Episode review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) Review

Episode length 58:54 · Released August 25, 2025

The short version

This is the movie that named our podcast. A new kid walks into the Foot Clan hideout and asks if anyone has cigarettes. The head thug answers: "Regular or menthol?" That head thug is Sam Rockwell, and that line is where Regular or Menthol comes from. The movie itself holds up better than it has any right to. Take away the turtles and the jokes and you are left with a dark, gritty crime movie about a cult leader recruiting runaway kids, with a kid friendly filter laid over the top. I gave it an 8. Chris stopped at 7.9.

Regular or menthol? The line that named this show

Twenty minutes into the episode we get to the scene. The Foot Clan's hideout is a warehouse full of arcade machines, half pipes and stolen electronics, where the only rule is do whatever you want. A new kid walks in and asks, "You got any cigarettes?" The head thug of the runaway kids answers: "Regular or menthol?"

That head thug is Sam Rockwell, years before he became one of our all time favorite actors. When we first started talking movies, we realized we both loved Sam Rockwell, one of us had already been through his entire catalog, and the turtles came up. The line was just a fitting, funny name for a podcast about movies, so that is what we called it.

It is a tiny part. He has a handful of lines as the lead thug who speaks for the kids. We do not think he went above and beyond the way some actors do in a bit part. They probably liked his look and gave him a couple of lines. But it burned itself into our memories as kids, and going back now it is wild to see where one of the greats got his start. Everybody starts somewhere, and sometimes it is in the Foot Clan.

How we pitched it

Some secret ooze leaks into a sewer and turns four turtles and a rat into humanoid hybrid creatures. The rat, Splinter, teaches the turtles ninjutsu, based on the moves he watched his old master practice. When a ninja clan shows up in New York with echoes of the past, the turtles spring into action, and eventually come face to face with the Shredder, the same man who killed their master's master all those years ago.

Turtle mania

It is hard to explain to anyone who was not there. I was in kindergarten in 1989 and 1990, and I was all in. Some kid always had the Turtle Blimp. There was the van all four turtles could fit in, the Casey Jones figure, promotions at Pizza Hut, lunchboxes, a Turtles board game that one of us still has at his parents' house, and video games on every system. The NES game was one of those impossible games they sold to little kids anyway, and it is still hard as an adult.

The closest comparison is Pokemon a few years later. Every kid had to have it. Turtles came at the tail end of that wave of American toy lines that turned into cultural phenomenons, like He-Man, G.I. Joe and Transformers, but it was also half a superhero story, which made it its own thing.

And all of it started with Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird basically sitting at a table and making a comic book in 1984. It sold a small first run, then somehow exploded. Imagine two friends making a comic about something at work, and a few years later it is licensed onto every product on earth.

A matinee with my mom

This is one of the first movies I remember wanting to see in a theater, and my mom took me to an afternoon matinee. Everyone in my kindergarten class loved the Turtles, so to her it was a kids movie. Rated PG. No problem.

Going back now, I think about her sitting in that theater thinking, what in the world is this? Because the reality of this movie is dark and gritty, with adult themes everywhere.

Chris thinks he was around eight. With three older brothers, he figures he saw it whenever they did, probably at his grandparents' house, where the Nintendo was and where all the cousins gathered. And he figures the adults in that house were asking the same question.

A crime movie with a kid filter on it

Chris put it best: this movie almost seems like it was made for teenagers and young adults, not little kids. The fight scenes are aggressive. They feel like the retro 80s and 90s ninja movies, and the choreography is excellent.

So how do they get away with a PG? Two ways. In every fight, the turtles are joking and making light of everything, so it never feels that serious. And the editing uses quick cuts so you never really see the impact.

Now imagine the movie without the comic relief and the turtles goofing off. It is a serious movie. The opening is a montage of crime across New York that no kid can relate to. If there were no giant turtles on screen, this would be an adult movie. What they did was take an adult crime story and put a kid friendly filter on it, and that filter is the turtles' behavior and the goofy stuff around them.

Shredder's plan is genius

Think about what Shredder actually does. A Japanese crime lord comes to America to settle an old rivalry, decides he might as well become a criminal while he is here, starts what is basically a cult, and becomes a surrogate father to an army of runaway kids.

The genius part is the crime he picks. Where are the drug dealers in this movie? Where is the mafia? Shredder stays away from all of it. His army does low level theft, the kind no one cares about. If you went to the cops and said someone took the TV off your balcony, they would shrug. That keeps him under the radar until his power is so big he is unstoppable.

And no guns. Everyone fights with swords and martial arts, which seems unrealistic until you remember where it all comes from. Splinter and Shredder are both old school, from the old country, and the movie keeps reminding you of it. Shooting people would also draw attention, which is the one thing Shredder cannot afford.

The hideouts

The hideouts in this movie are legendary. The Foot Clan warehouse is so well done that as an adult you start to think you would rather join the Foot Clan than be a turtle. Arcades, half pipes, skateboards, and a leader telling you to do anything you want.

The turtles' own lair is great too. They have carved a home out of the sewer, run power down there, and rewired a pay phone in the corner. One of us is convinced that watching this at five is what started a lifelong obsession with bunkers and hideouts.

I always give flowers to the crew, and the set design here deserves them. Look at the couch in the sewer: it is beat up and slanted, like someone always sits on the same side. And every time Casey Jones shows up in his mask, there are pink and purple hues lit behind him. They nail it all the way through.

