So it was June, “pride month,” (or at least it was when I sat down to start this post weeks ago – this is certainly coming late, but things last forever on the internet, so whenever you read this, imagine it’s still June), and I always try to mark that with some LGBTQ+ related content. Frequently that means checking out some good “Queer Horror” that I’ve not yet seen, but as alluded to in my last post, life is currently more than a little difficult (an understatement) and surveying a bunch of stuff I haven’t watched before in the desperate hope that some of it will be worth writing about is honestly more work than I’m currently capable of putting in.
But you know what I can do? Re-watch a flick I’ve seen again and again a couple more times, a picture that I love, a movie that could be termed a “problematic favorite,” but which I think, while it could be read as harmful and mean spirited, comes across as almost weirdly progressive and open minded – ah yes, the eternally watchable paradox that is Sleepaway Camp.
And I think this will be short. While there is so much to vibe on in this odd, endlessly sleazy, entirely lovable little gem, and there are one or two “big ideas,” mostly I’m just going to rave about it a bit and put myself to bed.
But I must issue a big spoiler warning on this one. It is literally impossible to discuss the significance of this flick without alluding to “the twist” that comes at the end. If you haven’t seen it yet – go, go, go! Watch it first and then come back here. It is more fun than you can imagine, and it’s streaming for free on Tubi (probably other places too) and I know it’s hitting Shudder in July. I probably won’t even summarize the plot – just give it a watch and come back (please come back…).
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
How is this movie so good? It doesn’t at all seem like it should be. And I don’t even mean good in terms of representational issues for its gay and trans characters – a surprisingly positive element which I really don’t feel was intentional, but no, I mean the movie itself, as a whole works. From what I’ve seen, the writer-director, Robert Hiltzik (whose only other credit, outside of producing the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th movies in the Sleepaway Camp series, is writing and directing the 5th movie, Return to Sleepaway Camp from 2008), wasn’t particularly a horror guy, so much as for his first feature, he simply wanted to do something cheap that would make money. He filled his movie to the gills with elements intended to get a rise out of people, almost all of which are, to some degree, in poor taste. While some performances are solid, plenty are, let’s say, unique. There are weird continuity issues. Some dialogue stretches credulity. So many elements seem like they should only be able to be appreciated as unintentional camp, something “so bad, it’s good.” But somehow this movie is so much better than that. Is it campy? Yes. Does it have weaknesses? Yeah – but a) they’re fun and b) who cares?
I guess she cares…
So what makes it so much fun, and beyond that even, what makes it so good? On one level, the outré nature of it all, the over-the-top willingness of Hiltzik to take things to shocking extremes, is genuinely a hoot. I love that this is one of the few camp based slashers that is really about the kids at camp, where one of them is the killer, and most of the victims are kids as well. You don’t often get that and, on a horror level, it’s striking. I don’t know that it’s ever scary, but it does “go there” shamelessly, time after time, and that feels special. I also love how terrible so many of the adults are, like Mel, the camp owner (Mike Kellin, a real treat), who covers up all the murder cause he doesn’t want parents to find out, and who is at least in his 60s and is all a flutter cause he’s going to have a date with the proudly bitchy counsellor, Meg (“M.E.G., Meg”), who’s probably 16 or something. But age inappropriate discomfort doesn’t stop there – we also have the head cook, who is a legitimately predatory pedophile and doesn’t care who knows it, openly lusting after the pre-pubescent children at the camp, all of the other adults mostly ignoring him with a shrug, and laughing it off with a “man, you sure are a creep, ha ha ha.”
And the element with the truly repellent cook brings me to the other side of this movie. While it is definitely campy as all get out and has some weird turns of performance and loads of things that are so much fun because they’re kinda silly (of special note is the cop who in his first appearance has a real mustache, but in his second, it is clearly fake because the actor got another role between shooting days that required him to shave it off), it is surprisingly grounded and weirdly believable.
This facial hair, however, is weirdly unbelievable.
The kids generally know the adults are awful – they get that the cook is dangerous and should be avoided, but they don’t talk to other untrustworthy grownups about it – what would even be the point? – they just have to navigate the dangerous world in which they live. They feel like real kids (and the native Long Islander in me gets a kick out of their accents). And one of the other things that makes the film so ‘real’ is how terrible the kids can be too. They swear a blue streak with great verve and creativity – they are cruel to each other – they bully and belittle – and then they largely get their comeuppance.
Mean girls – Judy and Meg.
And in those scenes of revenge, the movie earns its horror movie street cred – the budget was clearly not large on this one, but the kills (and/or mutilations) are really excellently staged and the practical effects read very well – and this flick has a significant body count. The movie isn’t scary per se, but its gore is solid and its suspenseful kill scenes are legitimately exciting. Scalding burns, death by bees while on the john, decapitations, water bloated bodies with snakes squirming out of their mouths, Judy’s hair curler shoved…someplace left to the imagination – the effects do not disappoint, nor their filming.
