going back to Troma's War, 1999's ultra-meta Terror Firmer is the most ambitious and sprawling of a wave of films by the 
upstart Long Island-based indie company who alternated its flagship Toxie films, quickie genre films, and oddball pick-ups with an occasional epic like this. Part of a string of films directed by Troma's Lloyd Kaufman himself, this is very much in the same company as Tromeo and Juliet and Poultrygeist with its expanded roster of characters and settings, elaborate gross-out effects, and attempts to break through to a wider theatrical audience than usual. About as Troma as a movie can possibly get, this one announces its intentions right away before the credits as we see a guy getting beaten to death with his own ripped-off leg and a sunbathing woman getting her fetus pulled out in a very rubbery fashion. From there it's a neverending stream of movie production jokes, cameos, and splatter set pieces that were almost entirely censored if you were unlucky enough to rent the R-rated version back in the day. 
where the blind, clueless director Larry Benjamin (Kaufman) is surrounded by a cast and crew of unhinged eccentrics. Among the more grounded of the employees is Jennifer (LaTourelle), a production assistant being fought over by two men, sound 
man Casey (Keenan) and FX operator Jerry (Haaga). No location shoot or frat party is safe from a killer who could strike at any moment when the screen isn't being bombarded with bodily fluids, explosions, and a slew of cameos you're better off discovering for yourself.
theatrical run including numerous midnight screenings, Terror Firmer has been on home video in numerous formats including a special edition DVD in 2001. The double-disc set features an open matte, interlaced presentation of the complete unrated version, a 1m27s Kaufman intro about the role of James Gunn in creating this film, three commentaries (Kaufman solo, editors Gabe 
Friedman and Sean McGrath, and Keenan, Rochon, and Haaga), a 16m14s "Fun with Scissors" section of twelve deleted scenes with optional editor commentary, eleven alternate footage scenes, an escalator scene comic-to-film comparison, a 6m27s cast audition reel, a 6m13s blooper reel, and a trailer and teaser. If you feel so inclined, you can also watch the film with the deleted scenes put back in (running 123m59s with the editors' commentary if you want it) which is a very bumpy watching experience. The second DVD features the massive "Farts of Darkness" making-of documentary (99m23s), a Lunachicks "Say What You Mean" music video, DJ Polo's "Freak of the Week" music video with Ron Jeremy (which needless to say doesn't play well now), Emtombed's "Seeing Red" music video, plugs for the soundtrack and the Troma book, a "Celebrate Tromadance!" promo, "Gyno-talk with Alyce LaTourelle," "At Home with Charlotte Kaufman," a Windows interactive game, the usual 
Radiation March thing, and bonus trailers for Citizen Toxie, Unspeakable, Cannibal! The Musical, and Parts of the Family.
auditions, bloopers, Charlotte Kaufman piece, the comic-film comparison, a #ShakespearesShitstorm trailer, Gyno-Talk, and three music videos. Unfortunately the presentation was severely lacking with faded color, very weak blacks, and an iffy Dolby Digital 2.0 track that sounded heavily compressed. 
Through Chaos" (48m40s), featuring Kaufman, writer Douglas Buck, editor Gabriel Friedman, Keenan, Haaga, Rochon, Sean Pierce, Greg "G-Spot" Siebel, Charlotte Kaufman and crew members Joe Lynch and Eric "Zork" Alan sharing more tales about getting 
into character, acting out on the city streets, and looking back at the killer's now touchy revelation and the motivation behind it. Then "Lloyd Gets Spooked" (16m46s) covers Kaufman's appearance at the film's raucous Minneapolis premiere with plenty of footage and new interviews with members of Carshool-Film-O-Rama. Finally "The Zork-ive" is a treasure trove of previously unreleased interviews Zork conducted during production with Kaufman (7m57s), LaTourelle (13m9s), actress Reverend Jen Miller (8m8s), Lemmy (4m20s), actor Roy David (8m25s), Haaga (2m50s), actor Yaniv Sharon (7m2s), and the one and only Joe Franklin (13m34s). The second Blu-ray houses the remainder of the video extras including the extended SD version (open matte as usual with all the surprising extra frontal nudity) with reinstated deleted scenes and editors' commentary, the "Farts of Darkness" doc, the "20 Years Later" featurette, alternate footage, auditions, bloopers, Charlotte Kaufman interview, deleted scenes with commentary, escalator scene comparison, Gyno-Talk, Kaufman's intro from the earlier Blu-ray, and the teaser and trailer. Note that the music videos are not carried over, so hang on to one of those earlier discs for those. The deluxe set also comes with a 40-page, perfect-bound book with new essays by Mathew Klickstein, Alex Gootter, and Heather Drain studying one of the wildest and most representative entries in Troma history.VINEGAR SYNDROME (UHD)
VINEGAR SYNDROME (Blu-ray)
TROMA (Blu-ray)
TROMA (DVD)
