Dir. Joe Cash (2020)
A documentary about the long history of B-horror and trashy movies.
CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Produced entirely through Zoom during COVID and containing dozens of retro clips from some of your favorite horror movies, Toilet Horror is a super-low-budget documentary that discusses some of the trashiest movies with some of the biggest names in B-horror. Director Joe Cash discusses everything from their favorite horror movies, movie nudity, and slasher movie icons with stars like Lloyd Kaufman, Debbie Rochon (who we interviewed!), Ari Lehman, and many more. Cash does a lot with very little as always, providing low quality screen recordings with a ton of insight into horror history.
The low quality can be distracting at times, however: the audio is downright terrible in some of these interviews, and there are numerous video interviews where the video quality is grainy at best. Despite its shortcomings, however, the film does deliver what's most important for a horror doc: it's a bunch of folks from the industry sitting around and talking horror. There are a ton of great insights, especially from the two actors who have played Jason Voorhees, that give some nice history from some of horror's most famous movies.
The film itself is fairly low quality, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a watch. It's definitely on the lower-end of horror documentaries, and there's not a whole lot of new ground covered. But if you're like me and you can never get enough background on some of your favorites, it's a film that you'll want to check out. The name is a bit misleading, though: despite a good bit of runtime devoted to Troma films, most of the film is dedicated to much more popular (and much higher grade) movies, especially the parts that deal with Freddy, Jason, and the Evil Dead franchise.
Who this movie is for: Horror documentary lovers, Troma fans, People who don't mind a little choppiness in their documentaries
Bottom line: For a movie that is meant to tell stories that fans have perhaps never heard, Toilet Horror hits its target. If you're looking for a polished documentary like the ones you see on the special features of the movies you love, this one could very well be a miss. As a huge fan of the slasher films of the 80's and pretty much everything Troma has ever made, this one was right up my alley. Definitely worth a watch if you're a fan of 80's horror especially.
