Tales of Cin­e­ma No. 5 – Troma’s Explod­ing Car

Inspired by Miguel Gomes’ tac­tic of sto­ry col­lect­ing for Ara­bi­an Nights, we set out in search of off-the-beat­en-path true tales in the hope of glimps­ing the soul of cin­e­ma today. These are sto­ries of obses­sion, acci­dents, gam­bles and mortality…

Ultra-low bud­get, New-York based under­ground film stu­dio Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment is known for ​“42 years of failed film­mak­ing”. This is accord­ing to Lloyd Kauf­man, who co-found­ed the stu­dio in 1974 with Michael Herz. Tro­ma trade­marks are unre­al­is­tic gore, glee­ful bad-taste humour and gen­er­ous nudi­ty. There is also a sequence that has been lov­ing­ly recy­cled in fea­tures, shorts and even music videos to give fans a long-term run­ning joke. The sequence is spec­tac­u­lar car crash footage in which a blue-green 1978 Ford Thun­der­bird hits a car parked in the mid­dle of the road, does a slow-motion 360 degree flip, lands on the ground and then explodes.

“It’s like the Alfred Hitch­cock cameo now,” says Gabe Fried­man, for­mer Tro­ma edi­tor and a pas­sion­ate cheer­leader of what he calls ​‘The Kabu­ki Flip’. The stunt was orig­i­nal­ly filmed for 1990’s Sergeant Kabuki­man NYPD. At the time Tro­ma had an unprece­dent­ed amount of mon­ey thanks to Japan­ese investors, NAM­CO (the cre­ators of Pac-Man), who stumped up half of the film’s $900,000 budget.

Lloyd Kauf­man remem­bers the day of the shoot: ​“We had five cam­eras. I was on the cam­era that was clos­est to the car and the stunt­man dri­ving the car was a cow­boy. He went too fast so the car went high­er and fur­ther than any­one expect­ed. I put myself on that cam­era because that was the least safe cam­era and I have lit­tle, or no, will to live, but the car didn’t get to me. I swear I ran away from the cam­era while that car was com­ing at me, but I got the shot so I must have stayed there, but my soul, I think, departed.”

The result­ing sequence was reused six years lat­er in the film Tromeo and Juli­et co-writ­ten by Guardians of the Galaxy direc­tor, James Gunn. In the re-edit­ed crash scene, James Gunn is in the driver’s seat, joy­ful­ly singing ​‘Found a Peanut’ with his onscreen fam­i­ly before a sev­ered head bounces onto the car bon­net caus­ing screams then fiery dis­as­ter. Frank Reynolds, who edit­ed Tromeo and Juli­et, regrets not ful­ly enjoy­ing his brief stint at Tro­ma, because of hav­ing had one wist­ful eye on the mid-’90s indie boom spear­head­ed by direc­tors like Whit Still­man and Kevin Smith.

Still, a con­sum­mate pro, he went though what, pri­or to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and sophis­ti­cat­ed edit­ing suites, was a man­u­al process of find­ing film stock that would suit a phys­i­cal­ly made copy of the car crash mas­ter-neg­a­tive. He made a copy then had to use glue to splice it into the new reel. In the process, he made his own lit­tle mark on the sequence. ​“Before the car flip there’s a strange point-of-view shot through a wind­shield. I acci­den­tal­ly got that shot when they gave me the copy of the car flip. They gave me a good 30-sec­ond chunk of the movie on a film print. I said, ​‘Oh, I’ll use this shot,’ and didn’t expect it to stay in the movie. I think it wound up stay­ing in every time they sub­se­quent­ly recy­cled it, which I thought was kind of fun­ny. I nev­er thought that they were going to use that shot again and I think that was due to Gabe as well.”

Gabe Fried­man took the edit­ing baton from Reynolds, insert­ing the ip into three films: 1999’s Ter­ror Firmer, 2000’s Cit­i­zen Tox­ie and 2006’s Poul­trygeist: Night of The Chick­en Dead. The lat­ter title Fried­man also wrote in col­lege. He has a pal­pa­ble sense of hon­our regard­ing use of the flip. ​“I think fans expect it. When you go to a screen­ing and The Kabu­ki Flip comes out of nowhere, it’s more than tra­di­tion. Respect it. The ques­tion is, ​‘Where are you going to put it in?’” Keep­ing tra­di­tion alive is tak­ing increas­ing lev­els of imag­i­na­tion. The Ford Thun­der­bird was used in 1990 because it was cheap to source.

Now, over 25 years lat­er, it has – unfor­tu­nate­ly for Tro­ma – become a clas­sic car. Hard to find and even hard­er to prise away from own­ers. Travis Camp­bell, who trans­ferred the orig­i­nal film ele­ment to high def­i­n­i­tion for 2013’s Return to Nuke ​’Em High Vol­ume 1 and 2016’s Return to Nuke ​’Em High Vol­ume 2, was there for the first time could not find a match­ing vehi­cle. Thanks to a lit­tle cam­paign­ing from The Kabu­ki Flip ide­alogue, Fried­man, a way was found to use the crash footage any­way. ​“They just shot the actors in I think it was a white car and the cam­era was real­ly close up on them.” Camp­bell explains. ​“Then you would cut to dif­fer­ent parts like The Kabu­ki Car turn­ing a cor­ner. We had to cut around the clown, of course. While they shot close on the actors, they shook the car. There was some­one hold­ing a branch run­ning by. The cam­era would be on a dol­ly going back and forth to give the illu­sion of the car moving.”

Return to Nuke ​’Em High Vol­ume 1 and Return to Nuke ​’Em High Vol­ume 2 are pas­sion projects that have been a long time com­ing. As well as The Kabu­ki Flip, there is an extra treat that was sup­posed to be a sur­prise for Tro­ma fans, but Kauf­man has said that we can reveal (“You’re wel­come. You do what you want.”) An extrav­a­gant stunt from Troma’s War (1988) of a car shoot­ing off a dock and then explod­ing above a boat will be some­how shoe­horned into the nar­ra­tive. Will this come to replace The Kabu­ki Flip?