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Lloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, actor, and documentarian who has been in the business for many decades. Along with Michael Herz, he is well known as the co-founder of the Film Studio, Troma Entertainment. Before he got into the film industry, Kaufman was born to a Jewish family in New York City on December 30th, 1945.

Kaufman attended Yale University and graduated as part of the class of 1968. While at Yale, Kaufman majored in Chinese Studies. He was not originally planning to become a filmmaker. However, Kaufman was assigned to a dorm with two roommates who were big film fanatics. These roommates helped Kaufman realize that he loved films and he wanted to be a filmmaker.

Some of the filmmakers Kaufman gained an appreciation for include John Ford, Franklin Schaffner and a few others. In fact, Kaufman actually scored an interview with Schaffner in 1969 for Films in Review.

He got his first taste of filmmaking while he was still at Yale. He was the producer for Robert Edelstein’s film, Rappacini*. Edelstein was one of those friends who helped Kaufman become interested in film and filmmaking. Also at Yale, Kaufman would make his directorial debut with The Girl Who Returned in 1969.

The premise of The Girl Who Returned is that the entire world is comprised of two countries. Luxembourg and Mongolia. All the inhabitants of Luxembourg are women, and all the inhabitants of Mongolia are men. The two countries have an Olympics competition between the two to determine who controls the world.

Kaufman made The Girl Who Returned on a budget of just $2,000. Today, that looks like a ridiculously small number. $2,000 is pennies for most modern films. In his 1998 autobiography, All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger, Kaufman talks about his experience making this first movie of his. It is here that we learn he made The Girl Who Returned using a Bolex camera which lacked a sound sync and could only film for forty seconds at a time.

Kaufman also said in his autobiography that he really does not like The Girl Who Returned. He thinks it’s a boring movie. The film was only ever screened at Yale and a few other colleges and did not do very well in terms of reviews. Regardless, Kaufman stuck with filmmaking as a career.

The Girl Who Returned may not have been a very good film but it was important for two reasons. First, it was Kaufman’s directorial debut. Secondly, it had a cameo of Michael Herz, who would later partner with Kaufman to create Troma Entertainment.

After he graduated from Yale, Kaufman worked with the now defunct Cannon Films for a few years. It was here that he actually collaborated on a few films with John G. Avildsen who would later go on to direct The Karate Kid and Rocky.

Kaufman even had a brief cameo in Rocky as a homeless guy outside the bar (Dodero 2012).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSkcA-Q32Xw&ab_channel=CineJeur

In 1971, Kaufman directed, wrote, and starred in his first film outside of school with The Battle of Love’s Return. It’s arguable whether this one is actually that good of a movie. However, it seems that at the time it was well-reviewed. Howard Thompson’s review of it in the New York Times was pretty good.

The Battle of Love’s Return might also be notable for giving Oliver Stone an acting role very early in his career. Stone of course might be well known and controversial today for directing JFK (1991).

Remember Michael Herz? Well, in 1974, Kaufman and Herz teamed up to create Troma Entertainment as a new production and distribution company. Kaufman and Herz had actually first met as students at Yale University. Although they did not like each other that much at first, they got along after hanging out together enough. Kaufman has said that the only reason he got together with Herz is because Herz had a pinball machine and Kaufman had a television.

Herz had been wanting to get into filmmaking as well, so he partnered up with Kaufman to create Troma. Seeing as how Troma is still around to this day, it would seem that this was a good partnership and a good decision.

So… how can Troma films best be described? They basically specialize in low-budget horror films. Not to mention, after all these years, Troma still is independent. In fact, it would seem that Troma sort of prides itself on being an independent.

Kaufman has described Troma as the “herpes of American cinema’ because he believes its not going anywhere and he seems to be right.

He has also said that Troma puts out movies that are so low budget and grotesque that no movie theater will ever take his movies. In addition, the low budget means they have no money to market the movie. Kaufman believes that the difference between him and big-time directors like Quentin Tarantino and Peter Jackson and others is the millions of dollars they can dedicate to marketing their movies (Ziems 2016).

Troma started out putting out a bunch of sex comedies such as Squeeze Play! in 1979.

However, Troma’s biggest successes would come in the 1980s. Mainly, 1985’s The Toxic Avenger. This is by far the most successful Troma film. Directed by both Kaufman and Herz, it was Troma’s first film in the horror genre.

The movie is about Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgi) who is a rather pathetic 98 lb. nerd working as a janitor at a health club in the fictional town of Tromaville, New Jersey.

He is frequently harassed by the customers of the health club. In one of their tricks, the customers Melvin to wear a pink tutu and kiss a sheep. He gets chased around the health club until he goes through a window and falls into a barrel of toxic waste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ODV02AYTw0&ab_channel=Agust%C3%ADnCordes

Melvin catches fire and then gets out and runs around. He runs home to get in his bathtub where the flames get put out. However, the damage has already been done. Melvin has been turned into a deformed freak by the toxic waste. However, he is also given superhuman strength. This is where he becomes the Toxic Avenger.

