The low-budget dark comedy that launched James Gunn's career

James Gunn was recently employed by Troma when he was assigned to write a Lloyd Kaufman film. Gunn said (via Destroy the Brain):

"He [Kaufman] said, 'I want you to write one of three scripts. Either 'The Toxic Avenger 4', something else you could create yourself, or 'Tromeo and Juliet' The last one I wanted to write was 'Tromeo and Juliet'. It didn't sound appealing to me at all, but it was the one he wanted me to write. I was so excited to do it and have a movie with my name in it, I went with all my might...as hard as I could...get back into production."

Gunn certainly got into the thick of things quickly, because "Tromeo and Juliet" is just as aggressively crude, crass, and silly as any of the studio's other key films. Lowlights include repetitive fart gags, close-up nipple piercing, eye punctures and beheadings, incest, penis monster, and gratuitous softcore sex scenes. It's totally normal if you buy the whole thing from Troma, but it feels incredibly laborious and one-note when dragged at nearly two hours.

On the plus side, you have Motorhead's Lemmy as narrator, and decent chemistry between Tromeo (Will Keenan) and Juliet (Jane Jensen), which Kaufman encouraged the cast to develop off-screen. Kaufman is credited as director, while Gunn was given the more ambiguous title of associate director:

"I basically directed the actors. Lloyd is a director. He basically does everything, but I do the actors and a lot of creative stuff. He's a real partnership between us, in terms of film. You know with Troma, those lines are very blurred."