It's time to draw Cronenberg month to a close, and I thought a suitable way to wrap things up would be to take a look at the debut feature from Cronenberg Junior. Yes, I know Brandon Cronenberg has a newer film out in Possessor, but there'll be a time and a place for that later on. For now, let's look at where it all began for Brandon with 2012's Antiviral.

Antiviral takes place in an unspecified near future and follows Syd March, who works at a clinic that specialises in diseases. More specifically, they take bugs and infections that celebrities have had and sell them on to their most ardent fans at a premium price. It's a fascinating concept – especially looking back at the movie from a viewpoint in the 2020s – and if anything this vision of the future feels far closer now than it did on the movie's release. However Syd gets himself into rather more than he bargained for when he gets involved with Hannah Geist, one of the clinic's biggest seller who is now rather severely ill. Having collected a sample from her for the company, Syd decides to inject himself with it – inadvertently making himself a pawn in a bizarre game of industrial intrigue much larger than he could have imagined...

Antiviral is a pretty striking offering on a number of fronts, certainly visually, where its colour palette is often fascinatingly pared down. The world of Antiviral has a clinical, almost medicinal look for long periods. The performances are generally strong, with some fine cameo turns and a solid central turn from the bleak, nihilistic Syd as depicted by Caleb Landry Jones. But the real strength of this movie for me lies in its core concept – it's mighty Cronenbergian, and sure shows that the apple did not fall far from the tree. It may not go in your face body horror – although that element is doubtless there – but the backdrop of paranoia and doubt and obsession is all there in droves, as are the soft science-fiction flourishes. In short, I loved this movie, for all these reasons and one more – and not one I wave around lightly. Watching this one back on the back of a JG Ballard kick, this one literally feels like a Ballard story brought to life – although of course it's not based on one. But the deep obsession with celebrity and the twisted need to feel close to them conveniently marries up elements of Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition, and even the somewhat gentler Vermillion Sands, to absolutely great effect. This one almost invites a larger world, although I'm not aware of any plans to return to the setting – that's not to say it's at all unsatisfying in its current form, but a few shorts or a limited TV series would certainly pique my interest.

There were some small quibbles – the dialogue was sometimes a bit too quiet to really hear without cranking the volume up to the max, and the endeavours of some of the smaller side characters felt a bit unclear – I'd have liked more detail on some of those, as I'm sure at one point there was a guy selling celebrity meat (or presumably meat bred from celebrities) and that feels kind of big to glaze over. But those aside, there's a lot here is you're a fan of Cronenberg Sr, or even JG Ballard, or just strange dystopian sci-fi full stop.

RATING: 9/10. Just my type of film really, and feels like a really fitting modernisation of so many of the concepts that David Cronenberg used. While you can spot that family flourish, Brandon does manage to do something different here, indeed something unique that I've not seen before. As an exploration of an excellent core idea, this one really does its job well – it's stylish, it's pacy, it's well-acted and leaves you wanting more without leaving you feeling frustrated, which is certainly no easy feat to achieve! You could say my enthusiasm for this one was infectious (I know, I know) and I'm delighted to award this one 9/10.

Welcome back to Cronenberg month – because why the hell shouldn't May be Cronenberg month? - with a step back in time from our series opener, where we took a look at 1979's The Brood. Today we move on to the director's second feature length movie (perhaps third if you want to include 1970's Crimes of the Future) in Rabid. This story could be seen as something of an alternative zombie outbreak movie, although as I'm writing this review with a pandemic still sort of rumbling on there's elements here that do feel like they hit a bit too close to home. Anyway, I've done my damnedest not to hold that against it. I'm positively foaming at the mouth to watch it, so let's get stuck in!

The story begins with a bang – quite literally – with young Hart and Rose driving on their motorcycle when they have a high-speed crash. Rose is almost gone, but Hart gives permission for her to undergo a highly experimental plastic surgery. This sort of thing may sound a little familiar to  regular Cronenberg viewers, but I suppose at this point this core concept was relatively new. However the surgery has rather unexpected effects in turning young Rose into patient zero for a new sort of zombie plague, one where the victims still look relatively normal but still have the same burning desire to spread the plague to more and more people. It's not long until the whole local area is under lockdown, with martial law being enforced, and oh boy does it feel uncomfortable with some of the context that is fresh in the collective memory of 2020. The strange virus continues to spread while Hart tries to reconnect with Rose in a city rapidly falling into disorder, but will the two lovers be able to find each other once again?