But then we get to the heart of it – the characters at the core of the story, and with them, the inclusion of this sleazy little slasher in the ‘queer horror’ canon. I said I wouldn’t really summarize, but the film centers around Angela, a young girl whom we first meet (as a young boy) in an opening scene in which her father and sister are killed in a terrible (and (unintentionally?) hilarious) boating accident. She’s taken in by her aunt Martha, a delightfully odd character (played by a woman, but who comes across as a drag queen presentation of some kind of dissociative state) who decides that though Angela is a boy at the time of adoption, she has always wanted a little girl and so that is what Angela will be (none of this is revealed until a flashback in the last couple minutes of the movie – until then, the viewer is meant to assume that Angela was the little girl at the beginning of the movie and that it had been her brother that died).
Aunt Martha, lost in, let’s call it “thought.”
By the time we meet Angela presenting as a girl in her teen years (Felissa Rose), when it’s time to go to camp for the first time with her cousin, Ricky, she is a girl – there is no sense of a “boy” passing. But she is not well – quiet, withdrawn, and painfully shy, she is a target for the cruel bullying of the worst elements of childhood. Clearly she has been damaged by the loss of her family in such brutal fashion before her eyes, and more, which I’ll come to in a bit. But that doesn’t stop her from enacting her bloody revenge throughout the film on everyone who harms her or is even a little bit mean to her.
Of course the film doesn’t come out and show her doing it – it tries to maintain suspense until the very end as to who is doing the killing, leaving at least some breadcrumbs leading to her cousin – who has a short temper, and is touchingly protective of his vulnerable younger cousin. And I kinda love him for it. He’s been coming to this camp for years. He has friends and a sense of status in the pecking order of the Lord of the Flies dynamics of kids, supervised by slightly older kids out in the middle of nowhere. He could so easily be as terrible as so many of his cohort, abandoning his delicate cousin/adopted sister to the pack of wild dogs (meaning middle-school aged monsters), or even turn on her to gain points – but time and time again, he is willing to throw down at the drop of a hat with anyone who looks at her funny. For a mean little bastard, I find him really sweet, and good. I believe he really cares about her.
But by the end, Angela’s secrets come to light as some of the older counselors (the two who seem to care the most about their young charges) find her naked on the beach, cradling the severed head of Paul (Ricky’s best friend, who’s been courting Angela all summer and finally got her to meet him on the beach after the social – he generally seemed like a sweet kid, but could also get a bit sexually pushy). After a quick flashback of Aunt Martha informing her mutilated and emotionally scarred young adoptee that they will have to change genders because “another boy in the house simply would not do,” the counselors see Angela’s penis (a local college student stripped down and put on an Angela mask for the scene) and utter the shocked line, “how can it be? My god, she’s a boy!” We zoom in on Angela’s wild, mad, iconic face (which Felissa Rose does to pose with fans at conventions to this day), the music stingers rise, we fade to green and the credits start rolling to the tune of the super groovy “Angela’s Theme (You’re Just What I’ve Been Looking For).” It is an intense, wild, really quite surprising ending to a very weird, and utterly watchable film.
So in the end, it is clear that the movie falls in with the unfortunate trope of the ‘trans killer’ (see Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, etc.), which can be seen as really quite dangerous and harmful in an age of moral panic fueling “bathroom bills,” demonizing particularly trans women as a threat to cis women in ‘women’s only spaces.’ And yes, the movie can fairly be accused of that. But upon first watching it, I really had a different vibe. As a cis-het guy, I can’t claim anything about how a trans person would read this film (but I know it is embraced by some), but I immediately and strongly felt it was (probably accidentally) quite progressive, and offered an argument for trans rights. Yes, Angela has been deeply broken, both by family trauma and by a forced gender swap, but that’s kinda the point, isn’t it? Being made to live as someone who she isn’t has irreparably damaged her. Forcing someone to present as other than themselves is deeply psychologically harmful – and it’s something that as a society, we should not do.
And at the same time, when we meet Angela as a teenager, I feel she is a girl; I don’t feel there is coercion at the moment, and then, as a trans character (and not simply someone forced to transition), she is such a sympathetic figure. Beyond gender issues, it’s hard not to side with her, though by the end, we understand she has killed or at least mutilated a lot of people, some just for the infraction of being irritating little kids. In her weird, socially awkward way, she serves as an identifiable stand in for every young person who feels on the outside, who feels uncomfortable with the other kids, who feels “queer” in any sense of the word (having to do with sexual identity or otherwise). I never went to a sleepaway camp and I can’t imagine having done so (quoting another camp movie, Wet Hot American Summer, I was one of “the indoor kids”) – but I can only think that I would have felt as awkward and uncomfortable as she seems to. In the end, we understand that she is the killer, but she has always been the protagonist, and I feel the film is rather on her side (even if it also feels like every choice was made simply for shock value – and in a weird way, that makes its progressive messaging feel more pure and affectingly effective than something that actually set out to make a ‘positive statement’ and that therefore comes across as lame and pedantic).
