Class of Nuke Em High (1986)
Dir. Richard W Haines & Lloyd Kaufman
85 Minutes – Arrow Films Region 2 BluRay
Tromaville High School is not the best place to go to school, it is just a quarter of a mile from the nuclear power plant and the high school honour students have become a biker gang known as The Cretins. So just everyday goings on in Tromaville.
The film starts showing nuclear waste leaking from the local plant and leaking on to the school grounds. Then its to a class room where the school nerd takes a drink from the water fountain only to ingest waste that makes him aggressive and foam at the mouth , he leaps from a 2nd floor window and melts on the car park floor below.
The story deals with straight-up couple Warren (Gil Brenton) and Chrissy (Janelle Brady) who are given some pot (grown by The Cretins in the grounds of the power plant), after smoking it Chrissy becomes really horny and they have sex for the first time.
Warren & Chrissy then both have hallucinations and become ill after smoking the weed , this culminates in Chrissy becoming pregnant and she vomits up a mutated baby into the school toilet and also Warren has super-human strength which he aims at The Cretins who he blames for the mess they are in.
This was released just after Toxic Avenger and is seminal Troma. It is full of visual gags and gore, anti-establishment teenagers and completely over the top.
Visually it is completely from its time, a classic mid eighties film that has the feel of a post apocalyptic New York ( I know its NJ but hey). It really has a look of say The Warriors and also Escape from New York.
As a film it is all over the place BUT this is what makes Troma great. It has no taste and no point but that is the point with Troma right?
This is a must for any genre film fan, a look back on quieter times when the future looked like a ticking nuclear timebomb , and 26 years later I think I would take that now.
I used to own this on VHS back in the late Eighties and to get it again from Arrow Films on BluRay was an absolute joy to watch and crammed with features and original DVD version with commentaries etc. Well worth a buy.
There is Return to The Class of Nuke Em High that comes out 2013 and trailers are online, and also there were 2 sequels in 1991 and 1994.
But this stands out as a classic piece of 1980’s trash 7/10
thecorpsegrinder 