I've watched most of Cronenberg's work by now, and honestly I have to say this one really feels like one of the weakest. It almost feels like it can't quite decide what it is – you couldn't call it a zombie film in the way that would satisfy fans of that particular subgenre, and while there are some bloody scenes there's probably not enough here for any of you serious gorehounds out there. Equally I don't feel like the emotional and personal story of Hart and Rose is really that well done to invest me in them as characters, and the many side characters we meet along the way just feel kind of like collateral damage waiting to happen rather than anything that integral to the story. I couldn't really make any connection to the finale, which made limited sense to me. Even the pandemic side of it just feels like background noise, and never really coming to fruition as a full element of the story. It occurs to me this actually bears a lot in common with Paul Tremblay's newest book Survivor Song, which I think pulls off the balance significantly better. There's nothing stinkingly wrong with it, but I did just find it a bit overlong and boring and a little hard to really invest in significantly as a viewer. Like I say, there are a handful of holes in the Cronenberg watch history, but this feels like it could well be the poorest.

RATING: 5/10. It's unlikely a director like this would ever score anything horribly bad, and even this one – which I have criticised above – has enough panache and flair and sufficient decent moments to be in the ballpark of being average. It just feels like it wanders and meanders a little, and can't quite decide what sort of film it ultimately wants to be, so more focus could have helped this one climb significantly higher. I've not seen the remake – I do tend to avoid that sort of thing on the whole – but if it maybe looked at one element a little more strongly than some of the others it could be an interesting watch. I'll mark that one down for some point in the future, but for now Rabid doesn't really get me into any kind of frenzy at 5/10.

2021 rolls into May now, and that brings us to Cronenberg month! Why Cronenberg month, I hear you cry? Because I say so, and what I so goes around these parts, that's why. In all seriousness, I've long been a fan of David's work, and son Brandon is also carving out a remarkably similar niche as something of an outsider producing really interesting films. It's some legacy, and through May I'll be starting with the work of the senior Cronenberg before moving onto a little something from Cronenberg Junior. And we're going back to the early days – although not the director's very first movie – with The Brood. This cast is led rather notably by Oliver Reed, who on reflection could probably have a themed month of his own around these parts – but what gravitas can this acclaimed
actor lend to this slice of body horror?

The Brood is a story about Frank Carveth, whose wife is undergoing a very unusual psychological treatment known as psychoplasmics, led by Oliver Reed's Dr Raglan. She's obviously been through plenty of trauma, as have many of the other inhabitants to the institute, but Raglan's relationships with the patients and their interactions make for plenty uncomfortably viewing. Frank begins to get a sense of just what danger his wife Nola might be in as the movie wears on, but there's an even more immediate threat than that as some of the dearest people around him get killed of one by one, murdered by strange, child-like shapes that we see very little of until the finale. As Frank desperately tries to get to his wife and end whatever bizarre force is destroying his and his daughter's life, there's a larger danger that could see them both dead...

There's good odds many of you out there might have seen this one already, but for those of you about 42 years late to the party I am going to endeavour to keep things spoiler free. This is an interesting piece, as it is a sort of body horror but that element is downplayed far more here than you might see in movies the likes of Videodrome and Scanners. There are certainly some gory moments, but only the one that really pushes into the flat-out grotesque. It's honestly more about the psychology and the connections between the characters, which does make it a pretty interesting movie. Reed is solid here as the creepy psychologist, and his patients – including a great turn from Samantha Eggar as Nola – do a fine job of portraying their distress along with the weird inter-dependence to the leader of psychoplasmics. Art Hindle as Frank Carveth is perfectly passable, and I want to give a nod to child actor Cindy Hinds too. Sometimes the children's performances can be a stumbling block in such movies, but not here.

There are some criticisms and niggles here and there – some of the lesser characters are maybe a little undercooked, which feels like a shame. The idea of psychoplasmics is never entirely clear to me, and I would have liked to have known more. My main reservation would probably be that the actual real body horror element is less than I would like – there might be a bit of personal taste in there, but it does play an important part in things, so it's still a valid point to me. Other than that, there's honestly very little to complain about. It's fair to say that this one doesn't quite hit the heights of some of the director's work into the 80s, but it remains well worth a watch today.