Furthermore, in looking at this as a movie for ‘Pride Month,’ I feel there are so many other elements that speak for its inclusion. First of all, there is the much above-referenced ‘camp’ quality of the whole film. It navigates the outrageous and the absurd and the taboo in a way that I most associate with artists who identify as queer, ala the John Waters voiced character on an episode of The Simpsons defining camp as “the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic” – this movie does that (e.g., Aunt Martha the female drag queen, the extreme, and often fun and funny murders of small children and predatory adults, fake mustache cop, the teen girl on water skis, screaming, for what feels like forever, for the other teens to turn the boat before they run over Angela’s family, the over-the-top, nigh glorious, bitchiness of Meg and Judy, the artsy quality of Angela’s character explaining flashbacks). But past that, it almost seems that there is a kind of ‘gay male gaze’ in terms of the camera. I find it striking that in a movie that goes so far out of its way to be taboo and controversial, there is absolutely no female nudity, but you get a bunch of boys going skinny dipping together (and when they’re not naked, they are all wearing the shortest shorts and crop tops). And finally, there is Angela’s father. We learn over the course of the movie that he was gay and we see him with his lover in one flashback that I suppose is intended to show Angela and her sister being psychologically scarred by seeing their dad in such a sexual situation, but which really comes across as tender and loving and entirely positive. He is no ugly stereotype – in what little we see of him, he seems like a good dad who loves his kids and who is in a healthy, loving relationship. I think maybe this is supposed to shock, but mainly I’m just shocked that it all seems so warm and affirming.
And somehow this whole ridiculous, sordid, disreputable film feels just that way throughout – warm and affirming, while being filled with a superabundance of gory little kid murders, pedophilia, cruelty, and child abuse. It’s great. From the very first scene, seemingly after the events of the film had concluded, showing a broken down, abandoned summer camp where something terrible must have happened, overlaid with the sounds of children playing, I feel that pretty much everything just works – a creepy atmosphere is laid down, and I am ready for it – we are then treated to a cavalcade of laugh out loud moments of violence and pain, and ultimately, it all culminates in an (apparently) inadvertently positive message about allowing children to live as they are (specifically, expressing the gender they themselves feel to be accurate) – it’s better for them (and safer for us).
Mel agrees.
This really has become one of those warm blanket movies for me over the years and it has been a pleasure to spend a little time revisiting it right now. Sometimes life can really get difficult (see the fact that it’s been more than 5 weeks since my last post), and it might be hard to think you can handle it all, but if Angela can persevere and thrive (she goes on to do quite well for herself in the rest of the movies – all of which are more intentionally campy than this, but aren’t nearly as satisfying for me), so can we all.
Happy summer everybody – if you go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone (for that matter, if you don’t go to summer camp, don’t be mean to anyone either) – or else…
A while back, I wrote about my long journey to becoming a horror fan. I certainly wasn’t one from the beginning – I just got scared too easily. I have a distinct memory of being seriously disturbed out on the playground of Ocean City Elementary while some kid detailed (to other kids, not even directly to me) the kill scenes in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (from what little I remember, I think it was probably part 5, The Dream Child). And yet, around this time (I would have been 10 or 11), I did discover something that was more my speed: cult classics, B-movies, flicks that were “so bad, they’re good,” films that didn’t take themselves seriously enough to frighten me, but were still chock full of outrageous, fun, gratuitous, over-the-top, schlocky, campy material: Attack (and later, Return) of the Killer Tomatoes, Elvira – Mistress of the Dark, Big Trouble in Little China, Frankenhooker, Ghoulies, My Mom’s a Werewolf, so many titles I can’t even remember, and of course, today’s two cinematic gems, Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) and The Toxic Avenger (1984).
At the time, I remember how that not-seriousness really let me enjoy them. I wasn’t yet up for what I understood horror to be, but I could really get a kick out of gory dismemberment as long as it didn’t feel too real (even if realistically shown, it was ok if it didn’t feel too serious, hence scary). Returning to at least these two films as an ‘adult’ is interesting. They both still have elements that I can enjoy on their own merits, but neither is something that I’m often in the mood for now, even if I could watch them on repeat 35 years ago. But the nostalgia is strong in them. They both take me back to a time and a place, and a memory of dipping my toes into material that I might not have been fully ready for, but that was part of the appeal.
But more than the stroll down memory lane, I also find them both fascinating to consider, especially as I have fully become a horror fan, and what’s more, someone who is interested in thinking and writing about horror, about categories (are they Camp? Trash? Satire? Exploitation? Do these terms even matter – are they useful?), about aesthetics, and about the pleasures I (and presumably others) derive from content that others would find distasteful, unpleasant, or even abhorrent. I no longer describe a movie as ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ – that feels unnecessarily belittling now, but in addition to the truly great masterpieces of horror which are so rightly praised (and, to be fair, tend to be my favorites) as ‘good’, I still have a really warm place in my heart for fun, cheap, trashy, unpretentious excess (unburdened by ‘quality’) – and I think it can be enjoyed for what it is and not only as a work of nostalgia or sociological-theoretical interest.
So, let’s get into these. There will probably be spoilers, as well as descriptions of some pretty absurd stuff, so you’ve been warned. Also, on the other side of the ‘reviews,’ I have a bunch of thoughts on cult movies/camp/sleaze, so I cordially invite you to stick around for that (this is a long post – make sure you’re hydrated).
