Nostalgia Kinky

While Troma has a history of releasing some of the most psychotically deranged films in all of modern cinema, few are as batshit crazy as Rise of the Super Tromettes (2025). Written and directed by feminist fetish model and filmmaker Mercedes the Muse, Rise of the Super Tromettes is a wildly surreal and trashy film. Troma’s new Blu-ray of the film, available from MVD, lets loose one of the company’s most unhinged productions.

Coming on like an uber-peverted Kick Ass, Rise of the Super Tromettes is a comic book vigilante thriller set in Tromaville, hosted by Lloyd Kaufman himself. It’s both silly and disturbing, cartoonish and gross, and it is more than a bit all over the place. Still, I admired Muse’s go-for-it filmmaking attitude. She’s cranked everything up to a garish and even at times grating level, but it all kind of works, in a weirdly twisted way.

Muse herself stars, alongside Elizabeth D’Ambrosio and Knotty Peach. Other Tromaheads pop up, but the film is controlled by Muse and D’Ambrosio, both giving performances as unhinged as the film itself. This is trash, but it knows it’s trash, and Muse’s fiercely feminist nature keeps the film from being just another gross-out SOV spectacle.

From what I gather, Muse’s first experiment in film was 2008’s short My Night Job, apparently a serious portrait of an S.F. Sex Worker starring Muse herself. From here she forms an art collective known as Underground Front before eventually hooking up with Troma fairly full-time with her feature debut, Honor Killing (2018). Muse is an interesting figure, who is clearly passionate about Troma and her particular brand of filmmaking.

There are aspects of Rise of the Super Tromettes I don’t personally care for, namely the film’s attempted satirical spin on the Covid era, but mostly I found this quite an enjoyable ride that maintains a 10 on the insane-meter from the first frame to last. Hopefully anyone reading will understand, Rise of the Super Tromettes isn’t for everyone, but if you like your trash particularly ripe, you’ll dig this.

Extras on Troma’s Blu-ray are slim but fine. We get the usual Kaufman intro as well as a brief behind-the-scenes featurette. The best extra is a ten-minute guided tour by Muse of her own personal Troma collection. She’s charming and seems quite kind in real life, so often the case with filmmakers willing to put their darkest visions on the screen.

-Jeremy Richey, July 2026-