Once upon a time, Troma head honcho Lloyd Kaufman gave former Playboy Playmate of the Year India Allen a quarter of a million dollars to make two features shot on “crappy digital video” and starring leggy cult queen Julie Strain. What she returned to Lloyd was unfinished and deemed unreleasable (unreleasable by Troma must be very bad, indeed!), lawsuits followed from both parties and finally after several years of toying around with the material (re-shoots, comic dubbing a la WHAT’S UP TIGER LILLY?, added framing devices…) we get the mess that is TALES FROM THE CRAPPER. There’s no doubt that this is a dire production, but the new voice-overs poking fun at the features are at times hilarious and Lloyd lucked out that the crappy film footage contained the entertaining pulchritude of Strain. It took me awhile to warm up to Julie, but thanks to her performances in this and DELTA DELTA DIE! (also 2003) I now realize when she’s in her element (and has a big enough role) she can make even the most rancid low-budget production worth sitting through.
The first tale is titled (or re-titled) “The Case of the Melon Heavy Alien Man Eater” and features Julie as Ivana Dance, a cop so tough that she shoves a road cone up a rapist’s ass. After busting some pedestrians (and waving her gun around in the air, firing shots that hit cars, cats and people in new comic sound effects), she infiltrates a series of strip clubs like “The Shimmering Beaver” to find out who or what has been killing the dancers and patrons. The culprit turns out to be a mantis-headed alien stripper monster who does such things as ripping a guy’s penis off and shoving it through his head and forcing a urinal cake down a guy’s throat in the restroom. Kevin Eastman (aka the guy who created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and also aka Mr. Julie Strain) plays her murdered partner and India Allen herself plays a reporter. Julie has a weird sex scene with a blow-up sex doll that turns into a woman (Arban Ornelas) who then goes to work at the club (??) One of the other strippers is played by B movie regular Antonia Dorian (DINOSAUR ISLAND), who through new dubbing becomes a transsexual stripper with a bad case of flatulence named Larry (I bet Antonia was just thrilled when she saw this).
The second story is a very (read: very) dumb tale of a teen boy who wants to go to college, but whose financial aid has fallen through. He and two pals (including the fat guy from the TV show “Lost”) then decide to throw a fundraiser party to help raise tuition. They pander on street corners handing out fliers and inviting complete strangers to their home to see three kinky strippers (I guess the proceeds from that little function MAY take care of a semester’s worth of books… if they’re lucky). The dancers (Julie Strain, Arban Ornelas and Masuimi Max) are actually lesbian vampires who plot to suck down as much blood as possible, and after an lengthy all-girl sex scene, they go to the party and start their feeding frenzy. Ron Jeremy works the door at the party and newly added scenes feature Trey Parker (as Juan Schwartz) telling a long bad-taste incest joke and guest victims like Ted Raimi (using the alias Bill Ferguson and getting anally raped to death), Trent Haaga, Ramzi Abed, Doug Sakmann and Eli Roth. Julie’s half-sister, Lizzy Strain, also shows up at the party, as does the band New Found Glory.
The two tales are frequently interrupted by new Troma vignettes and linking footage (which aren’t nearly as funny as the stuff in the two stories). Lloyd and Michael Herz (played by big guy Joe Fleishaker) tell the history of Troma studios in one segment (where Debbie Rochon pops up in a cameo as the unheard-of feminist Troma co-founder Eva Lipshitz). Also, Lloyd shows up on Hollywood Boulevard with a trash bag over his head as “The Crap Keeper,” rambles on and on and on and eventually interviews James Gunn (a former Troma alum who went on to script SCOOBY DOO and the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD). There’s also a long and tasteless threesome with “Kelly Powers” (Suzi Lorraine), Isabelle Stephen and tranny Jamie Greco thrown in for no apparent reason. Debbie shows up a second time as a film editor who rips her top off and gets to work re-cutting the second story.