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
Primarily special effects and Claymation artists who have worked on a wide range of projects from Robocop to Critters, from Elf to Team America: World Police, the Chiodo brothers (Stephen, Charles, and Edward) have written and directed only one feature film, giving them free reign to create outlandish, ridiculous, gloriously silly things, and it was, of course, Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Following the model of a 50s sci-fi monster movie (The Blob (1958) is all over this thing), what it lacks in narrative drive or acting that might traditionally be deemed “adequate,” it makes up for in genuinely inspired set dressing and matte panting, very effective, if low budget, effects work, and endless creative, absurd, clown-horror gags. Also, it has one of the all-time great eponymous closing credits songs, written for the film by The Dickies (in my book, it’s right up there with The Ramones’s Pet Sematary).
In short, a young couple up at Lover’s Lane sees what looks like a meteor strike in the nearby woods and they go to investigate, finding a circus big-top set up in the middle of nowhere – which is also a spaceship – filled with bloodthirsty clowns who have seemingly come to earth to eat everybody, cocooning most of their victims in something like pink cotton candy so they can insert laughably long twisty straws into the rose colored concoction and suck out their blood. The young couple tries to get the police involved, but encounters difficulty from both the older officer (because he’s just a mean, abusive, awful cop) and the young deputy (because he’s the girl’s ex). But eventually the deputy witnesses a clown eating some citizens, he comes on board, and having learned that the clowns can be killed by puncturing their big, red, confetti filled noses, they all team up with some goofballs in an ice cream truck to send the alien jesters packing.
But really, this is not about the story, or the characters. Most of the performances are perfunctory at best (and some don’t quite make it that far), and the narrative goes about where you would expect it to. And that is all fine. As prefaced, this is a pretty ‘campy’ movie (a term I mean to be at least somewhat distinguished from ‘camp’ as one might discuss in terms of Oscar Wilde, John Waters, Susan Sontag, or Ed Wood, Jr.). It knows how silly it is and it just doesn’t sweat elements of ‘quality’ that are not its focus (i.e., clown based menace and mayhem).
So what does it have, you may ask? How about a sequence where one of the titular clowns quickly crafts a balloon animal dog to track the young couple, it’s inflated head sniffing about, hot on their trail? A big creepy clown disappearing in plain sight by copying the stiff, regular movements of an animatronic gorilla outside a drug store? A puppet theatre for an audience of one, a kind of Punch and Judy show that culminates in the single viewer being fatally wrapped in candy floss? The terrifying sight of too many clowns getting out of one tiny car? An amusement park security guard who is pied-in-the-face to death, one of the clowns leaving a giant cherry on the pile of cream that is dissolving his flesh, leaving only his bones and a badge? A motorcycle gang making fun of the littlest clown for riding a funny tiny bicycle with training wheels, leading one of them to destroy his bike, so he jumps out of frame and jumps back in with boxing gloves. The jerk who broke his bike mockingly says, “What are ya gonna do? Knock my block off?” and so he does, the thug’s bloody head flying off of his shoulders.
And it’s not like the clowns only target ‘bad people.’ We get a scene outside a clown-themed burger place (that is not McDonald’s) with a big, freaky clown luring a little girl outside, a giant mallet gleefully held behind his back – her mom yanks her back inside before the clown gets to mutilate her, but even if that isn’t shown, the suggestion that it might be is already planted in the imagination.
Similarly, this is a PG-13 movie and therefore can’t offer the kind of gratuitous nudity it might otherwise, but it does tease it. There’s a shower scene where we see the girl of the young couple undress, implying that evil clown stuff is coming her way (some particularly animated popcorn on her discarded clothes threatens to do something though we don’t yet know what). The camera stays at her feet as she undresses, and on her face in the shower. Then it cuts away to another scene, and when we finally see her attacked in the bathroom, she has finished the shower and is fully dressed in jeans and a baggy sweater, even wearing her sneakers already. I can’t help but think that this is all intentionally playing with audience expectations, teasing what isn’t shown.
But when the attack comes, it is weird, gross, playful, funny, and kinda great. The popcorn has somehow sprouted into fanged clown heads on wormy, phallic bodies that shoot out of the hamper, the medicine cabinet, and the toilet, chomping at her as she fights them off with the shower head and curtain (I guess they’re not that tough). She then runs out of the bathroom to hear her boyfriend’s voice at the door, but when she opens it, it’s a big, scary clown! The door slams and she runs to her bedroom window, seeking escape, only to see a clown fire patrol below, eager to catch her. Finally she turns and sees that another has found his way inside, who shoots her with a clown gun that captures her in a giant yellow, polka dotted balloon, now needing to be rescued by our heroes.
But the pièce de résistance of the whole film has got to be the shadow puppet scene. It is certainly the bit that I’d best remembered through the years, and on re-watch, it absolutely holds up. A bus passes a stop to reveal a big, old clown that wasn’t there a moment before. He gets the attention of those waiting at the stop and starts to make shadow puppets of increasing complexity and delight: an adorable bunny, a trumpeting elephant, George Washington Crossing the Delaware, and a sexy belly dancer. Everyone watches and laughs and claps, loving the show. It’s sweet how much they like it, and also funny how the clown’s big sausage fingers couldn’t possibly be forming these amazing images. Finally, as the clown directs a sinister chortle at the camera, the shadows take the shape of a red eyed tyrannosaurus which, with a mighty roar, bends down and gobbles up all of the once enchanted, now terrified and screaming viewers in its umbral maw, devouring them whole. It really is a joy. Check it out here.
