Romeo and Juliet

This is Shakespeare run through a wood chipper: Lloyd Kaufman and James Gunn take every beat of Romeo and Juliet and drown it in sex, gore, and jokes, then hand the lovers a happy ending the Bard never would. It matters if you want to see how far an adaptation can bend before it breaks, and how a tragedy's skeleton survives even the crudest flesh. For Troma fans, transgressive-cinema students, and anyone curious what a cow monster has to do with Verona.

1. 1

   Act 1

   Squalor, Cages, and a Meat Tycoon

   Lemmy of Motörhead opens the film as narrator, introducing two feuding Manhattan families: the rich Capulets and the poor Ques. Tromeo Que lives in squalor with his alcoholic father Monty, working at a tattoo parlor with his cousin Benny and friend Murray. Juliet Capulet is sequestered in her family's mansion, watched over by her abusive father Cappy, passive mother Ingrid, and overprotective cousin Tyrone, while being sexually satisfied by family servant Ness. Both lovers are stuck wanting what they cannot have: Tromeo lusts for the big-bosomed, promiscuous Rosie, and Juliet is forced into an engagement with wealthy meat tycoon London Arbuckle by her father, who wants to complete his mafia family tree. Then a duel between Murray and Sammy Capulet drags in Detective Ernie Scalus, who assembles the heads of both households and warns that they will answer personally for any new breach of the peace. Immediately after Scalus's warning, Monty and Cappy threaten each other with weapons. Sammy Capulet gets caught in the window of Monty's speeding car and is thrown head-first into a fire hydrant, gradually dying.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Masquerade and the Plastic Cage

   Tromeo attends the Capulets' masquerade ball at the insistence of Murray and Benny, hoping to meet Rosie, but finds another man performing cunnilingus on her. Tromeo locks eyes with Juliet at the ball. They instantly fall for each other and share a dance until an angry Tyrone chases him out of the house. Cappy, disgusted by Juliet's active libido, forcefully imprisons her in a plastic cage as punishment. The plastic cage symbolizes Cappy's oppressive control and imprisonment of Juliet's sexuality and freedom. Tromeo sneaks into the Capulet house, meets Juliet, and after proclaiming their love verbally and physically, they agree to be married. Juliet breaks her engagement to Arbuckle, and the next day Father Lawrence marries them in secret. Tyrone discovers Juliet's secret affair, gathers his gang, and confronts Tromeo in his family's parlor. Murray stands by Tromeo to defend his honor but is fatally wounded by Tyrone's club.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Dismemberment, Eviction, and a Potion

   Enraged by Murray's death, Tromeo pursues Tyrone and slays him through a series of car crashes that dismember him. Detective Scalus evicts the Ques from Manhattan as punishment for Tyrone's murder. Cappy savagely beats Juliet into reconciling with Arbuckle, threatening to disown her if she doesn't. Juliet goes into hiding with Father Lawrence, who devises a plan with Tromeo to clear the Que name and end the feud. The plan enlists the apothecary Fu Chang, who sells Juliet a special potion to aid her predicament. On her wedding day, Juliet drinks the potion and transforms into a hideous cow monster with a three-foot penis. The sight causes Arbuckle to leap out the window in fright, committing suicide. Cappy deems Juliet a disgrace and sentences her to death, but Tromeo arrives and chases Cappy out before he can rape her. Tromeo restores Juliet's appearance with a single kiss.

4. 4

   Act 4

   Crossbow, Monitor, and the Sunset

   Cappy returns with a crossbow to execute the newlyweds. Juliet electrocutes him to death with a computer monitor. Detective Scalus, impressed by Tromeo and Juliet's teamwork in ending Cappy's criminal empire, pardons Tromeo of murder and orders Cappy's corpse transported to the morgue for cremation. Ingrid and Monty reveal the real reason behind the feud: Cappy and Monty once co-owned Silky Films, a pornographic production company. Ingrid, then married to Monty, had an affair with Cappy and bore a son. Monty signed over Silky Films to the Capulets in exchange for keeping his son. Tromeo and Juliet learn they are siblings but brush it off, determined not to let their ordeal be for naught. They passionately embrace and drive off into the sunset. Six years later, Tromeo and Juliet are married suburban yuppies with a house and birth-defected, deformed children of their own. The narrator ends with a brief poem: 'And all of our hearts free to let all things base go/As taught by Juliet and her Tromeo.' A brief shot of William Shakespeare laughing uproariously is shown before the end credits.