Despite getting kicked out of his mother’s house, Toxic Avenger or Toxie uses his powers to enact a form a justice. Toxie fights drug dealers, pimps dealing with underage prostitutes, murderers, and other nasty people. He even goes back and gets revenge on the people who harassed him at the health club.

The Toxic Avenger was a huge success for Troma. It basically created an entire media franchise. There were three sequels, even if they were less successful. The Toxic Avenger was been adapted into a musical. There was a video game and even a children’s cartoon based off The Toxic Avenger.

Although the 1991 cartoon was called Toxic Crusaders and was much less gruesome than the original movie. It featured Toxie and bunch of other heroes going around fighting pollution. The video game for the NES was based on this TV show (Winfrey 2016).

Another impressive aspect of The Toxic Avenger is how it managed to be a pretty good movie with a much lower budget. Its budget was only $500,000. Even for the 1980s, this was a small budget. In comparison, each of the original Star Wars trilogy movies had budgets of at least ten million dollars. It turns out movies have always been really expensive to make. However, it is still impressive that Troma can put out good movies on much lower budgets.

Following the success of The Toxic Avenger in 1985, Troma continued to put out other successful works. Herz and Kaufman worked with Richard W. Haines to direct Class of Nuke ‘Em High which released in 1986.

Class of Nuke ‘Em High takes place at the Tromaville High School (the same Tromaville in The Toxic Avenger --- a lot of Troma films take place here) where the nuclear power plant next door has just had an accident. The owner of the plant, Mr. Paley covers up the accident to prevent his plant from being shut down. The toxic material kills one student and the runoff poisons others turning them violent and causing a lot of problems. It spawned two sequels that were not directed by Kaufman or Herz.

After Class of Nuke ‘Em High came Troma’s War in 1988. This was probably one of the most ambitious projects for Troma and Kaufman at this point with a budget of 3 million dollars. It’s about a group of Americans who crash land on a island. Meanwhile, terrorists are about to attack America with a new biological weapon. This one was apparently more of a commentary on Reagan-era militarism. It looks like a good movie. Although, it apparently did not do so well financially and gave Troma a lot of financial problems. It may even be partly why Troma remained a independent film producer and distributor rather than becoming way bigger.

However, Troma has managed to stay around to this day and they still seem to be going strong and Lloyd Kaufman seems to be a major part of that success.

Some notable movies since then would probably be Tromeo and Juliet or Terror Firmer.

They even made a fourth Toxic Avenger movie in 2000. He even worked on some of these films with stars in their early careers such as James Gunn who went on to direct the Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

To this day, Troma and Kaufman still seem to have a pretty loyal fanbase. They also relish in being independent. Since 1999, they have been holding a TromaDance Film Festival. Until 2009, it was held in Salt Lake City at the same time as Sundance. Then it was moved to New Jersey. Kaufman felt that Sundance was basically “too Hollywood”. TromaDance does not even have an entry fee or anything. It seems that just about anyone can submit any movie to get into the festival.

Outside of filmmaking, it seems that Kaufman has taken an interest in promoting the art to others. Kaufman has taught classes on filmmaking at his old school, Yale. He has books and movies on how to get into filmmaking such as Make Your Own Damn Movie!.

Overall, Kaufman and his Troma creation are still going strong even after over 40 years. It seems like they’ll be here for a while. Who knows what they’ll come up with next? Perhaps a Toxic Avengers reboot?

Sources:

Kaufman, L. (1969, August). The Early Franklin J. Schaffner. Films in Review. https://pota.goatley.com/magazines/films-in-review-1969-08.pdf

Lloyd Kaufman – Curriculum Vitae. Lloyd Kaufman. https://www.lloydkaufman.com/biography/

Kaufman, L. & Gunn, J. (1998) All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger. Berkley Boulevard.

Ziems, M. (2016, January 20). Lloyd Kaufman – The Toxic Avenger of Independent Cinema. The 8 Percent. https://the8percent.com/lloyd-kaufman-the-toxic-avenger-of-independent-cinema/

Dodero, C. (2012 July 10). Q&A: Rocky Director John Avildsen on Working with Lloyd Kaufman. The Village Voice. https://www.villagevoice.com/2012/07/10/qa-rocky-director-john-avildsen-on-working-with-lloyd-kaufman/

Thompson, H. (1971 December 1). Screen: Love’s Return. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/01/archives/screen-loves-return.html

Winfrey, G. (2016 July 29). Troma Lives! Inside the Wacky, Repulsive, and Weirdly Meaningful World of a B-Movie Legend. https://www.indiewire.com/2016/07/tromaville-indie-film-legend-lloyd-kaufman-troma-entertainment-toxic-avenger-1201710070/

That Shelf Staff. (2014 March 17). Interview: Lloyd Kaufman. That Shelf. https://thatshelf.com/interview-lloyd-kaufman/

(2005). The 6th Annual TromaDance Film Festival. https://web.archive.org/web/20081011131259/http://news.tromadance.com/archives/2004/10/18/press-release/

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