Tales from the Crapper

March 21, 2005

Rated: NR Runtime: 90 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Tales from the Crapper is the most recent in-house release by Troma Studios. It is also the worst 4-star movie you’ll ever see. Bad lighting, bad sound, bad acting, bad writing… hell, it’s downright bad filmmaking. How come I enjoyed it so damn much?

Tales from the CrapperFormer Penthouse Pet and Heavy Metal superbabe Julie Strain stars in the two separate Tales. In the first Tale - “The Case Of The Melon Heavy Alien Man Eater” - an alien makes a crash landing near a strip club in LA. The alien begins brutally slaughtering customers at the strip club, and it’s up to Julie Strain’s “loose cannon” cop character to solve the mystery and track down the murderer.

“Tuition of the Terror T**t” is the second Tale, and it features Strain as one of three vampire lesbian strippers. A young man learns that his parents can’t afford to pay for his college tuition. So he and his friends decide to have a stripper party at his apartment, charging guests $100 each for admission. They hire Strain and Friends as the strippers, and you can probably figure out the rest. This Tale features cameos by Ted Raimi and Trey Parker, who both wear wigs and are credited with fake names to trick SAG.

According to the documentary on the DVD, each of these Tales started as a feature-length movie shot on digital video. Troma financed the two movies, and were shocked when they received the footage. It looked and sounded awful (even by Troma standards). The decision was made to combine the best scenes from two crappy feature-length movies into one crappy feature-length movie.

But Troma’s work was far from over. They had to shoot several new scenes so that the heavily-edited stories made sense. And the audio was so bad that they ended up dubbing every single voice in post-production. This is particularly funny when a big tough guy enters the strip club and has a whining sissy boy voice. And of course, all the trademark Troma sound effects show up, adding fart noises where appropriate and the natural sounds that bouncing breasts make.

Ahh… bouncing breasts. There is no shortage of these in Tales from the Crapper. Big, small, fake, real… they’re all represented here. As you know, there’s the story about the strip club, and the story about the vampire strippers. And in most movies that would be sufficient. But Troma goes one step further, addressing a major problem that plagues these types of movies. There are always several scenes with guys just standing around talking. Guy cops talking about the murders. Loser guys talking about their stripper party. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, these are important scenes. They contain the necessary exposition to move the story forward. I know that. But they’re a pain in the ass to watch when you know there’s more hot stripper action on the way.

Thankfully, Troma has developed an exciting new technology to make these scenes a lot less painful: BONERVISION. Whenever one of these “guys talking” scenes occurs in Tales from the Crapper, a small circular screen pops up labeled BONERVISION. Topless women dance and cavort on BONERVISION while the guys talk. This means you can watch hot nekkid babes while listening to what the guys have to say. Genius. I hope Troma filled out all their paperwork at the U.S. Patent Office, because they’re going to make a fortune off of this.

Blood, gore, violence… it’s Troma, folks. ‘Nuff said.

Lloyd Kaufman, who is the President of Troma Studios and the Creator of the Toxic Avenger, plays the pivotal role of The Crapkeeper. His segments work as bookends to each of the Tales. These segments include an interview with Tromeo & Juliet screenwriter James Gunn, a skit with Super Tromette Debbie Rochon (who appears topless), and another skit with perennial Troma fat guy actor Joe Fleishaker (who also appears topless).

Troma always packs their DVDs with plenty of extras, and this one is no exception. There’s an hour-long documentary about the reshoots Troma had to do to make Tales from the Crapper watchable. There are also two commentary tracks, several trailers and the music video for Cannibal Lesbian Hoedown. But my favorite extra was the Topless Comedy Jam with Julie Strain. It should have been called Totally Nekkid Comedy Jam. I don’t remember any of the jokes.

While I love Troma’s philosophy of being a fiercely independent film studio, their movies usually don’t do much for me. In fact, I liked the documentaries on Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie much more than the movies themselves. However, Tales from the Crapper is highly entertaining in a bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest common denominator kind of way. I give it four stars for the entertainment value and the incredible amount of T&A.

Two paragraphs into this review, you had already made up your mind about whether or not this is your type of movie. If you’ve made it this far, then see Tales ASAP. You will not be disappointed.

Posted by Chris Terranova | Filed Under 4 Stars, Comedy, DVD, Debbie Rochon, Horror, Julie Strain, Kevin Eastman, Lloyd Kaufman, NR, Ron Jeremy 

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