Kicking off 2017 with a TERROR FIRMER (1999) Installment of Troma Tuesday

Happy 2017 to everyone out there in ER Land! Hope Santa – or Krampus – brought you whatever slabs of decadent sinema you were wishing for this holiday season. My apologies for the lack of posts in December. I barely had an opportunity to squeeze in some repeat Holiday Horrors right around Christmas thanks to what seemed like constant running around and working on the new issue. More on that in the next week or so but we're finally back on the review horse thanks to our tireless contributors, especially Evan Romero who steps up to the plate and takes one for the team with another Troma Tuesday entry, though it sounds like he kinda likes this one. Cheers! 

When a Troma movie goes in my Blu-ray player, you know one of three things is true: 1) Our Fearless Editor wishes to torture me; 2) I'm desperate for entertainment; or, 3) I've heard good things about it. In regards to TERROR FIRMER, the third choice is the right choice.

A psychotic female is killing people left and right. This doesn't concern blind filmmaker Larry Benjamin (Lloyd Kaufman) who is only concerned with getting his latest picture finished. But the killer soon MAKES it his concern when she starts bumping off members of the cast and crew in grizzly ways. Will Benjamin and his rag tag group be able to stop this bloodthirsty killer? And what does this killer have against independent cinema? The truth is more horrifying than they can imagine...

Yup folks, Troma enters slasher territory here with a flick that isn't painful to watch. While I wouldn't put it amongst my top Troma choices, it definitely doesn't belong amongst the lowest. TERROR FIRMER has everything you want from a Troma flick: gratuitous nudity, poor taste, political and social commentary, "humor" and buckets of blood.

Women let their boobs, beavers and booties hang free; many are excellent deposits for the Spank Bank. The gore is over-the-top and in poor taste, but not quite as abundant as I'd hoped. Still, you get to see a fetus ripped from a pregnant woman's womb, a guy's dick stretched to absurd lengths, a mutilated Ron Jeremy feast upon a dick, a man eaten by an escalator, and much more!

But while the nudity, gore and poor taste are welcome, the political and social commentary runs itself into the ground - obviously the result of the three screenwriters trying too damn hard. Yes, we get it: you have leftist/counter-culture sympathies. There's no need to remind us in damn near every scene.

The humor mostly fails to strike the funny bone. Jokes are of Troma's typical toilet/low-brow variety, and while some are genuinely funny, many of them go on longer than they need to, resulting in jokes that aggravate instead of titillate and have you pressing the fast forward button.

But despite its faults, TERROR FIRMER is a solid addition to Troma's library. Many of the key elements are there to please Troma fans and to piss off the uptight P.C. elite. Plus, where else are you gonna see Lemmy doing a public service announcement for hermaphrodites? – Evan Romero

Evan Romero is a regular contributor to the pages of ER and spends much of his time reading morally questionable books and watching movies no sane person would touch. He is the vocalist/bassist for the punk band Porno Holocaust (you can find them on Facebook and listen to some demos if you’re inclined). His short story “Touch” was recently published in REJECTED FOR CONTENT 5: SANITARIUM. You can read more of his reviews at ReelAtrocities.com or at PopHorror.com.

TERROR FIRMER is available at Amazon.com.