RATING: 7.5/10. Certainly a strange and interesting offering, and a movie that has many of the Cronenberg trademarks before we came to truly know them as Cronenberg trademarks. It's got the odd branch of medicine, the strange creatures and the distinctive element of body horror – if subtler here than you might associate with the director's work. It doesn't smash everything out of the park, but it held my attention all the way through and there's enough good here (especially if you do like the director's work subsequent this one) to ensure it has value investing your time in.

I've never quite understood how these double titles things happen – I mean maybe in the days of VHS there was value in trying to ape the title of a more successful movie, not to mention the many unofficial sequels that we tended to see back in the 70s and 80s. But why this should happen in 2018 I've never really grasped – maybe it's different names for different markets? Anyway, I watched this via Sky Cinema as Nobody Leaves, though when I look that title up on IMDB it sends me right to Braid. So there you go – one movie, two identities. And this was one of those movies that I went into knowing literally nothing about – just sounded like something that would fit the bill for us here at Film Gutter. And in the end... well... it was and wasn't.

Let's start with the story – Petula and Tilda are two twenty-somethings forced to abandon a large drug shipment in their apartment when the police come knocking. While they do escape arrest, they have what might be a larger problem – being $83,000 dollars in debt to a dealer by the name of Coco. They try and come up with some way to get the money, but only come up with one – to visit the home of their wealthy but disturbed childhood friend Daphne, who has been effectively playing a childhood game the three partook in ever since her younger days. As the pair arrive, they determine that they have to play along for enough time to find Daphne's safe before getting away with that stack of cash to pay Coco back – but the strange game itself is a threat to all three of them.

Now, on the surface that might sound relatively simple, and I am probably underplaying the complexity of this movie for two reasons – firstly I'm a little reticent to spoil everything that goes on here, and secondly because I don't really understand much else of what is going on here. The film certainly goes for a unique style – lots of smash cuts, strange colour palettes and trippy effects to accompany the various drug freak-outs of the characters – and almost all the dialogue and interaction does have a strange, stylised feel to it that doesn't quite seem to fit the real world.

The issue for me is that it just feels like nothing hangs together – I came to the end of this one totally baffled, and in all honesty by about halfway I was pretty much disinvested in what was going on. It doesn't feel coherent, and sadly seems as though the focus is more on cool and weird visuals than it is on stringing a plot together you can penetrate and characters you can bring yourself to care about. Nothing feels like it really matters before too long, and too much is just left dangling unexplained that could desperately have done with a revisit before the credits rolled.

RATING: 2.5/10. Don't get me wrong – I'm not averse to experimentation. In fact regular readers will know exactly how highly I respect movies trying something new, but it should be done for some kind of a reason. Nobody Leaves feels like it's trying to be different for the sake of being different, and that sadly is an idea that very rarely lands. It's ultimately just rather a mess, which again is not automatically a criticism – last week's movie Meat Grinder was kind of a mess, but it was bleak and compelling and still had some sort of logic to it. There was a reason it was like that. A movie can be a wild, exciting mess, or an entertaining mess, but sadly this one is neither. Everyone involved is no doubt trying hard, but if you can make head or tail of this one then you're doing a lot better than me. There was promise here in this concept, but less style and more substance was needed here – a simpler story and less flashy touches and this could have scored much higher, but with all its fundamental flaws I can only grade this one a 2.5/10.

Unless I'm much mistaken, Meat Grinder has the honour of being the first Thai film I've covered in this series – certainly not a conscious decision, as I'm always researching and looking for movies to add to the list before even trying to find out where I can actually watch it. But let me say this – if they're all up to this level, it certainly won't be my last. However, this one comes with a public health warning, because this movie is absolutely as dark as f**k. And you should all know by now that's not a claim I make lightly.