So, yeah – this is not a film about the story, but is rather an excuse to have a series of almost completely unrelated monstrous clown gags. And they are fantastic unrelated monstrous clown gags, easily making up for any of the film’s (many) shortcomings. But I want to return to one of those. Earlier, I commented on how this movie doesn’t expect much of its actors, but I must say there is one exception: John Vernon, who plays the mean, awful police chief, is just great in this part. I know him best from Animal House, where he plays the mean, awful dean, and as I understand, he really made his career playing wholly unlikeable, comically nasty characters. That’s just what he does here, and every time the camera is on him, he really brings the scene to life, along the way, adding a surprising note of something like social commentary to this deeply silly movie.
He is a bad cop, and what’s more, he is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with policing. He directs his energies at those he preemptively suspects of wrongdoing (in his case, “young people”), while completely ignoring the calls of help of people being murdered by clowns, convinced that everyone is just trying to make a fool of him, both under and over policing his community at the same time. He is abusive to those he arrests, joking about their lack of rights now that they’re in ‘his’ territory. He only attacks, threatens, and belittles, refusing to see where the real threat lies. He makes fun of his deputy for how his ‘police academy training’ causes him to care about idiotic things like “civil liberties.” But when he gets his comeuppance, it’s a treat.
Earlier in the film, convinced that everyone was just pulling his leg with this clown nonsense, he’d declared that they weren’t ‘going to make a dummy’ out of him. So, of course, that’s eventually what happens. The deputy returns to the station, finding clown prints everywhere (big and red, and climbing the walls), and eventually his crooked boss propped up on the knee of a clown that has gorily shoved its hand into his torso to pull his internal strings as one would a ventriloquist’s dummy. His cheeks are rouged (with blood), and trickles of the red stuff at the side of his mouth suggest the articulated mouthpiece of such a doll, as the clown uses him to tell the deputy not to worry because “all we wanna do is kill you.” It’s the only time a clown gets anything like words, the rest of the time just uttering funny little squeaking sounds, and it is cool, creepy, and intimidating. Plus, Vernon does it so well.
My grandparents had cable and I remember one summer when this was just on HBO constantly. As the film had come out in ’88, I can only assume this would be the summer of ’89, making me ten at the time. And it was just perfect: funny, silly, gross, and creative, with some pretty outrageous stuff in it, but still tame enough to be shown on TV at noon on a Tuesday. It was filled with moments of horror (the clowns do kill a lot of people, the image of the clown sucking blood out of the candy cocoon was disturbing, and the aforementioned dummy scene was pretty creepy), but the campiness made it all fun for me. I remember some friend having the Friday the 13thgame for Nintendo and that I didn’t like playing it cause it felt scary (even though it was an 8-bit system and you could barely see anything – Jason was effectively a purple and white blob chasing you around the screen), but this movie was a blast and I couldn’t count the number of times I watched it. It’s a pleasure to have returned to.
The Toxic Avenger (1984)
If today’s first film was TV-friendly, this next one was decidedly not (though it somehow got a cartoon version for kids, so go figure). From Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz of Troma Entertainment, The Toxic Avenger is crude, cheap, and ugly, with nudity that precludes it from being shown in the middle of the day as well as gory, sometimes shocking violence that is so over-the-top (though also frequently quite silly) that some viewers will just not be able stomach it. Positioned somewhere between a superhero satire and a monster movie, between mean-spirited schlock and loving camp, this is a wholly independent movie that you had to go to the video store for.
Now, though I didn’t take quite as much pleasure in returning to it as I did with the first feature today, there was still a charge of nostalgia, and beyond that, it has really prompted a lot of thoughts about camp and exploitation, about the concepts of taste and aesthetics, about how we watch a film and about how a filmmaker can push and/or play with our boundaries. Troma successfully builds and maintains an absolutely loyal fan base for their weird, little pictures that are as far from mainstream Hollywood as can be imagined – and that wouldn’t happen if these movies weren’t quite special in their intentionally ugly, utterly idiosyncratic way – if they didn’t invite the viewer to a uniquely loveable viewing experience (even while viewing horrible things).
As with many a superhero origin story, we start with a put-upon weakling, in this case, Melvin, the scrawny, gawky mop boy at Tromaville Health Club, where he’s ill-treated by everyone, but especially a quartet of bullies who, when they’re not chain smoking in the gym while pumping iron, are chugging whisky as they speed around town, actively trying to run down pedestrians for points. As with many a slasher film, things really get kicked off thanks to a prank gone wrong. One of the bullies convinces Melvin that she wants to leave her boyfriend for him, so he should meet her by the pool in a pink leotard and tutu. This he does, only to have the lights turned on, realize he was making out with a lice infested sheep, and be chased by all the laughing customers of the club until, in terror and shame, Melvin leaps out of a second story window, landing in an open vat of bubbling green toxic waste on the back of a flatbed truck, stopped by its drivers so they can do an insane amount of cocaine.
