Lots of low-budget films feature lots of violence, nudity and cheesy special effects but the folks at Troma are the Olympic gold medallists of bad taste cinema. For decades, they have been making movies that you would not dare show your family or employers.

Their most famous work has to be “The Toxic Avenger” movies. They follow the exploits of a wimpy teen turned mutant monster superhero as he brutally murders bad guys and then goes home to make love to his blind girlfriend. The film features shocking acts of violence including a child’s head being crushed by a car. What’s even more shocking is that the Toxic Avenger got his own kids’ cartoon show just a few years later.

However, Troma have done plenty of other movies including “Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.” about a bumbling New York cop that gets the mystical martial arts powers of a Japanese folk opera performer. Sadly, it was not as successful as “The Toxic Avenger”. Other films from them include “Class Of Nuke ‘Em High” and “Troma’s War”.

They also did “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead”, a horror/comedy/musical, which has a scene where a burqa-wearing Muslim woman tries to save a redneck from a possessed chicken by ramming a broom up his rear and poking it through his genitals. Where’s the kids’ cartoon of this? However, their crowning achievement in sick and twisted humour is probably Terror Firmer where a hermaphrodite serial killer, who likes to stick pickles (that’s not a euphemism by the way) into a woman’s privates, tries to rape a woman only for her to turn the tables and force herself on him. I’m seeing why this one did not get a cartoon series. In fact, the whole movie is so graphic that a censored version exists where Lloyd Kaufman, the movie’s director and founder of Troma, merely explains the most offensive scenes in great detail instead of showing them.

Troma do not just make their own films, they also help distribute other movies. They have distributed films such as “Surf Nazis Must Die” and “Killer Condom”. They also distributed the first movie by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park). That is of course “Cannibal! The Musical”. Parker and Stone actually have a cameo in “Terror Firmer” as hermaphrodites.

They are truly an insane company yet nobody seems to put as much effort into schlock as they do.