MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Nuke ‘Em’ Radiates Goofy Charm

“Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown” (at the Vista, Hollywood, and Peppertree, Northridge) finds the Troma Team, those zany low-budget producers Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz and their cohorts, in top form. Lots of filmmakers try to get laughs out of genre spoofs featuring bosomy babes and cheap special effects, but the Troma people have more smarts than their competitors and understand (most of the time) that mayhem must proceed with some form of crazed logic.

Laid to waste by its proximity to malfunctioning twin nuclear reactors, Tromaville Tech has now been rebuilt, but all is not well. The New Jersey school’s fat, bearded, falsetto-voiced dean (Scott Resnick) and its science prof (Lisa Gaye), a biogenetic engineer with a 3-foot-high beehive hairdo, have secretly turned the basement under the reactors into a veritable “Island of Lost Souls” in which humans are mated with lower forms of life in order to provide a source of slave labor. The subhumanoids, alas, are more human than not, and of course there’s all that radiation going around.

The film’s star is Brick Bronsky, a massive bodybuilder-wrestler who can project a sweet innocence with endearing wit and humor. He plays Tromaville Tech’s ace investigative reporter, plodding away amid escalating chaos that unleashes a screenful of Godzilla-like monsters as well as stirring up the school’s outrageous punk gang. (Also outrageous: the co-eds, all of whom wear string bikinis and look like refugees from a Russ Meyer movie.)

Director Eric Louzil and his raft of writers realize that tone is everything when you’re dealing with something as sobering as nuclear disaster. Louzil, who once directed Kevin Costner in a couple of early Troma flicks, goes for an abiding and consistent aura of absurdity, which allows him to get away with just about everything. In “Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part 2” (rated R for much raunchy humor) the silliness is on purpose.

‘Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown’

Brick Bronsky: Roger Smith

Lisa Gaye: Professor Holt

Leesa Rowland: Victoria

Michael Kurtz: Yoke

Scott Resnick: Dean Okra

A Troma Team release of a Troma Team production. Director Eric Louzil. Producers Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz. Executive producers Masahiro Ebisawa, Sammy O. Masada, Tetsu Fujimura. Screenplay by Kaufman, Louzil, Carl Morano, Marcus Rolling, Jeffrey W. Sass, Matt Unger; based on a story by Kaufman, Morano & Unger. Cinematographer Ron Chapman. Editor Gordon Grinberg. Costumes Kaptain. Music Bob Mithoff. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (for scenes of nudity and sexuality, for comic horror violence and grossness, and for language).