Melvin goes through a pretty gross transformation sequence, becoming a giant, greenish brown monster, covered with boils, forever stuck in his now filthy leotard and carrying weaponized mops. He is also instilled with an overwhelming urge to destroy evil wherever he finds it. And it so happens that his small New Jersey town of Tromaville is full of depraved scumbags. From the 80s stereotypes of punk-street gangs to the nefarious Mayor that they all directly report to, who is furthermore making deals to line his pockets by poisoning the town with toxic waste, this is not a nice place to live. And yet, it’s also implied that the town is filled with ‘good people’ who would be able to live their lives in peace if only some kindly monster would brutally tear apart all of the ‘bad guys.’
Along the way, Toxie (as he will later come to be affectionately called in the sequels), rescues and falls in love with a nice blind girl Sara, who moves in with him in his lean-to shack at the toxic dump site, adding that feminine touch that makes a toxic dump shack feel like a home. By the end, the corrupt mayor calls in the National Guard to take out this vigilante monster, but the good people of Tromaville show up to protect their toxic defender.
I feel that the seed of the story is satirization of the classic superhero narrative, a genre of fun kids’ entertainment which often carries quite reactionary messaging about how the world is full of dangerous elements and that the only way for them to be dealt with is by masked vigilantes who carry out a form of extra-judicial justice.
I think that vibe is right on the surface in something like Batman, but even in the more kid-friendly Spider-man comics, there is an impression that the city streets are full of gangs and muggers that normal people are being victimized by. It’s one thing to fight colorful supervillains, but the presentation of our modern cities as such threatening hellscapes in order to justify a ‘hero’ having someone to fight, someone who deserves to have violence used against them, definitely carries a message.
This is a theme that some comic books and later some comic book movies would eventually pick up and interrogate, but that generally followed Alan Moore’s seminal Watchmen books which were published 2 years after this was released.
Thus, The Toxic Avenger offers criminals that are so reprehensible, such unforgivably monstrous people (vicious, racist, drug addled rapists, murderers, and gleeful sadists), that the hero of the piece can be even more of a monster – absolutely physically brutal in how he dispatches them. For example, among other things, the “good guy” of the movie crushes a drug dealer’s head in a weight machine, stabs out another guy’s eyes with his fingers, blends an assailant’s brains with a milkshake mixer (along with milk, whipped cream, and a cherry of course), deep fries a robber’s hands until he dies of shock, bashes heads together until brains ooze out, rips another guys arm off and beats him with it ala Beowulf and Grendel, burns one bully girl’s butt off on hot sauna stones, takes scissors to the other bully girl (weirdly, it happens off screen, but as we don’t see it, we assume the worst – in one longer cut, he just cuts her hair), disembowels the mayor with his bare hands (in front of a crowd which cheers with joy as the mayor tries and fails to push his guts back in before dying), and murders a seemingly nice old lady (who we learn after the fact was a slave trader) by locking her in a hot dryer and then crushing her in a steam press, all of this earning him the love and loyalty of the good people of the town.
I think that in its exaggeration, the movie shows how this superhero “kids’ stuff” was not that dissimilar to conservative fantasies like the Death Wish or Dirty Harry movies. But in its ludicrous excess, I feel Troma’s movie communicates a different message, rather showing the absurdity, the silliness of both the fear mongering and the violent response of “the good.”
Now, while I wasn’t into horror yet when I first watched this, I was absolutely a Marvel Comics kid and I don’t think the satire of reactionary messaging made it through to me. I just got the joke of ‘it’s a comic book super hero origin story and there are bad guys and isn’t it funny that it’s all so extreme?’ And obviously, this is not a “message movie.” It’s a movie having grotesque fun with taking awful things beyond where you thought they could go. But still, the reactionary-as-absurd reading feels very present.
But like I said, this really is not a movie about a message. It’s also not a movie about making do with a limited budget and making ‘artful’ decisions to create something ‘beautiful,’ perhaps by showing less and implying more, ala a low budget, gorgeously shot Val Lewton joint. Nope, Troma rather follows an exploitation film ethos of showing you what you couldn’t see in a ‘Hollywood’ picture because they don’t have to follow any dictates of commercial ‘good taste.’
It wears its low budget proudly and rather than ‘overcoming financial limitations’ with clever cinematography or nuanced performances, it instead embraces a home grown, rough hewn look and feel, featuring outlandish acting that exists somewhere between Pink Flamingos,The Three Stooges, and a skit on Saturday Night Live as played by middle schoolers. This description may come across as negative, but I don’t mean it to be so. I think the anti-style of the performances is key to the film’s success, underlining the campy not-to-be-taken-too-seriously-ness of the whole proceedings.
Some of this comes from the performers themselves, dialing everything up to eleven and mugging for the camera, and some is a filmmaking choice, such as Toxie, after his transformation, always sounding as if he’s been poorly dubbed by the most polite, square jawed, good guy imaginable, when he isn’t grunting and growling. He also periodically takes a break from gutting baddies to help little old ladies cross the street or rescue a baby caught in a tree.