Meat Grinder follows the story of Buss, a young woman under much financial duress, with a child at home and what appears to be a pretty unsuccessful noodle cart business that keeps her out of the house most of the day. It also goes into her absolutely nightmarish childhood – and some of these scenes were so uncomfortable to watch, not necessarily on the visual gore/torture level, but on the psychological level some of this stuff will not soon be forgotten. Unfortunately she hands down flashes of this treatment to her daughter, and Buss tends to ultimately calm herself by immersing herself in a water barrel to almost the point of drowning. But the nightmarishness doesn't stop there, oh no. Because after a crazy riot breaks out around her in town, she finds a body in the bottom section of her cart – and she's not one to waster perfectly good meat...

From there, her business flourishes, to a point where she converts her house into a bustling noodle bar, but sadly those she owes money to are not willing to let things lie. And that's without mentioning suspicion falling on her over the missing young man that made up her first batch of 'special noodles'...

It's honestly a pure coincidence that this one is a second cannibal movie of the month, but this one is very different to The Last Supper. That one was a tale of debauchery from a man in a position of privilege, while Meat Grinder is a traumatic story of abuse and pressure leading one woman to a single, horrifying decision. There are times you almost sympathise with Buss, despite her heinous crimes, because of everything that has gone on in her past – and that's good storytelling however you slice it.

As much as there was that I liked, I don't want to go totally overboard, because there were limitations – it did rather jump all over the place time-wise, leaving me confused here and there, and some of the side performances don't quite back up a great central turn by Mai Charoenpura as Buss. She's quiet and taciturn much of the time, but with this simmering sense of rage and injustice ready to explode at any time. The music was pretty jarring in many places, and sort of knocked the mood the film was presenting at times. There were a good number of surprises en route though, and if you like your cinema deeply grim and unpleasant – both emotionally and visually – this could be worth you digging out for a watch.

RATING: 8.5/10. I can't help but think that if this movie had been a bit more linear, and put a bit more time into just hanging together better, this could have been well towards top marks. As it is, this is a fine movie that offers a distinctly bleak look into a life all-but ruined by cruelty from both parents and spouse, with that darkness spiralling into the modern-day of its protagonist. Some of the performances from characters on the fringes do hold things back a bit, but I don't want to mark down too badly because the majority do a good to great job. Brace yourself though – while it is compelling, it is literally no fun at all and might even be one of those that actively puts a dent in your mood. I know next to nothing about Thai cinema, but based on this I might just have to explore its horror movies a little more deeply...

Two things to say before I start – I've always liked horror short films, and have tried throughout the five or so years of Film Gutter to bring the focus to them where I can. It's not always easy to find that many that are particular extreme, but I've always enjoyed watching them where they fit the bill. Ultimately it's never been a hardship for me to review something in the milieu.

Secondly, if I'm trawling my way through Amazon Prime and I see the name JACK KETCHUM on the front page of the movie, it's dollars to doughnuts that I'm going to click it. This short film is based on an equally short story by one of the most acclaimed horror writers of his generation, so had to be worth at least a look – especially bearing in mind this is the mind that brought us movies like The Woman and The Girl Next Door. So let's dive in, shall we?

Mail Order tells the story of Howard, who is quickly established as a sort of douchebag, one of those stock market wheeler-dealery types with more money than morality. Hats off for getting that across so quickly. Unfortunately he's even slimier than that, as with his work done he proceeds to open a package and play a snuff film he's ordered. But something there gives him pause – although honestly he probably should have paused long before the act of hitting play. Anyway, he recognises the women on the tape as ex-girlfriend Greta, with whom he had a pretty brief dalliance that ended when he tried to get a bit too aggressive in the bedroom. We see all this in flashback, and it's decently enough done structure-wise. But there's a final surprise to come, and Howard bumps into Greta in an alleyway – which he seems weirdly blasé about – but she's certainly not forgotten what he did to her...

Honestly I felt like I preferred the opening section of this film to the closing, which was a bit hard to fully grasp at the time, although I think you can make sense of given some time and thought about it. Still, the central premise is a decent one, and that's a word I'd use for about everything here – decent. There's a small cast and crew involved, and clearly things have been done on a budget – very common in this section of the industry. The acting performances are perfectly fine, and everything looks OK without really excelling in the camerawork or visual elements. You can tell it's a Ketchum from its overall bleak tone and some of its content, so if you like the author's work you might get that bit more out of it again. But ultimately this was a movie that did a solid enough job of everything, and was worth the quarter of an hour or so that I invested in it.

