The Battle of Love's Return (1971) dir. Lloyd Kaufman, Troma Entertainment
I was going through some old adverts one day this month and found a special for the then new Sci-Fi Channel. It seems for one week whole week back when the channel was still only seen in limited parts of the country they had something called 'the Aroma of Troma' which promised to be a week of nothing but Troma movies. Well, lacking anything else to do why not revive this old holiday once more?
Meet Abercrombie (Kaufman). He's fresh-faced, eager, and about as sharp as a bowling ball. He works for Mr. Crumb (Stanley Kaufman), a slave-driving loon of a boss. Abercrombie tries to do his best, but given that he's very personification of the word 'putz' he doesn't have much success.
Things are looking up though, as Abbie meets his Dream Girl (Lynn Lowery). He also gets hit by a car. He figures that he has to something manly, something impressive! So he enlists and is promptly sent off to fight...somebody and somewhere.
"Pretentious film made by unpretentious director" said one reviewer and I'm inclined to agree. There is very Woody Allen vibe (back when that was a good thing) about the whole production. A sort of 'hey gang, let's put on a show!' feel carries the film for a while yet Kaufman even then has a 'yeah whatever' going for him. Everything is broad and cranked up to eleven. One could compare it to a higher end student film, which makes sense given this is Kaufman's second only film and his first professional one.
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