• TTromeo QuePoor, lovesick son of an alcoholic, working a tattoo parlor and burning for Rosie until Juliet rewires him. He kills for his friend, loses his home, and ends up a yuppie dad in New Jersey, sibling marriage notwithstanding.
• JJuliet CapuletSequestered heiress caged by her father's control and satisfied by the servant Ness until Tromeo. She survives beatings, a cow-monster transformation, and her father's crossbow, then kills him with a computer monitor.
• CCappy CapuletAbusive patriarch and secret porn mogul who pimps his daughter's marriage to build a mafia family tree. He dies by electrocution, monitor to skull, his empire ended by his own children.
• TTyroneJuliet's overprotective cousin, the film's Tybalt. He clubs Murray to death and is dismembered in the car crashes Tromeo uses to avenge him.
• MMurrayTromeo's loyal friend from the tattoo parlor who gets him to the ball and then dies defending his honor against Tyrone's club. His death turns Tromeo into a killer.
• DDetective Ernie ScalusThe Prince of this Manhattan, warning families, evicting the Ques, then pardoning Tromeo once Cappy's criminal empire falls. Law here bends to whoever wins.
• LLondon ArbuckleWealthy meat tycoon engaged to Juliet against her will. He flees her cow-monster form out a window to his death, taking the meat inheritance with him.
• MMonty Que and Ingrid CapuletThe feuding parents who end the mystery: ex-spouses tied to the Silky Films porn company, with Ingrid's affair making Tromeo and Juliet half-siblings.
• FFather LawrenceThe secret-wedding priest turned co-conspirator, hiding Juliet and plotting with Tromeo to end the feud. In this version, the scheme works.
• NNessThe Capulet family servant who keeps Juliet sexually satisfied inside the mansion, part caretaker, part symptom of how Cappy runs his house.

The plastic cage

Cappy imprisons Juliet in a plastic cage to punish her active libido, a transparent box that makes her captivity visible. It stands for her father's ownership of her body, and her escape from it marks the point where his control starts failing for good.

The potion

Fu Chang's potion replaces Shakespeare's death-faking vial with a transformation into a cow monster. It stands for the risk of the plan itself: the escape route becomes the catastrophe, and only love's kiss can undo what the scheme set in motion.

The computer monitor

Juliet kills her father by electrocuting him with a computer monitor, the tool of the modern world turned weapon. It stands for the daughter finally ending the patriarch's authority with the household's own machinery.

Silky Films

The porn company Cappy and Monty co-owned is the buried origin of the feud, lost in a custody trade. It stands for the squalid, commercial truth under the families' noble hatred, and for the inheritance of shame the children unknowingly share.

The ending is a triple heresy. First, nobody tragic dies: the lovers live, pardoned, and the bodies on the floor belong to the father and the forced groom. Second, the sibling revelation, which in any other story would be the horror beat, is brushed off in minutes because Tromeo and Juliet refuse to let their ordeal be for nothing; the film dares you to object. Third, the sunset drive and the Tromaville epilogue, with its deformed children, convert tragedy into a gross-out domestic comedy, suggesting that 'base things' survive every attempt to purge them. Lemmy's closing poem, 'And all of our hearts free to let all things base go/As taught by Juliet and her Tromeo,' frames the lovers as teachers of a shameless ethic, and the shot of Shakespeare laughing uproariously licenses the whole desecration, as if the Bard approves of what his story became. Whether that is liberation or just shock for shock's sake is the argument the film wants to start.

1. 1.Compare the plastic cage and the potion to the tomb in Shakespeare's play: how does each work confine the heroine, and what does Juliet's survival say about who these stories let die?
2. 2.The feud's origin is a porn-company custody dispute. What does the film gain by giving the 'ancient grudge' a squalid, material cause that Shakespeare withheld?
3. 3.The lovers learn they are siblings and shrug it off. Is the film endorsing their choice, satirizing the audience's investment in tragic purity, or both?

Troma devotees, students of transgressive and adaptation studies, and anyone who thinks Romeo and Juliet could use more dismemberment. Skip it if you need the Bard's words intact or your endings tragic.

FAQ