Troma Entertainment

• 1. Introduction

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  Troma Entertainment was founded in 1974 by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, and it has never stopped making movies that polite society would rather not talk about. The company claims to be the longest-running independent film studio in the world. Over five decades, it has produced, acquired, and distributed more than a thousand films on budgets that Hollywood would classify as rounding errors.

  The name itself tells you something. According to Kaufman, Herz invented the word "Troma" by trying to think of the most ugly-sounding word ever uttered by man, after they struggled to find a company name that hadn't already been registered. Whatever the phonetic ugliness of the word, it stuck. Before any of the horror comedies or the splatter films or the cult mascot in a tutu, there was just two people and a name nobody had claimed yet.

  What questions does a company like this raise? How does a studio survive for fifty years making intentionally repulsive movies on tiny budgets? Who were the people who passed through its doors before fame found them? And what exactly is the fictional New Jersey city of Tromaville, the Toxic Chemical Capital of the World?

• 2. The Troma Formula

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  Troma films occupy a specific, self-defined corner of cinema. They are B movies, primarily in the horror comedy genre, made exclusively for mature audiences. Many of them are rooted in 1950s horror traditions, refracted through farce, parody, gore, and what the industry calls splatter. The company's own description of its output includes overt sexuality, nudity, and intentionally sadistic, graphic violence.

  What makes Troma films recognizable is partly a practical decision that became an aesthetic signature. The studio reuses the same props, actors, and scenes across multiple productions, sometimes to save money. One famous example is the flipping and exploding car filmed for Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. That single piece of footage has since appeared in place of any other car that needs to crash and explode in a Troma production. A severed leg and a creature described as a penis monster have received similar repeated deployments.

  The company articulates its filmmaking priorities through a self-imposed list called the Rules of Production. Safety to humans comes first. Safety to property comes second. "Make a good movie!" appears third, written in a noticeably smaller typeface than the first two rules. That choice of typography is not accidental. It captures the Troma sensibility as precisely as any single film could.

• 3. Before They Were Famous

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  Oliver Stone made his acting debut in a 1971 film called The Battle of Love's Return, which Troma later acquired. Stone would go on to win the Academy Award for directing, but his earliest screen appearance is preserved in the Troma catalog.

  Stone is not alone. Paul Sorvino appeared in Cry Uncle! in 1971. Vanna White appeared in Graduation Day in 1981. Kevin Costner appeared in Sizzle Beach, U.S.A. that same year. J.J. Abrams is credited in Nightbeast from 1982. Vincent D'Onofrio appeared in The First Turn-On! in 1983. Michael Jai White appeared in The Toxic Avenger Part II in 1989, the same year Billy Bob Thornton appeared in Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. Samuel L. Jackson appeared in Def by Temptation in 1990. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, before South Park, appeared in Cannibal! The Musical in 1993.

  James Gunn wrote and appeared in Tromeo and Juliet in 1996, then co-wrote Kaufman's book All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger. Gunn went on to direct Slither and eventually the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and Kaufman has since made cameo appearances in both. Carmen Electra appeared in The Chosen One in 1998. David Boreanaz appeared in Macabre Pair of Shorts in 1996.

• 4. The Toxic Avenger's Rise and Fall

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  In 1984, Troma released a violent comedy about a superhero born from a vat of toxic waste, and that film changed the company's trajectory permanently. The Toxic Avenger became Troma's most popular production and eventually its official mascot. Its influence spread into sequels, an animated television program, and later a stage musical.

  The musical version debuted at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, before opening in New York in the fall of 2008. The book was written by Joe DiPietro, known for the long-running stage show I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change. The music was written by David Bryan, the keyboardist of Bon Jovi.

  The sequels to the original film, however, were all box office failures. They arrived after what the source describes as the financial demise of Troma itself. Similarly, Kaufman's follow-up to The Toxic Avenger was Class of Nuke 'Em High, co-directed with Richard W. Haines, which became a hit and at one point was Troma's highest-selling VHS release. But Class of Nuke 'Em High also inspired two sequels, both of which failed commercially. Kaufman then directed Troma's War, conceived as a critique of what the filmmakers saw as Ronald Reagan's glamorization of war. It was also a box office bomb. The string of failures pushed Troma into financial hardship and forced it to operate as a smaller company.

