ever movie role, is obviously having a blast as the slightly nerdy Jerry and reels off his lines like a b-movie pro. Will Keenan is fantastically smarmy and cool, and overacts like a champ, as does Debbie Rochon who more or less steals every scene she’s in as the prima donna b-movie actress turned insecure slut. Alyce LaTourelle is also great in a totally non-Troma kind of way as the relatively innocent and sweet Jennifer, totally unprepared for the world of the Troma movie set, she could very easily go on to do bigger things. Lloyd Kaufman is also good as Larry Benjamin, even though its fairly obvious he’s playing a blind version of himself, he gets to recite a pretty cool monologue part of the way during the film which totally sums up Troma and his movie making philosophy, clearly his best performance since Mr T’s body double in Rocky 3. If it wasn’t for the dedication and fun that these performers put into the movie, it really would have been a total lost cause.

So, while its admirable that Lloyd Kaufman wanted to finally diversify his style somewhat and go beyond what we expect from Troma, it just seems that he kept with the old style for so long because he’s just not very good at anything else. I know that might seem harsh, and normally I would be very encouraging of movie makers going beyond what is expected of them (look at Tetsuo creator Shinya Tsukamoto’s excellent Gemini for instance) but Terror Firmer just comes off as pretentious. It was almost like Kaufman and co. had this great idea, but really didn’t have the skill or expertise to follow it through properly. The result tries to be many things but often fails to even entertain on even the most base level, the sudden jarring switches between dumb toilet humour and surprisingly graphic violence just make the film incredibly uneven, the occasional flashes of brilliance all too rare. All in all this is a pretty big disappointment, suggesting that Troma might indeed be a one trick pony, but we like them that way gosh darn it!