In addition to producing their brand of schlock, Troma Entertainment has picked up several titles to distribute. Admittedly, most of them can be complete dreck, but every so often, you’ll find something like Cannibal! The Musical. For every classic like The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High, you’ll get trash like Deadly Daphne’s Revenge. Quality aside, Troma wants to encourage young, independent filmmakers to get their movies out there for the world to see. While you may not be financially successful right away, your film will eventually find its audience, which is more important. That said, Troma will sometimes pick up a movie for distribution to have a product to push out. Often, this can lead to Troma putting out just pure garbage that even they come to regret later on. Such is the case with the forgotten 1985 film Igor and the Lunatics.
%
Rating
Synopsis
In the 1960s, Paul Byron (T.J. Glenn) led a hippie cult that worshiped him among men. However, one of its members, Jimmy (Christopher Chandley), wants out because he witnessed them committing terrible acts of murder. While Paul is locked away in prison for several murders, he’s freed after 16 years and is looking for revenge. He reunites with his old lackey Igor (Joe Niola) to search for a child Paul believes is his. Said child is found by Jimmy’s wife, Mary-Ann (Mary Ann Schacht), making it more personal for Paul. Meanwhile, a Native American man named Hawk (Peter Dain) is trying to protect the child since he helped raise him. Soon, all the groups come together to fight to the death to either reclaim or protect the child. It’s an all-out rampage headlined by Igor and the Lunatics!
Review
As of writing this review, I’ve done the Troma Tuesdays series for almost a year now. In that time, I’ve reviewed some genuinely Troma-rific classics, but I’ve also seen my fair share of dreck. Unfortunately, Igor and the Lunatics is probably the worst Troma movie I’ve reviewed so far, and that’s saying something. I had to look up several other reviews to remember what exactly happened because I forgot just about everything. I could go on about the shoddy production value, the questionable acting, and the weird pacing issues. However, despite all of that, this film commits the ultimate sin a film could commit: it’s boring. The opening scene offers some nudity and blood, and there are a few other scenes like that. Unfortunately, for those ten minutes, you have to sit through an hour and twelve minutes of nothing!
When you look up the cast for this, you’ll find that most of them never worked on anything else. In fact, the film’s director didn’t make another film for almost twenty years and hasn’t made one since 2011. Considering how little information there is on the production, I almost wonder what happened to these people. Its production history would probably be much more interesting than the film itself, but we may never know. If there are any positives, I will say that some of the gore effects are actually pretty good. Some highlights include a girl getting sawed in half and a guy getting a machete to the face. Also, while I panned this movie for its shoddy production values, some scenes have a nice gritty quality. This one might be good for a few drunken laughs, but overall, Igor and the Lunatics is not worth watching.
Buy Igor and the Lunatics from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AluZw7.
