The 1980s schlock-splatterfest franchise, originating from the famously low-budget, low-morale Z-list horror studio Troma, is now rebooted with an impressive cast and unimpressive script; it gets its somewhat delayed UK premiere at Edinburgh, after screeningat a couple of film festivals in 2023.
The original film was about a cringing nerd, sexually humiliated by bikini-clad women and brutalised by jocks, who then falls into a bin of bubbling toxic waste and is transformed into a hideously disfigured bulbous monster wreaking a terrible vengeance on all the bullies. This new version is not more progressive exactly, but the scantily-clad-babe factor, so important in bargain-bin 80s movies, has been dialled down.