But it’s not always so simple as the violence and cruelty being artificial, just a silly act, and therefore more of something to laugh at than be shocked by. Sometimes, the envelope is pushed far enough that even if an effect is clearly unrealistic, the fact of what is being played can still elicit a strong response. While I remember really liking this movie when I was maybe 12 (give or take – I’m not sure), and in many ways it is the perfect movie for a 12 year old, there was one scene that always got to me and that really delivered the horror.
Early on, we see the four bullies from the health club out for a night drive, swilling booze and playing their favorite game. One of the girls reminds the driver of the rules – how many points he gets for running down different kinds of minorities (all of whom are described with racist epithets). Then, to all of their joy, they come across a kid on a bike and slam into him, the kid flying over the car and lying bloody in the street. You don’t get any points if he lives, so the driver backs up, steering the tires directly over the kids head, crushing it with a wet pop. The two girls run out of the car and gleefully take Polaroids of the dead kid for their collection (we later see one of them getting off to these photos in the sauna). The fact that the effect is clearly fake (a melon in a wig, filled with corn syrup and food coloring) doesn’t detract at all from the overwhelming wrongness of the scene. I remember around when I first saw this, some yahoos in a pickup running me off the road when I was on my bike and this scene always connected with that genuinely scary memory for me. And the idea of such terrible people having so much fun targeting someone like me just for kicks was real horror – the kind that stays with you – the kind that teaches you something unbearably sad and scary about the heartlessness and cruelty of the world.
And at the same time, as the whole film constantly goofs around with extremity, having a punk rock, offensive blast with poor taste, I feel even this scene is kinda played for laughs. It’s all too much – villains so beyond believable humanity that it is a joke. But it also shook me to my core. This movie is silly, and it’s horrible, and it feels fake, and it feels real, and it’s fun, and it’s deeply, disturbingly wrong, and sometimes it’s even hilariously sweet (especially in the absurd romantic scenes played out between Sara and Toxie – walking among toxic waste at sunset, hula hooping, decorating their shack, making tender love – all to delightfully cheesy music). A line is walked between sincere feeling and a kind of camp detachment. In many ways (aesthetically, in terms of special effects and acting, even “morally”), it is all intentionally ‘bad.’ But that is where a camp appreciation comes in. Even if it is bad, that doesn’t mean it can’t be loved (and not in a superior, so-bad-it’s-good) sense, but as its own, weird self.
Somehow, in probably just trying to make a fun, crazy, cheap movie and turn a profit, Kaufman and Herz created something special. It is both ‘the thing’ and ‘not the thing,’ both sincere and ironic, mean and sweet, naïve and jaded. In terms of horror, it mostly follows the tropes of another genre (superheroes), but it features one of my most memorable instances of kindertrauma, and therefore one of my strongest ever experiences of ‘art-horror’ (as opposed to ‘real life-horror,’ like learning about Nazi death camps or something). And yet, it was also just a really funny, stupid good time that I watched again and again, along with its sequels, when I was exactly the right age to enjoy it. It’s an irony that when one is old enough to handle its violence, one is probably too old to fully appreciate its humor.
Re-watching it for this post, I felt perhaps that time had passed – that it was harder to laugh at it as much as I had more than thirty years ago, but I still found it fascinating, and maybe more than anything else, I respected the chutzpah that went into making it. It can be hard to commit yourself so wholly to making something that most people won’t like. That takes courage and will and not just anyone can do it. These days, I feel a bit inundated by the trolls of the world just out to get a rise out of people and therefore don’t have too much hunger for such button pushing, but it’s weird how a movie like this can feel almost innocent in its juvenile, perverse love of serving up shock and disgust and slapstick and inane jokes and all manner of gratuitousness. The grotesquerie is real. But so is the love.
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The last few months, I’ve been hung up on a question of aesthetics. When writing about Fulci’s Murder Rock, I noted how its sleazy vibe excused any failings and offered its own peculiar pleasures. I went on a run of 50s ‘teensploitation’ movies, enjoying them both as cultural artifacts of their time, and specifically digging those elements which, from a certain perspective, might not be deemed ‘good,’ but are there to be reveled in. I found real enjoyment in a couple of Lesbian Vampire movies that really fit into an erotic-Euro 70s ‘sexploitation’ mode. And in this post, it has been interesting to take this trip down memory lane to two movies of my adolescence that both edge into realms of campy exploitation and which were both key steps on my path to eventually falling in love with the horror genre. In all cases, I have been wondering: what exactly is the appeal of what might be deemed “sleaze” or “trash” or “exploitation”? There is a distinct aesthetic quality that I catch a whiff of but I can’t put my finger on.
Also in the last couple of months, I’ve read Calum Waddell’s book analyzing American exploitation films from 1955-1977, “The Style of Sleaze” and a book of essays edited by Jeffrey Sconce, “Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins on Taste, Style, and Politics.” I’ve read Susan Sontag’s “On Camp” and a thesis written by James W. Macdonald, “The Art of Trash: Evaluating Troma Entertainment as Paracinema.” And through all of these, I still haven’t pinned down what that artistic quality is that I find reflected in these works, which feels so aesthetically satisfying. Now, it’s not exactly “camp,” but camp is part of how I enjoy them, and it’s worth touching on.
