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| Images courtesy of Troma Entertainment |
The face and patina of Lloyd Kaufman’s fifty-year-old
independent film production company Troma Entertainment has changed
considerably since it first originated in 1974.
Often making B-exploitation pictures on the cheap and quick, usually
channeling the energies of 1950s horror movies while amping up the gore levels
and politically incorrect transgressions, Troma based on the Greek word tromos
meaning ‘horror’ and its frontman Lloyd Kaufman have seen fit to offer a unique
frequently hilarious, grungy and gritty antidote to popular mainstream horror
fare typically with its tongue firmly planted in cheek. Much
like Roger Corman and his production company New World Pictures, Troma was a
haven for character actors and/or directors that have since tapped into the
mainstream to initially find their footing and decades later as Troma has moved
away from Super 8mm film to crisp 4K digital camerawork that impetus has more
or less remained the same.
Their latest pickup and release comes in the form of British
based writer-director Liam Regan who started out as a Troma fan before working
up to actually working on Troma movie sets including both of the Return to
Nuke ‘Em High sequels. Eventually
Regan formed his own production company called Refuse Films and found himself
in and out of collaborations with Lloyd Kaufman including but not limited to Shakespeare’s
Shitstorm and soon the unlikely twosome would circle back together on an
unlikely pairing of Troma Entertainment and Refuse Films for Liam Regan’s 2022
cannibalistic coming-of-age horror comedy Eating Miss Campbell. With a title riffing on Kevin Williamson’s Teaching
Mrs. Tingle and a rebellious snarky teen goth lead that will remind viewers
of The Craft and more recently Happy Death Day, Eating Miss
Campbell like most Troma fare aims to completely offend and to a degree upset
with its transgressive comedy but gradually plays out as a mostly watchable
high-school Mean Girls satire with odes to Ruggero Deodato peppered in.
Beth Conner (Lyndsey Craine) is an angsty depressed 18-year-old
goth vegan living with her nymphomaniac parents who has tried to take her own
life several times only to inexplicably reawaken inside a low budget horror
movie and like most teenagers just wants an ordinary life with love and
happiness in it. However, things are
complicated at her local school Henenlotter High (little homage there) with the
arrival of English teacher Miss Campbell (Lala Barlow) whom Beth develops a
crush on. Soon, upon a chance meeting
with Miss Campbell, Beth discovers her latent inner cannibal when she gets a
taste for human flesh and blood and realizes she really likes it. From there, as jock bros try to make unwanted
advances on her and schoolmasters try and throw their weight around when they
aren’t being ousted for illicit relations between staff and students, the chaos
and pandemonium ensues including but not limited to school shootings, cannibal
cults and more than a few off-color jokes that would make Uwe Boll wince.
Vulgar, stupid, crass, infuriating and strangely kind of
wise at the end of it all, Eating Miss Campbell is a unique new look for
the face of Troma Entertainment. While
the microbudget impetus is still there, Liam Regan and Lloyd Kaufman manage to
work in a number of original punk rock bands including Unquiet Dead and Hands
off Gretel as well as cameos from The Human Centipede 2 actor
Laurence R. Harvey and later Dani Thompson and even Lloyd Kaufman himself. Slickly filmed digitally by Hamish Saks with
a serviceable original score by Joe Renzetti, the Troma/Refuse collaboration
while unlikely is one of the most polished and refined looking Troma efforts to
date. Acting wise, yeah most of the cast
is hamming it up deliberately but Lyndsey Craine makes our surrogate Lydia
Deetz into a resourceful heroine who frequently breaks the fourth wall to speak
directly to the audience.
Released in 2022 followed by a new Troma Team Video disc
release on blu-ray with plentiful extras, Eating Miss Campbell isn’t
quite in league with their previous Super 8mm fare and feels perhaps too clean
for what we expect from the Troma moniker.
Still, despite the offenses and crassness, Eating Miss Campbell for
all of its digital slickness and 5.1 surround audio nevertheless comes together
as a mostly solid Troma movie with a largely British cast. No this isn’t The Toxic Avenger or Cannibal
Holocaust or Bones and All or even Trouble Every Day for that
matter. And yet it winds up being a
mostly fun-gross romp whose sensibilities perfectly reflect the attitude of the
fifty-year-old independent filmmaking giant.
Troma fans will find much to enjoy here even if the filth and grittiness
of their earlier efforts isn’t quite there.
--Andrew Kotwicki