The score and the soundtrack

The score is god tier. It is by John Du Prez, and there is an hour of it online that you can put on in the background while you work. It enhances everything: the movie cuts to a new scene, the score kicks in, and it fits every time. Then there is the regular soundtrack, with MC Hammer and a bunch of original songs on top.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop

The practical effects are unbelievable. The suits came from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and the animatronic mouths move almost perfectly with the dialogue. The actors in those suits are doing spin kicks with giant shells and sculpted muscles on their arms and legs, which cannot have been easy to move in.

What gets us is how fast you accept it. Within minutes you are not watching a turtle, you are watching a person who happens to be green. That is what the 2023 movie could not do. CGI turtles fall into the uncanny valley, where your eye picks up that something is wrong. These creature effects trick the eye in a way CGI still cannot.

The people in the movie accept it just as fast. April freaks out for a second, and moments later the turtles are in her apartment laughing and joking. Not one Foot Clan soldier ever stops in the middle of a fight to ask what is going on with the giant mutant turtles. We would have signed up for the arcades. We would not have signed up for that.

Literally us

I am Michelangelo. He is always cracking jokes, and you can see the building blocks of a sarcastic guy in the making. He is a teenager now. By the time he is a 40 year old turtle, he is going to be insufferable.

It goes deeper than that. My name is Mike too, so as a kid I asked for his toy set, which came with plastic nunchucks. I played with them all day, then moved up to foam ones, and when my karate black belt test required a weapon, I used real wooden nunchucks with a chain and did not have to practice. They are still in my closet.

Chris is Leo. He and his three older brothers each had an unofficial turtle growing up, and his was always Leonardo, because the twin katanas were just awesome. With, he admits, a little touch of Sam Rockwell.

The loadout check

Every movie, Chris asks for a loadout check. No guns here, so this is the turtle weapon tier list, and as someone who has actually trained with these, I have opinions. My rule: the longer the weapon, the better.

Leonardo's two katanas are the best. He can reach you before you can reach him, and they are sharp. Donatello's bo staff is second for the same reason. If you disagree, play any of the turtle video games, where Donatello is overpowered. Nunchucks are third. Raph's sai come last. Which tells you something, because if Raph wins fights with the worst weapon, he might be the best fighter of the four. He is definitely the angriest.

Scenes we love

The opening crime montage, especially the old lady on her balcony who turns around, turns back, and watches her TV float away, followed by a reaction that is very clearly a voiceover. We laugh every time.

Shredder alone in a dark room, lit only by a stack of about ten stolen TVs, watching April report on the Foot Clan, then throwing a knife into the screen at her face. It is hard to even find a clip of it online, and it is one of the coolest shots in the movie.

The interview where April calls them "the Foot" and adds that it sounds like a funky club for podiatrists. As kids we had no idea what that meant.

The farmhouse. Halfway through, the movie leaves the city for April's place in the countryside, which is where we always felt the movie split into two parts. How does a reporter afford a farmhouse? Maybe an inheritance. It was the 90s and it is pretty run down, so we will allow it.

The bathtub scene. Raph lies in a coma after the Foot Clan beats him, Leo sits hunched in a chair, music plays, and April sketches. It is genuinely emotional, and it is exactly why this is more than a goofy kids movie.

Casey Jones and his golf clubs, and his showdown with Tetsu, the Foot Clan's mustached master ninja. Tetsu goes through an intimidating martial arts routine, and Casey answers, "You got to get that checked out." Then he gets punched in the face. Tetsu's outfit and mustache also deserve a mention. Over the top, in the best way.

The rooftop. The turtles are joking their way through the Foot Clan, then Shredder appears, the music changes, every other Foot soldier steps back, and suddenly it is serious. He takes all of them apart. Back at the hideout, of course, it gets funny again. That swing between serious and silly is what this movie does better than anything.

And the ending. Splinter confronts Oroku Saki, and Shredder falls off the roof into a garbage truck. Casey Jones does not hesitate. He hits the compactor and crushes him. Superheroes today are not allowed to kill anyone. Casey Jones just killed a man.

Why Chris gives it a 7.9

He was not ready to go to 8, but he went as high as 7.9. It is the perfect blend of fighting, especially the kung fu, humor and story, and it bridges a comic book into a real movie. It is a bit gritty for a kids movie, and looking back, that is probably why it is so good and why it still rules. Doing all of that with practical effects and animatronics, without CGI, makes it even more impressive.

Why I give it an 8

I made it to 8. On paper, a goofy kids movie about mutant turtles doing martial arts is not a recipe for a good movie. They made it a really good one anyway. The proof is the sequel, The Secret of the Ooze, which went more cartoonish, cut the fighting, added the jokes, and is just a kids movie. This one is a solid crime movie with something weird and unique on top, and that weird stuff is what brought the kids in. It is not Citizen Kane. It is way better than a goofy movie for kids, and it would be impossible to make today.

Behind the scenes

A few things we dug up for the episode:

• The turtle suits and animatronics were built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.
• Corey Feldman voices Donatello, and once you know, you cannot unhear it.
• The movie is full of product placement: Domino's, McDonald's, Bazooka gum and a Roto-Rooter reference. Pizza delivery used to be a real job, and Domino's would knock money off if they were late. In the movie the turtles get $3 off a late pizza and do not tip.
• The second movie, The Secret of the Ooze, leaned into the toy line and the cartoon, and Vanilla Ice shows up.

Listen to the full episode

Fifty nine minutes on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, from the cold open to the trash compactor.

Also on the show: Apocalypto, Burn After Reading, There Will Be Blood. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.