However, I don’t even want to attempt a definition of “camp.” For all that her essay was iconic, I don’t think Sontag was all that successful, herself, some qualities just defying definition (quick – define art!). But some elements I find helpful are Sontag’s description of life as an aesthetic posture, a section from Charles Ludlam’s manifesto for his “Ridiculous Theatre” company about how “Bathos is that which is intended to be sorrowful but because of the extremity of its expression becomes comic. Pathos is that which is meant to be comic but because of the extremity of its expression becomes sorrowful. Some things which seem to be opposites are actually different degrees of the same thing,” and the moment on the 1997 episode of the Simpsons, Homer’s Phobia, when the John Waters voiced character describes ‘camp’ as “the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic,” and Homer responds, “Oh yeah, like when a clown dies.” In addition, I think it’s key that a camp appreciation is ironic, but isn’t mean or judgmental. It celebrates failure with a genuine joy in the failed thing as opposed to mocking it with a disaffected smirk. Camp distinct from snark.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space doesn’t care about its ‘failings.’ It just wants to make crazy clown horror gags and can shrug off the rest. The Toxic Avenger takes it a couple of steps farther and actually celebrates what one might term its own ‘crappiness.’ Thus, I think much of how I might enjoy some of the described material is through a camp lens – but that describes my way of watching and appreciating, and not the qualities which I find worthy of appreciation in the given work. So, there must be another element to identify: in low budget material that might be deemed ‘sleazy,’ there is often a direct, honest attempt to deliver something to the audience. You can see the strings, and it might all be pretty slapdash, but they promised to ‘turn you on’ or ‘gross you out’ or ‘shock your sensibilities’ and without any shame, they are damn well gonna try (and may or may not succeed, and as discussed, failure can be lovely).
I came up in the theatre and have a deep love of overt theatricality – theatre that leaves room for the viewer’s imagination to do its work: shows made out of cardboard and duct tape and bodies and passion in a poor medium that depends on the audience to show up, forever doomed to make art in a world of commerce and die if no tickets are sold. How could I not love to see that spark of struggling-to-create so visible in the final product? In Sconce’s book, he includes an essay of his own, “Movies: a Century of Failure,” wherein he writes, “Much of the romance of exploitation cinema stems from this valorization of film production itself as an elemental struggle against the conspiratorial forces of the universe. For many trash cinephiles, this is the essence of the art form, a medium of exploitation that has always been less about realizing some idealized, artistic vision than the act of creation itself, transforming the cinema as a whole into an existential metaphor of affirmation in the face of chaotic absurdity.” He describes so well something I’ve always loved about making theatre – that sense that you are in a noble battle against reality to pull something into being – for a moment and then it’s gone. It is a romantic, Quixotic notion. Maybe the element I’m finding in this sleaze-trash-cult-exploitation work is just ‘theatricality’?
I feel this element can be found in both of today’s films. What they may lack in ‘traditionally understood quality,’ they make up in an unmistakable joy in the act of their own creation, of committing to the ridiculous idea, of abjuring half measures and always using one’s whole ass. Returning to the notion of camp, I found it striking that Troma Entertainment was referenced in the two abovementioned books and in neither case positively. I feel there was a judgement that it doesn’t satisfy as a kind of camp pleasure because it is done too intentionally, and thus fails (and though neither volume mentioned Killer Klowns, I have the sense it would have been viewed similarly harshly). For me (and I admit I am no expert), I feel that misses a key point. If, as Sontag wrote, camp views life as an aesthetic posture, then a ‘put on’ is no less real.
From a theatrical perspective, from a camp perspective, in terms of many (though certainly not all) tenets of gender theory, queer theory, and notions of “performativity,” we are what we play (as well as the ones who play – forever both and neither), and identity is all performed. The mask we choose to wear is as revealing, if not more so, as the face concealed beneath. Now, it is fair to say that an artist’s intention to adopt an artificial, “campy” mode does change how we understand their work – we appreciate it differently than work accidentally resulting in those ineffable qualities appealing to a camp sensibility, but I think it is needlessly limiting for that sensibility to close itself off to the pleasures found in material thus intentionally crafted. Honestly, it’s just weirdly snooty to look down on films (or anything else) for ‘trying too hard.’ If artifice weren’t a legitimate route to the ‘authentic,’ Wes Anderson wouldn’t have a career. These movies can be dumb on purpose, and thus can be dumb and, at the same time, be very clever and fun for how they choose to be dumb. Ambivalence can be delicious.
This seemingly paradoxical aesthetic tension describes a whole segment of horror works, often fan favorites, which will never win an Oscar, and which never need to – they’ve already served their audience, and their creators have gotten a nominal payday and can go on to try to make more. But though they will always exist outside of the purview of a mainstream “Academy,” and even also outside of the appreciation of many of the lettered scholars of exploitative trash, for whom I guess they’re not trashy enough or in ‘the right way,’ odd little treasures like Killer Klowns from Outer Space and The Toxic Avenger surely deserve to be celebrated – and I think, by at least certain people, they always will be.