• 5. The Creative Revival

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  From 1995 to 2000, Troma entered what the source describes as a period of creativity and some of their greatest work. Kaufman directed three films during this stretch, all released in limited theatrical runs. Tromeo and Juliet was a loose parody of Shakespeare's play. Terror Firmer was a slasher film loosely based on Kaufman's book about The Toxic Avenger. Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV completed the trilogy.

  The period was not without damage. A low-budget video feature called Tales from the Crapper cost $250,000 despite most of its footage being completely unusable. Producer India Allen backed out midway through and sued Troma, alleging breach of contract, slander, sexual harassment, trade slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Kaufman supervised a reshoot, split the surviving material into two parts, and released the result as a double feature on DVD in September 2004.

  Kaufman's long-time editor Gabriel Friedman co-directed and wrote the screenplay for Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, a musical zombie comedy. Its official New York premiere took place on the 9th of May 2008, though the film had been previewing on single screens for over a year before that. Father's Day, produced in the winter of 2010-2011, cost ten thousand dollars. It won the top prize of Best Film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival on the 21st of October 2011, along with five other awards at that festival. The film was refused classification in Australia on the 31st of October 2012, effectively making it illegal to sell or exhibit there.

• 6. Tromaville and the Troma Universe

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  Most Troma productions take place in a shared fictional setting: Tromaville, a New Jersey city whose official designation is the Toxic Chemical Capital of the World. The Toxic Avenger films, the Class of Nuke 'Em High films, Tromeo and Juliet, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, Father's Day, and more than a dozen other Troma productions are all set in or explicitly reference Tromaville.

  The city even has a post-apocalyptic version. A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell takes place in a Tromaville destroyed by catastrophe. This shared universe predates many of the franchise-building strategies that major studios now rely on, though Troma arrived at it less by design than by the natural economy of reusing locations, characters, and lore across a catalog built over decades.

  TromaDance, the company's annual film festival, ran in Park City, Utah, during the same period as the Sundance Festival, explicitly positioning itself as an alternative to mainstream independent film culture. It left Utah after 2009 and relocated to Asbury Park, New Jersey. In 2014 it moved to New York City, and since 2020 it has been held at The Mahoning Drive-In Theater. Kaufman teaches filmmaking classes at the festival and has frequently released finished films from the program on DVD.

• 7. Books, Streaming, and Hollywood

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  Kaufman has written several books drawing on his time running Troma. All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger, co-written with James Gunn and released in 1998, functions as a company autobiography. It was followed by Make Your Own Damn Movie!, Direct Your Own Damn Movie!, Produce Your Own Damn Movie!, and Sell Your Own Damn Movie!. A DVD box set was released alongside each of the first three books in the series.

  In 2006, a novelization of The Toxic Avenger appeared, co-written by Kaufman and Adam Jahnke, a long-time Troma employee. In 2025, a book titled Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews, written by Mathew Klickstein and published by the University Press of Mississippi as part of its Conversations with Filmmakers series, collected more than five decades of Kaufman interviews.

  On the 7th of April 2010, Kaufman confirmed that a PG-13 remake of The Toxic Avenger had been greenlit, to be produced by Akiva Goldsman. A previous deal with New Line in the early 1990s for a live-action Toxic Crusaders had gone nowhere. A Mother's Day remake was at one point expected to be directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and produced by Brett Ratner. Troma and Starz Entertainment also entered an agreement for Return to Nuke Em High as a two-part title, with the second volume delayed due to funding issues. In 2015, Troma launched its own streaming service, Troma Now, at a monthly fee of US$4.99 after a free trial month. In August 2012, Troma uploaded more than 100 catalog films to YouTube; the channel was terminated in 2020 and again in 2023 for failing to meet community standards, but has since been reinstated.