Make Your Own Damn Podcast

Dario Argento, master of Italian horror, once had a film distributed by Troma Entertainment. It's 1996's The Stendhal Syndrome. Starring daughter Asia Argento as a police detective tracking a serial rapist, it explores themes of trauma in a nuanced, compelling way. Plot twist: The Stendhal Syndrome is now a Full Moon Feature. Go figure.

There has never been a film like Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD. An attempt by Lloyd Kaufman and company to enter the mainstream with a crossover hit, Sgt. Kabukiman is a film that has a hard time deciding what it wants to be. Co-host Jeff Burk is not a fan. Lucas is much more forgiving. 

There are few films with such an impact on mainstream cinema than 1987's Street Trash. It's our most requested movie and often mistook for a Troma movie (much to Lloyd Kaufman's chagrin). Its director has been the steadicam operator on such everything from prestigious films as Titanic and Terminator 2 to genre classics like Jason Takes Manhattan. His filmography is only the beginning. Street Trash...

In early 2020, Lucas and Jeff recorded a pilot episode for a Richard Laymon podcast. The show never developed and the episode has been locked into the vaults until now. Enjoy the discussion exploring Richard Laymon's THE WOODS ARE DARK. If you enjoy it, let us know! Maybe one day we'll do more. 

Sideshow and drag performer Bobby Lugosi crashes the show to talk about the queer cult classic VEGAS IN SPACE. A low-budget effort made over the course of eight years, VEGAS IN SPACE follows soldiers who must pose as women to search for missing gems on the all-female planet of Clitoris. The film was written by the late notable drag performer Doris Fish and released by the notorious Troma Entertain...

It's warm in Texas and cold in Oregon, but Lucas and Jeff are determined to align themselves in holiday cheer to talk about 1980's Christmas Evil, a film praised by the likes of Joe Bob Briggs and John Waters. It's an early slasher, still glistening with 70s grime, and it follows the Taxi Driver-like descent into murder of a lowly toy factory worker. As a boy, Harry saw Mommy fucking Santa Claus a...

Female beauty standards! Bad surgery! Travelogue footage! Jeff and Lucas break down TromaNow original Under the Knife, directed by Josh Hoffman. Plus, medical horror tropes, Train to Busan, and hardcore punk band Fucked Up. 

Jeff and Lucas break their moratorium on guests to chop it up with semi-professional critic and filmmaker Scout Tafoya about everything from reexamining universally loathed movies, Rob Zombie, the dystopia of Disney/Marvel, Jodorowsky's legacy, Troma giving chances to filmmakers who wouldn't otherwise get noticed, and a whole lot more. Check out Scout on  Vimeo  or  Patreon . 

This week, Jeff and Lucas couldn't record, so we dug way back in the archives and found an old episode of a previous podcast where they discussed 1987's trailblazing but criminally underseen meta-horror film, Anguish. Directed by Bigas Luna, Anguish follows a serial killer who collects the eyes of his victims for his mother (played by Zelda Rubenstein of Poltergeist fame). Then, at about the 21-mi...

If you've ever owned a Troma movie on DVD or Blu Ray, chances are you saw this early-80s oddity. A minute-long public service announcement about the dangers of climate change (then called global warming), it features dancing children clad in sunglasses and leotards and an ominous message. It's a work near and dear to Troma president Lloyd Kaufman, and we try to determine why.

This week on Make Your Own Damn Podcast, Jeff and Lucas examine the late 90s slasher parody Decampitated, trans representation in Troma movies, and the meta horror subgenre.

Co-hosts Jeff and Lucas take on Troma's most nihilistic movie yet! With PTSD, cheesy 80s villains, family annihilation, and sets so grimy you can smell em through the screen, Combat Shock is a complicated, flawed, but ultimately interesting and worthy entry in Troma's catalogue. Plus, if you go far enough to the left, you get your gun rights back; Lucas gets candid about raising kids when you're m...

Jeff and Lucas finish their deep-dive on the Class of Nuke Em High franchise in this their 30th episode. Return to Return to Nuke Em High Volume 2 is Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team at their irreverent, frenetic best. Plus, getting screened at MOMA beats getting escorted at gunpoint from Cannes, meta is hard to pull off but great when done right, Lloyd Kaufman as Buffalo Bill cannot be unseen, an...

This week, Jeff and Lucas take on the slickest (so far) of the Lloyd Kaufman films: Return to Nuke 'em High, Volume 1. "Torture porn" is a term that rolls off the tongue and Lucas is spacey. Plus, organic is bullshit, Uncle Lloyd's in a bad mood, armored wheelchairs, the MPAA still sucks, economic blacklisting of independent artists, Dave Made a Maze and other great works of art that fall through...

Class of Nuke 'Em High 2 is a fun, over-the-top slice of 90s cinema. Can the same be said for Class of Nuke 'Em High 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Subhumanoid? Plus, Jeff Burk and Lucas Mangum talk all about horror franchises, the place of the Nuke 'Em High films in that canon, our favorite series, Halloween Kills, Final Destination and Saw, the campy brilliance of David R. Ellis, 15 Minutes of Sh...

Jeff was wrong about Class of Nuke 'Em High 2. It might be the most underrated movie we've covered to date. Brick Bronsky rules! Lisa Gaye rules! Don't mess with squirrels!

Hippies! Table saw bisection! Obnoxious laughter! IGOR AND THE LUNATICS has all this and more, but is it any good? Find out as Jeff Burk and Lucas Mangum dive into this little-seen bit of exploitation. Plus, I DRINK YOUR BLOOD and EASY RIDER are brilliant, we need to Twitter, and Zack Beins rules. Shoutout Rayne Havok. Shoutout Young Stepdad. 

Lucas and Jeff take a look at the seminal DEF BY TEMPTATION, a historically significant and compelling work of NY low-budget cinema. It stars Samuel L. Jackson in an early role and cinematography from Ernest R. Dickerson (DEMON KNIGHT & THE WIRE). 

Filmmaker and host of the excellent Talkin' Troma podcast stops by Make Your Own Damn Podcast, and together we round robin our 5 favorite Troma movies. Things get crazy and weird, as expected. 

Jeff and Lucas take a gander at Lloyd Kaufman's documentary ALL THE LOVE YOU CANNES and pivot to discuss their own experiences with industrial trade shows in the world of independent art. 

Super-crack! Exploding hookers! Weird science! Frankenhooker is New York grindhouse trash cinema meets Universal Monsters, and we love it! 

Made in 1976 by people mostly associated with the porn industry, BLOODSUCKING FREAKS is quite possibly the most notorious Troma movie ever, but is it any good? Listen as Jeff and Lucas deep-dive, dissect, and analyze this cult classic.

In 2018, director James Gunn (writer of Tromeo and Juliet) was fired from Disney. They rehired him a year later, but during that hiatus from the largest entertainment company on the planet, he wrote and directed The Suicide Squad. Of all his movies done since entering the mainstream, this film most perfectly embodies the Troma spirit. 

This week Jeff and Lucas look at the first of Lloyd Kaufman and company's sex comedies, the softball and sexy-time flick SQUEEZE PLAY! Plus, the many waves of feminism and the history of wet t-shirt contests!