Review of Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986) by Harry W — 27 Jan 2016

One of the more notorious films released under the Troma Films label, Class of Nuke 'Em High sounded like a fun yet undemanding horror comedy.

Class of Nuke 'Em High cuts straight to the chase. Beginning with a high school which just happens to be located next to a nuclear power plant experiencing a leak, leading to one of the characters ingesting radioactive waste before attacking other students, having his body suffer severe burns and jumping straight through a window. This is all before the film title even appears, so Class of Nuke 'Em High immediately sets the tone of weird horror-comedy that viewers can expect if they aren't already familiar with the style of Troma Films. The standard criteria for a good B-movie is violence, nudity, blood and gore. A decent quantity of all this can compensate for a poor script and lacklustre acting. As Troma films specialize in exploitation style B-movies and the film is directed by the two founders of the company, Class of Nuke 'Em High clearly offers potential. But all in all, it fails to live up to it.

Though Class of Nuke 'Em High aspires to be little more than cheap fun, it ultimately offers the wrong kind. After the intro, there is little blood and gore for a long time. There are brief moments of nudity, but the spirit of the into scene is not resumed for another 30 minutes when the film is about halfway complete. This leaves predominantly the acting and the screenplay to keep viewers distracted until then, but after that, there is little more exploitation for a lone time. Class of Nuke 'Em High ends up spreading the exploitation fun out too sporadically over the course of the narrative and puts far more reliance on the B-movie script and acting even though the gimmick wears thin rather soon due to its blatant repetition. There is a certain level of fun to be had in this all and if the viewer is watching it in the correct state of mind such as if they are intoxicated and surrounded by a crowd of people in the same state then it can make for an entertaining guilty pleasure. But as a straight-up piece of cinema, Class of Nuke 'Em High just fails to offer the correct style of B-movie fun to entertain. It manages to keep moving through everything at a rather speedy pace and makes an attempt to keep atmospheric with a soundtrack which seems to play out forever, but it doesn't dash past a surplus of dialogue which constitutes most of the film and causes it to drag on despite a relatively short running time of 82 minutes.

Frankly, Class of Nuke 'Em High fails to offer the same experience as Troma Films' prior nuclear-waste themed horror comedy, The Toxic Avenger (1984). To compare the two, Class of Nuke 'Em High is a lot less focused. The Toxic Avenger revolved around its titular character as he exacts vengeance on the criminals of Tromaville, New Jersey, in a series of comedically over-the-top death scenes. With Class of Nuke 'Em High, there are two main characters yet a large assortment of supporting figures who get too much focus despite offering little in the way of interesting material. Random plot points come and go, yet few of them are ever of the exploitation nature that the few more entertaining points are. A clear sign of what Class of Nuke 'Em High could have been comes from the ending in which the characters battle a nuclear monster in the fallout shelter beneath the titular school, but when the entertaining moments such as this are too short while the periods of cheap dialogue are too long, it effectively blunts the entire experience. Even though the film is very proud of its B-movie nature and makes for an easy watching experience due to its lack of seriousness, the fact that most of the running time requires the collection of unknown actors portraying stock characters to fill the quota with their severely limited charisma plagues too much of the viewing time.

With a low budget, Class of Nuke 'Em High manages to create an effective style of B-movie imagery by capitalizing on its settings and creating some entertaining moments of blood and gore. The soundtrack is also decent as there are many original songs recorded for the film which are very distinctive of the 80's timeframe in which the fill was produced. Unfortunately, despite presenting signs of obvious skill in handling the latter it is most underutilized element of the feature. This just signifies how misguided Class of Nuke 'Em High is because it good have been good cheap fun but just ended up being plain cheap instead. You'd expect that with three directors behind the camera and four people writing the script someone would see fit to up the ante on the level of exploitation being depicted, but it appears to have just gone over everyone's heads. Sure, there are a couple of lame jokes here and there which are good for a sporadic laugh and Pat Ryan Jr.'s return to the same kind of role he portrayed in The Toxic Avenger may be fun for followers of the Troma Films label, but as there are few characters in Class of Nuke 'Em High who carry any central gimmicks outside of the few females willing to go topless for the film, the abundance of actors ends up as a very arbitrary element. It should say enough that nobody has ever heard of any of these actors outside of Class of Nuke 'Em High with the exception of Pat Ryan Jr. for his various roles in Troma Films.

Class of Nuke 'Em High has some occasional moments of exploitation flair thanks to Troma Films' distinguished eye for over the top blood and gore, but it plays second fiddle to a slow and unfocused story which obsesses over its collection of thinly-scripted and poorly-acted characters far more than any of its better assets.