The good, the bad and the subhumanoid; it’s the latest movie from Michael and Lloyd!” blares the title song as the credits mercifully roll on the third outing for cinema’s most radioactive school. It’s a typically meta joke in a film rotten with them and while it’s worked somewhat for the good people at Troma before, this turgid three-way finally sees the fiercely independent film studio sink into the toxic mire of terminal unfunnyness…
All the bouncing titties, green drool and sledgehammer satire in the world are unable to salvage this movie that amounts to little more than the world’s most irritating sex riot you’ve ever seen and it proves once and for all that it’s very possible to make a boring film out of gratuitous nudity and endless fart jokes.
After the attack of Tromie the giant irradiated squirrel devastated the school, the evil Yukamama corporation has retreated to new digs under the control of the sinister Dr Slag PhD, while the control of the gang of violent punks known as the Squirrels has fallen to Lil’ Eggwhite, son of previous leader Yolk (See what I mean about the jokes?). Meanwhile, former hero of the hour Roger Smith is attempting to settle down with his genetically created, Subhumanoid girlfriend who, thanks to her unique biology, gets fully pregnant in no time flat and gives birth to a subhumanoid baby named Adlai who grows to full adulthood in about two years. However after Adlai’s mother dies in childbirth (it’s a comedy, folks!) Dr Slag PhD. discovers that there’s actually twins and with the help of the epically beehived Sr Holt, the woman who created the Subhumanoids in the first place, they take the other child, name him Dick and trains him in the ways of evil.
While Adlai tries to live up to his father’s name by writing in the school paper he feels he’s being neglected by his dad thanks to the fact that he was made mayor (election day in Tromaville must be a fucking nightmare), but one day he discovers he has the awsome power to make one of his hand glow and channel clean energy through it. However, his father decrees that Adlai is now hired to be Tromaville’s sole power source, but sitting in a power plant with his hand stuck inside a reactor only leaves him feeling even more ignored by his dear old dad.
Meanwhile, Dick has discovered he has a similar power and along with a trio of mutant clones in the shape of a wolf, a dragon and some sort of constantly gurgling sea creature as back up, heads out into Tromaville to beat up random people to frame Adlai’s good name. Will Dr Slag PhD’s plan – whatever the hell it actually is; either I missed it or the movie decided not to mention it – either one is possible…
I’m not sure exactly how high you’d have to be to get anything positive from The Good, The Bad And The Subhumanoid, but surely if you were to overdose it would still be way more fun than making it through the endless hour and forty minutes of pointless drivel Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz has produced for us this time round. It’s a given fact that Troma movies are somewhat puerile and poorly made (that’s part of their fucking charm) but Class Of Nuke ‘Em High 3 takes this to the absolute limit with the majority of the jokes delived by people looping stupid one liners in the overdub, which honestly feels less scripted and more like whatever randomly came to mind during the sound mix.
The plot (and I use the term looser than a prolapsed butt-hole) is actually Lloyd Kaufman ripping off the mistaken identity shenanigans of Shakespeare’s A Comedy Of Errors – although I struggle to remember if, at any point, the Bard included quite so many instances of farting asses but I’ll confess it’s been a while since I’ve read him…
Kaufman would go on to riff of history’s greatest playwright with much greater success with 1997’s Tromeo And Juliet and has recently tried again with an adaptation of The Tempest which he’s renamed (wait for it) Shakespeare’s Shitstorm; but here, Kaufman’s obvious affinity is far more subtle – which is the only thing that is…
The fact that the first twenty minutes is pure set up that comes complete with a non-stop voice over from Adlai explaining the plot, just goes to show how bad Troma’s storytelling has gotten and you long for the days when they just got down to the simple stuff of shocking ultra violence mixed with goofy humour without beating us about the head and neck with a constant reminder that Troma are fully aware that they’re deliberately churning out trash. They obviously hope that it’s charming but instead it’s as irritating as someone telling you an unfunny joke and then explaining to you exactly why the joke is supposed to be hilarious while jabbing you directly in the balls with a pool cue.
It’s obvious that the filmmakers also had big plans for lead actor Brick Bronsky thanks to giving the big lug at least three different roles as Adlai, Dick and their father Roger and having him play them all exactly the same (although Dick is far angrier and wears a leather jacket with bones on it). In fact, Troma had him pegged as a star in the making and even staged an actual parade at Cannes to push him to other filmmakers hyping him up as the next big action legend. While this says a lot about how Troma looks after their own, Bronsky had more chance of becoming the next big thing as a rotting dog carcass. He’s good for a Troma movie, but then this is a studio that’s subsequently cast Lemmy from Mötorhead as the President As The United States and Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf as God, so it’s a sliding scale, I guess…
It’s tough to poorly review a movie that’s supposed to be poor by design, but there’s more to Troma simply being amusingly shit.
However, whatever the X factor is that made the original Toxic Avenger and Class Of Nuke ‘Em High movies transcend their rough edges and become stone cold camp classics, it’s noticably absent here and the best parts of The Good, The Bad And The Subhumanoid are unfortunately the footage of a giant, irradiated squirrel wrecking shit from part 2.
Class dismissed.
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