When Lloyd Kaufman and his merry band of maniacs at Troma set out to adapt Romeo and Juliet, the result was never going to resemble a reverential BBC production in doublets and codpieces. Instead, what we got was Tromeo and Juliet, a film that gleefully shoves Shakespeare into a blender full of sex, gore, cheap beer, and body piercings. It is, improbably, both revolting and rather brilliant.
For the uninitiated, Troma is the world’s longest-running independent film studio, run since the seventies by Lloyd Kaufman. Their ethos is simple: make everything outrageous, gory, juvenile, and politically incorrect, but never boring. They’ve given us the likes of The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ’Em High, and countless films in which heads explode for no reason other than the budget could stretch to it.
Tromeo and Juliet came during a particularly prolific period for the studio, spanning from around 1995 to 2000. What set this one apart was a script co-written by a young James Gunn. Yes, that James Gunn, the man who’s now in charge of the squeaky clean DC Cinematic Universe. Back then, though, he was writing incest gags and dream sequences where Juliet is attacked by a penis monster that looks like the combined mass of all the cock Bonnie Blue has ever taken, coagulated into one singular, monstrous shaft. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Despite what you may think, the skeleton of Shakespeare’s story is still here: feuding families, star-crossed lovers, doom lurking at every turn. But in this telling, the Capulets are grotesque pornographers and the Ques (standing in for Montagues) are tattooed degenerates.
Our Romeo substitute, Tromeo Que (Will Keenan), is a sensitive slacker and aspiring poet, stuck working at a tattoo parlor and dreaming of something more. His life changes when he meets Juliet Capulet (Jane Jensen), a young woman literally imprisoned in a glass cage by her deranged father, Cappy Capulet (Maximilian Shaun), who rules over his family’s seedy porn empire with sadistic fervor and increasingly incestuous intentions.
Tromeo and Juliet fall in love during a wild party, much like in the original play, but their romance quickly spirals into chaos. Juliet is betrothed to the sinister London Arbuckle (Stephen Blackehart), a grotesque parody of Paris, and her efforts to escape her oppressive family lead to increasingly surreal and violent events. Tromeo, desperate and passionate, battles both societal decay and his own insecurities to stay with her.
Tromeo and Juliet fall in love during a wild party, much like in the original play, but their romance quickly spirals into chaos. Juliet is betrothed to the sinister London Arbuckle (Stephen Blackehart), a grotesque parody of Paris, and her efforts to escape her oppressive family lead to increasingly surreal and violent events. Tromeo, desperate and passionate, battles both societal decay and his own insecurities to stay with her.
Meanwhile, supporting characters like Sammy Capulet (Debbie Rochon), a chain-smoking punk version of the Nurse, and Benny Que (co-director and Troma stalwart Lloyd Kaufman in a minor role), round out a cast of freaks, deviants, and doomed lovers. The whole thing is held together by a gravel-throated narrator – none other than Motörhead’s Lemmy – who delivers Shakespearean morsels like a beery ringmaster at the world’s sleaziest circus.
Troma films are infamous for wallowing in sleaze, and Tromeo and Juliet doesn’t disappoint. There’s incest, cannibalism, fetish gear, and gallons of bodily fluids. Yet, and here’s the surprise, it’s not just juvenile shock value. Somewhere beneath the pus and puss, there’s a beating heart. Tromeo and Juliet genuinely like each other, and the film, for all its grotesquerie, seems oddly invested in their happiness.
It’s this tension, between sincerity and scatology, that keeps the whole sordid enterprise entertaining. Like a fart delivered during a funeral, it’s not right, but you can’t help laughing anyway.
As someone who grew up with the alternative British comedy from the Eighties and Nineties – such as The Young Ones, Bottom, anything involving Rik Mayall smashing Adrian Edmondson over the head with a frying pan – the film’s style really resonated with me. Those shows thrived on chaos, slapstick, and gleeful vulgarity. Tromeo and Juliet reminded me of that spirit. It’s crass and anarchic, filled with pratfalls and cheap shots, but propelled by such manic energy that it becomes endearing. If Rik and Vyvyan had ever decided to stage Shakespeare, it might well have resembled this.
Some people may clutch their pearls at the idea of Shakespeare reduced to dick jokes and mutilation. But let’s remember the man himself wasn’t above smut. The Elizabethans adored bawdy humour, grotesque violence, and ghostly apparitions. Romeo and Juliet is rife with puns about maidenheads, swords, and “standing” in more ways than one.
Viewed from that angle, Tromeo and Juliet is an oddly faithful adaptation. It translates the play for a modern audience not by sanitising it but by doubling down on filth and blood, precisely the sort of thing that would have had the peasants roaring in 1595. If anything, Kaufman and Gunn captured the true spirit of Shakespeare better than a hundred tedious period dramas ever have.
And yes, it has a giant penis. An enormous, mutant, wobbling penis. If that doesn’t say “timeless romance,” I don’t know what does.
Midnight Cinema Junkyard 
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