RATING: 6/10. Funnily enough IMDB seems to have landed on 6.2/10 (at the time of writing) and that feels pretty fair. Mail Order is not likely to rock your world, but it's perfectly watchable and entertaining for what it is out to achieve. It probably won't be your go to Ketchum adaptation – although it has some extremely stiff competition in that regard – but for afficionados it should be a good watch, and indeed it's worth checking out even if that's not the case. You can go and find it on Amazon Prime if you'd like to take a look for yourself – no need to mail off for it or anything...

As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time scrolling through streaming services seeking out movies to review, and when this one popped up on Amazon Prime I had an immediate sense of deja vu. It took a minute or two to figure out why, but this was a movie that I'd seen a couple of years prior at the Paracinema Film Festival here in my home town of Derby (and indeed my home venue of QUAD). I don't know quite why I didn't review it at the time – I'd packed in a lot of films over those few days, and it's possible I was just feeling a bit overloaded to review that much. But I figured this would give me a second chance to check this one and give it the spotlight I maybe should have previously.

Hippopotamus as a film is pretty small in scale, following kidnapper Tom and his captor, Ruby. She wakes up in a locked room, chained and completely discombobulated with both legs broken to negate any chance of escape. Tom tells her the same thing many, many times – you can only leave here once you've fallen in love with me. So far it's not a revelatory concept, although the performances are decent enough to carry this one in general, and the short runtime does help things along to some extent. Of course you then have to throw in the fact that she has forgotten everything due to retrograde amnesia – and you will just have to stretch to accept that old filmic device if you're going to get anything out of this one – and although it is pivotal to the plot here as a device it does always leave me feeling bit incredulous.

I felt like I really wanted to like this movie – while I have seen a lot of these 'kidnapper vs kidnapee' cat and mouse sort of films, if someone does have a fresh spin I can certainly be talked into enjoying something. This one is obviously low-budget, but not in a way that feels in your face – everything looks decent, while keeping the cast and effects to a minimum. But it does feel like even at 77 minutes the plot is a bit slight to carry its runtime, and as more and more is revealed it does feel as though things get harder to believe. The closing part of the scene are a long sort of flashback and as a conclusion feels really unsatisfactory, and dare I say illogical, jolting my suspension of disbelief many times. Hippopotamus is basically OK if a bit slow for an hour, and then really seems to fall apart in its last quarter of an hour. It does feel as though a potentially interesting concept does get a bit flushed away, which is a shame because I think this movie could have ranked higher if we could have taken it home that bit better. It's maybe angling to be something a little like Pet, which I slightly preferred, but doesn't land it quite as well.

RATING: 4.5/10. I feel like the rating for this one has gone down and down the more I've thought about it, although I didn't want to be too hard on it because there were certainly ideas and indeed performances here I liked. However I'm not quite so willing to forgive it for a clumsy, heavy-handed ending that really detracted from what had happened rather than adding to it. If you're particularly into movies with this kind of set-up, you might still get something from it, but there are better examples out there. I doubt this one will cramp your mood severely, but it's hard to see it living too long in the memory either – ironically, given what the movie is about. As I mentioned previously, you can watch this one free with your Amazon Prime subscription if you wanted to go and check it out for yourself. Overall this one comes out a little below average at 4.5/10.

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Before you ask, no, Film Gutter hasn't suddenly started to delve into religious movies – although this and many others might have had us saying 'Oh my god' here and there. In fact there's very little of any religious persuasion in The Last Supper, a fairly obscure Japanese offering following a plastic surgeon/cannibal who tells his story as a sort of confessional diary. If the idea of cannibalism makes you distinctly uneasy, now might be a good time to turn back from this particular review.

On the surface Dr Yuji Kotarida seems to have it all – highly revered and idolised in this field, about to be profiled by a significant TV channel and seemingly having women fall at his feet everywhere he goes. But this move doesn't mince words (if you'll forgive the phrasing), as we kick off with him brutally beheading a date with a massive cleaver. From there most of the story is in flashback, with the doctor tracking back to where it all began, with him cooking and eating fat removed by liposuction (it sounds gross and it is gross here, trust me). He then retells the growth of his obsession for human meat, and the many women he cooks and eats – from a suicide victim he found in a forest through to a woman he paid a large amount of money for the privilege (which went to her struggling family, it appears) to more recent victims he has knowingly and deliberately killed. In fact, it seems human meat is about all he eats. But when a woman close to him goes missing, he comes under ever closer scrutiny from the police and his gruesome, heinous crimes are at risk of being unveiled...

