There’s something fitting about the faux-grindhouse trend rolling to a stop into the lap of Lloyd Kaufman. The DIY filmmaking legend/Twitterholic is carving himself a piece of the imitation sleaze pie as his Troma Entertainment distributes the new-but-old-looking Father’s Day, directed by a fellow named Astron-6.
The plot is some kind of revenge story concerning a town where a rapist and murderer of dads returns after being gunned down by a mysterious stranger years earlier, but the whole thing seems hazy and overly complicated in the way these things often are, so fuck it: just watch the trailer below. If nothing else, it confirms that Hobo With A Shotgun really nailed the tone of 80s Troma. Or is this movie aping that one? These are the questions that pop up when a genre trend starts eating its own tail.
As the mainstream remake of Troma’s 1980 flick Mother’s Day gradually makes its way toward a stateside release (one assumes), one has to admire Kaufman’s hucksterism as he simultaneously cashes in on that film AND the inexplicably ongoing retro exploitation trend. Seeing the Final Cut-generated film damage and the winking, self-aware grindhouse sensibilities on a Troma film makes me a little sad (at their best, Troma’s films were messy but earnest fun), but hell, if anyone should make a buck off this wave of counterfeit exploitation, it’s ol’ Lloyd.