Troma are an American institution, in their own way. Founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974, the independent film studio has produced and released over a thousand films all in the same trashy, low-budget vein. There's the classic, gory Toxic Avenger series; musical zombie comedy Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead; and gross-out sci-fi flick the Class Of Nuke 'Em High. You can watch a lot of their movies free and legally on their YouTube channel, so long as you've got a string stomach and aren't eating anything whilst you go into one of their splatter-filled black comedies. As these things often do, Troma's films have earned something of a cult following. People really, really like cheap and shlocky exploitation films, y'know. Quentin Tarantino's made a whole career out of it. Catering to their obsessive, cataloguing fanbase, the first wave of Troma Entertainment DVD releases - including the Toxic Avenger, Bloodsucking Freaks, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Sgt Kabukiman, and Surf Nazis Must Die - included a fiendishly difficult pop quiz about their films called the Troma Intelligence Test. The TIT became somewhat infamous for the easter eggs hidden within it. For every question you get correct you "win" a clip of some extreme violence or racy T&A from a past Troma film, and if you get them all right you...well, you get to see something that saw the DVDs banned in Australia. So it's pretty powerful stuff, let's just put it that way. How to find it: Get all the answers right. We're not telling you them. Cheater.
12. Firefly's Jayne Sings The Song Of His People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKFLJmOQ50 There's probably a good chance you've seen as many people singing the praises of Firefly on the internet as those pictures of half-naked women. With good reason, though, as Joss Whedon's witty and thrilling space western was cancelled way before its time by the infamously short-sighted Fox network. Its early demise helped it earn a small but dedicated group of fans (who call themselves the Browncoats) who latched onto the richly detailed and imaginative future world the series took place in, along with funny and memorable characters like Nathan Fillion's charismatic captain Mal Reynolds, Summer Glau's mysterious River Tam and Adam Baldwin's doofus Jayne. Normally the but of jokes amongst the crew of smuggling ship Serenity, in one episode of the truncated series the group comes across a moon where Jayne apparently got himself into a memorable solo scrape and has since become a local legend. The slightly oafish Jayne revels in the attention and adoration, including a folk song all about his escapades and how mint he is. Which to be fair, we'd be pretty chuffed with and all. The Hero Of Canton isn't the catchiest tune around, but it definitely painted the character in a more sympathetic light than usual, which is possibly while Baldwin enjoyed it so much. As evidenced by an easter egg on the complete Firefly series DVD boxset, where he sits down in front of a painted backdrop - with his trademark knitted beanie on - to sing the Hero Of Canton, acapella, on his own. It's truly a sight to behold. Everybody, from the top: Jayne! The man they call Jayne! He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor, stood up to the man and he gave him what for... How to find it: On disc 4's special features menu, highlight "Joss Sings the Firefly Theme", then navigate left to select the ornament.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