I can't move on without talking about the horrible dub on this – I'm stuffed if I could find any subtitles, which I would have far preferred. But apart from that there was a lot I liked here, and I've made a conscious version not to hold the English dub against this film here. Some of the delivery is so underwhelming and underplayed it sounds like either the voice actors new saw it in context, or they were doing this dub at the end of a super-long working day. Yet this was an interesting movie, with a sort of macabre humour running through it at times. It's one of those 'not for everyone' movies, but I found it held my attention strongly. Some of the plotline above might sound outlandish, but in its context it works and takes you on from relatively minor indiscretions to full-on atrocities committed by our charismatic lead. Many people who visit him talk about just how good the meat he prepares is, without knowing its hideous secret of course. It moves along at a good lick, and while the end is maybe a bit convoluted there are a couple of cracking moments there I am absolutely not going to spoil.

The gore actually isn't too over the top for what it is – in fact it's probably bookended at the start and end by the most gruesome scenes – and much of the middle is suggestion and intimation rather than being horribly in your face. I think that helps it not slip too far into absolute absurdity, and leaves it some impact by the time you come to the closing credits. It's over the top, but not too much so, and whipped along at a good pace with some interesting and original concepts.

RATING: 8.5/10. This one was certainly a pleasant surprise, given just how little I knew about it before watching it. It's pretty macabre and ghoulish, but does keep a strong pace and has some little flashes of very dark humour that I'm sure some of my hardened readers will enjoy. I can't really tell you any one element was particularly special, but every aspect of it – acting, pacing, visuals, sound, concept – ultimately ranged from good to excellent, so this one does rank pretty highly. I feel like it almost earned half a mark for its striking closing moments too – which I'm still not spoiling! A very strong 8.5/10 for this one.

BY ALEX DAVIS 

Well, all good things must come to an end, and here we are at the epic conclusion of Tro-March. And after the joys of killer condoms and rabid grannies, I’m going to stick to the familiar today with a second visit to Tromaville for Class of Nuke Em High II: Subhumanoid Meltdown. I enjoyed the first one fine – without it really rocking my world – and honestly I was expecting more of the same here. Honestly because this was a sequel I thought this would probably be a little worse, but I was rather proven wrong here. In fact, much to my surprise, I enjoyed this one mightily.

Nuke Em High II picks up a number of years after the huge explosion that took out both the Tromaville Nuclear Facility, and the nearby high school, but never fear – both have been rebuilt, strangely enough within the same premises – because why not incorporate those two things together? Our story follows ace (school newspaper) reporter Roger Smith, a buff surfer guy also looking to get laid at every turn, to no avail I should add. The school itself is even more crazy than the previous film, and it almost feels better for going that much more extravagant. One of the things for me that makes this film an improvement on part one is its wry and self-knowing humour – Troma pokes plenty of fun at itself here, and that sort of fourth-wall breaking has always been something I’ve enjoyed in movies.

Anyway, deep inside the nuclear plant, the dean and an evil professor are building up a race of subhumanoids – mostly distinguished apart from humans by the additional mouth they have where their bellybuttons should be. Our intrepid lead Roger Smith falls for Victoria after taking part in an – ahem – ‘experiment’, and when everything goes to hell again at Tromaville High School he’s determined to save his beloved. And what exactly is it they’re under the most threat from? Why, a giant toxic squirrel of course!

As I mentioned earlier, this for me feels like a better movie than the first one all round. It is shot a bit cheaper, admittedly, but it really goes all out. I accused the first of pushing that bit too hard, true, but this one sticks the landing by being a much funnier movie and also having a plot that makes sense throughout and setting up all of its key points. Sure, it’s not exactly Shakespeare – we’ll save that one for Tromeo and Juliet – but it at least does all the fundamentals of a plotline right. I loved Brick Bronksy in the lead as Roger Smith, who was absolutely perfect as the dumb blonde with the big ambitions, a perfect epitome of the 80s flipping over into the 90s. For me this is going to be a movie with more memorable moments than its predecessor, so it’s bound to score more.

