Class of Nuke 'Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown B-Movie Review

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CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH PART II: SUBHUMANOID MELTDOWN - 3 Slimes

Rated R

Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 12 June 2005

The Characters:

Roger - Despite his blonde hair and beefy musculature, he acts like a social recluse. This is probably caused by his excretion of potent body odor.
Victoria - The loving mutant girl who falls for Roger. "Loving" does not necessarily mean "attractive."
The Subhumanoids - They were created to be the perfect servant race. The reason that they need a mouth in place of a bellybutton is never explained. If anything, I think a smaller set of arms, lower on the ribcage, would be an asset.
Prof. Holt - Her brilliant mind created the subhumanoids, but what is up with that hair skyscraper?
Dean Okra - <YODA>Irritating of voice and unclean of soul, he seems. Head ripped off and eaten, it is.</YODA>
The Squirrels - Violent gang that Dean Okra uses to persecute the student body.
Yoke - Flabby leader of the Squirrels. I often wished that he could afford more leather.
Tromie - A giant mutant squirrel! Thank heavens!

The Plot:

Oh boy, I do not know if I should be doing this. Reviewing another Troma film is what I mean. Do not get me wrong, they are the perfect sort of film for Badmovies.org. They become difficult to review because literally half the movie has nothing to do with the plot. Multiple scenes are random occurrences. It makes writing about the film an exercise in frustration. Do I tell them about the decontamination teams who roam the campus, hosing down students, or devote my energy to the bulimic dolphin/man hybrid? Which of those two is contributing more to the story?

You understand my dilemma.

"Class of Nuke 'Em High 2: Subhumanoid Meltdown" is made even more incomprehensible by what happens at the beginning. Not only do they provide a recap of the first film, but it then tells the present story through a flashback. Yes, Roger carries Victoria outside, while dozens of people run screaming to and fro and a towering squirrel monster destroys nearby buildings. There is also a serious vehicle accident involving the bus from "The Road Warrior" and, ah, somebody's car. I was just complaining about how disjointed the average Troma film makes me feel. This is, amazingly enough, a little worse. To make matters more complicated, the three-hundred foot tall radiated rodent starts puking on the screaming populace.

Mercifully, the flashback takes us to the beginning of the story. Roger is a member of the school newspaper. His college (which has high school lockers) is co-located with a nuclear power plant. As a part of their curriculum, students perform many critical functions at the plant. This strikes me as a very bad idea. I mean, come on, this is not MIT (more like IDIOT). I can just imagine the college not having a commencement ceremony one year, because all of the seniors were in the containment building when "The Uh-Oh" happened. Anyway, nobody likes Roger due to his oppressive body odor. He is also a social misfit. Yes, despite his buff physique, Roger is a royal chode.

In order to interact with a woman, the loveless reporter takes part in a radical experiment conducted by Professor Holt. The scientist is trying to learn just how many men a female subhumanoid can service before collapsing from soreness. Roger, who is blindfolded, is lucky number 65 (she must clean out with a wet/dry vac between visitors). After making the beast with two backs and three mouths, he is smitten with the girl. Unfortunately, his part in the experiment is over. How will Roger ever find his dream mutant, now that she is working number 66?

Subhumanoids are nearly superhuman in some respects. At least, they are described that way. I guess, when everyone else is a weak klutz, having good hand to eye coordination seems lordly. However, the subhumanoids' extraordinary abilities come with a price: sudden, catastrophic cellular meltdown. When under duress, the genetic constructs become violent for a few seconds, then collapse. What emerges from the steaming pile of guts looks like a poor man's Zuni fetish doll. Roger watches the star of the girls' basketball team become a hideous lump of face, but his editor refuses to publish the story.

