CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH (1986)

`NUKE 'EM': TOXIC WASTE

The Record (New Jersey) - December 12, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record
1/2@

CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH: Directed by Richard Haines and Samuel Weil. Written by Haines, Mark Rudnitsky, Lloyd Kaufman, and Stuart Strutin. Photography, Michael Mayers. Special effects and makeup, Scott Coulter and Brian Quinn. With Janelle Brady (Chrissy), Gilbert Brenton (Warren), Robert Prichard (Spike), R. L. Ryan (Mr. Paley), James Nugent Vernon (Eddie), and others. Produced by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz. Released by Troma Inc. Opens locally today. Running time: 78 minutes. Rated R: nudity, profanity, excessive violence and gore.

"Class of Nuke 'Em High," the latest from infamous Troma Inc., takes up where "The Toxic Avenger" left off earlier this year somewhere in North Jersey, along the outer limits of gleeful bad taste.

Actually, the Avenger himself doesn't show his ghastly mug for that, we must somehow wait for "Toxic Avenger II" but we do get another glimpse of his environmentally troubled hometown, Tromaville, which continues to look a lot like Jersey City.

"The Toxic Avenger," which exploited the timely question of nuclear-waste transport to serve up a trashy spread of horror effects and violence, was, heaven help us, something of a cult hit.

"Class of Nuke 'Em High," which slightly modifies the formula by adding a faulty nuclear-power plant, is and here I'm speaking very relatively and checking most of my professional ethics at the door a better-made movie. Maybe, heaven please help us, it won't be quite awful enough for bad-film fans, and will disappear quickly.

In this chapter of Tromaville's annals, teen-agers at the town's high school are having their highly questionable constitutions further altered by leakage from a nearby power plant. The water fountains spew blue goo. The Cretins, once the school's honor students, deal a home-grown marijuana that provides what they proudly call a "nuclear high. "

The story shakily revolves around an all-American couple, Chrissy and Warren (Janelle Brady and Gilbert Brenton), whose virginity preoccupies most of Tromaville High's population. The two are tricked into sampling the tainted drugs, and promptly go all the way sexually and in other physical ways that I can't bring myself to describe. Revenge is called for, without a doubt.

Unlike its predecessor, "Class of Nuke 'Em High" looks professionally photographed. The X-ray and laserlike special effects are a little higher tech. The skin-shriveling reveals more attention to gruesome detail. The costumes, especially those given to the futuristic Cretins, have a twisted sort of style.

"Dialogue" is still too optimistic a term to attach to the screenplay, but this plot gains coherence because most of the action takes place on the campus of a single school (a Bergen County institution that should want to remain nameless). The direction, by Troma veterans Richard Haines and Samuel Weil, is at least innocuous.