That’s not to say the movie is without criticisms – some of its montages feel ultimately pointless, and some of the side performances are not all they might have been. The dean’s voice grates on me horribly – although it’s doubtless meant to. But generally these are minor quibbles in a film that never took itself too seriously and delivered a lot of wry smiles and some flat-out belly laughs too. It’s one of those very rare instances where the sequel improves on the first, and now I’m thinking I probably have to complete the trilogy at some point…

RATING: 7.5/10. I can’t go nuts on a rating for this one, as it doesn’t reinvent the wheel or make me think differently about anything, but I had a lot of fun and that counts for plenty. It does a better job of making sense – and that is still important even in a weird gross-out comedy like this – and the main performances were far more likeable here than the one that kicked off the trilogy. I’ll be happy to head back to school if the third one can deliver at this sort of level – and that review will be coming some time soon I’m sure. It’s more of a B grade for this one at 7.5/10.

Tro-March continues on apace as we come to one of the label’s better-known movies – maybe only behind the likes of Tromeo and Juliet, The Toxic Avenger and Sgt Kabukiman NYPD – in the form of Class of Nuke Em High. The title in many ways tells you what you’re about to get into, and this one was obviously a hit because we were later treated to two sequels, which is not really all that common where it comes to Troma-land. This one is co-directed by the living legend that is Lloyd Kaufman himself, so this one ought to be absolutely Troma-riffic. So let’s take our seats ready for the school bell, shall we?

Class of Nuke Em High takes place at Tromaville High School, and before I move on I have to say how much I’ve always loved this fictional city of Tromaville. Someone ought to upon up an amusement park or an attraction or something that allows you to tour Tromaville. That can’t just be me, right? What a visitor attraction that would be somewhere over in the US…

Anyway, Tromaville High School is of course filled with all sorts of weird and wonderful characters, with goths, punks, rockers, jocks and many more exaggerated character types besides. The story in the main follows Chrissy and Warren, two of the cooler kids at school and long-time girlfriend and boyfriend. However neither wants to make the first move in the bedroom stakes, much to the amusement and consternation of their respective friends. Their main antagonists are a group of biker punks who do a nice sideline in selling weed at the school. But who provides it, I hear you cry? Well, their supplier is none other than the nearby nuclear power plant – and when they promise their buyers an atomic high, they really mean it. And from here the story descends into the sort of madness you might expect from Troma, and the school finds itself the very epicentre of a nuclear outbreak…

It’s hard to be too critical when you knowingly walk into a b-movie – after all, I can’t say that Class of Nuke Em High hasn’t delivered what it said on the tin. But there are good b-movies, and bad b-movies, and OK b-movies, and this one probably falls into that latter category. For me it takes a little while before we really get the ball rolling with the genuinely off-the-wall stuff, and sometimes it just feels like it’s trying a bit too hard to be totally outrageous and overblown. Some scenes do just feel eminently random, and add very little rather than showing off a particular effect. There’s a very strange moment in the middle with a miscarriage subplot that feels totally out of place in a horror comedy, and just jolted me out of things for a while. As the story wears on, I also feel like I don’t fully know quite why any of this stuff is happening – it’s a cavalcade of bizarre visuals and effects, sure, and if you just switch your brain off completely you can get plenty out of it. But I wasn’t quite immersed enough to fully do that, so that nitpicky, critical bit of me was still finding holes here and there. Class of Nuke Em High certainly isn’t toxic waste, but it’s not the finest offering Troma ever put out either.

RATING: 5.5/10. There is some fun to be had here, but it feels like everyone involved is trying that little bit too hard. When we looked at Killer Condom that felt like it made more sense all along, and things felt like they fit within the world of that story. Nuke Em High seems to be so obsessed with grossing you out/and or making you laugh that it throws a lot of other stuff out to achieve that, and I think that with a bit more restraint (does that sound ridiculous when you bear in mind I’m talking about a Troma movie?) would have helped this one along immensely. There’s nothing to ruin your day, or frustrate your horribly, but having watched it recently I’m already finding it’s not going to live awfully long in the memory. So it’s a middling C grade for this one at 5.5/10.