Professor Holt is not taking the news that her babies are defective well. She obsesses about saving them and creates an oral vaccine to prevent the meltdowns from occurring. All the professor does is draw blood from already devolved subhumanoids, then swish it around. Presto, instant protection for the others! (And this whole time I thought using chicken eggs was surprisingly simple.) Around the same time as this is happening, Roger stumbles across Victoria again. He thinks it is love, while she cannot remember if he was number 62 or 65. At least they seem happy together.

The vaccine solution comes too late for Dean Okra. He is going to deliver the subhumanoids to the corporation that runs the power plant and the school. When Holt resists, both she and Victoria are thrown into a dungeon full of stop motion monsters. Roger rallies the students to save his girlfriend, resulting in a tortuous assault on the dean's lair. Students carrying uzis and campus security with M-16s craziness ensues. Oh, and lots of people running around and yelling. Do not forget that.

There were times when the random chaos was genuinely amusing and a welcome diversion from the plot. Almost every scene has people, in the background and on the peripherals, running, dancing, or being pummeled. After a while this causes the viewer too much stimulation. It is like trying to watch a movie about teenage delinquents superimposed over a three Stooges film.

Okay, so Roger and his student activists are storming the reactor with their uzis. Not only do they finally defeat the Squirrels, but Dean Okra is turned into a chew toy for a clay gargoyle. You have to give it to Troma; the bad guy always meets a grisly end, often decapitation. Elsewhere, one overachieving tree-hugger attacks the reactor's control panel with a chainsaw (What is a tree-hugger doing with a chainsaw?), thus causing some minor problems. None of this compares to what happens next.

Shortly before all Hell broke loose (I cannot pinpoint the precise moment, but it is there), a happy little squirrel is seen dining on nuclear waste. The rapidly mutating rodent becomes the single most destructive Sciuridae to ever walk the Earth. It tromps through the nuclear plant, knocking down structures. Roger carries Victoria away from the destruction, but she is already showing signs of imminent meltdown. If he would just stop narrating into his recorder for one minute, he might be able to get the vaccine from Professor Holt and save his true love. He does not (Roger is such a chode). Fortune shines on Victoria, though. Tromie (the huge radioactive squirrel) picks up the professor, then drops her right beside the stricken girl. Thank goodness.

I have already mentioned that the movie is too chaotic at times. However, Tromie's rampage is kind of amusing. It is not on par with a Godzilla film, nor even a 70's Gamera film. Heck, The X from Outer Space looks good in comparison, but we take what we can get.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

GI Joe Figures: the SFX person's friend.
A rubber frog and bread does not a sandwich make.
With the right girl, even sloppy 65th is enjoyable.
Dolphins are very self conscious about their weight.
Women athletes sometimes wear spikes on their bras.
Love means never having to say you are sorry, even after bashing her against a tree.
Providing first aid to someone who is projectile vomiting is no picnic.

Stuff To Watch For:

4 mins - Now we all know where David Lee Roth went to high school.
9 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT! Yikes! That third one was a man!
24 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT! Wow, is that ever disturbing.
30 mins - She thought that she was going to America...
34 mins - Where does a fetish like this come from?
53 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT! The bald thing is really killing these for me.
60 mins - Sounds like an average college girl.
72 mins - Benny gave the prop a little too much of a helping hand.
75 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT!

Audio clips in wav format

SOUNDS

Starving actors speak out

	File	Dialog
	nukehighsub1.wav	Roger: "Whoever finds this tape, if you can't get my article printed, please at least find a way to save my dearest love Victoria. Damn! Who would have thought college would have turned out like this?" (Explosion, screaming).
	nukehighsub2.wav	Prof Holt: "We will not ask you to do anything embarrassing, humiliating, or abnormal at any time. Now, get in that next room and strip down naked!"
	nukehighsub3.wav	Dean Okra: "There is no more time! I've already reported to the board of directors that campus integration is a complete success.
	nukehighsub4.wav	Roger: "Just because Victoria had lips on her belly didn't stop me from loving her. I had to find her."
	Theme Song	Listen to a clip from the soundtrack.