Troma-thon returns for more B-movie comedy-horror Friday and Saturday at Lehighton’s Mahoning Drive-In Theater, located on Seneca Road, just off Route 443.

Lloyd Kaufman, Troma Entertainment president and co-founder, will attend both days. The filmmaker’s many hats include director, producer, screenwriter, actor, author and teacher.

Troma produces primarily low-budget, independent titles, full of farce, parody, gore and splatter. “Eating Miss Campbell” kicks off this year’s six-film lineup, with director Liam Regan attending the 2022 movie’s world drive-in premiere.

Troma-thon 2023 will include appearances by Troma stars Lisa Gaye, Vito Trigo and Donna Slash. In addition, the event will feature live bands and a playable demo for Retroware’s “Toxic Crusaders” game, based on the 1991 animated series and due in 2024.

Kaufman’s “Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV,” released domestically in 2001, will screen Saturday. In the Stan Lee-narrated film, the titular superhero defends Tromaville from his evil alternate-universe doppelgänger.

J.T. Mills, Mahoning Drive-In production manager, has played Toxie at the retro drive-in’s Troma-thon since the first in 2020. He also plays Toxie for Troma events and promos.

Mills, who’s worked at the theater for nine years, favors the original 1984 “Toxic Avenger” film, in which bullied Melvin, a health-club mop-boy, turns into a deformed, superhuman creature.

“I love the gritty look,” said Mills, who describes “Uncle Lloydie” as “a fun, down-to-earth guy” with no ego. “The ratio of comedy to horror is perfect. It makes a statement that you don’t have to work in Hollywood to make a successful film.”

Kaufman attributes Troma mascot Toxie’s popularity to a few factors. “There’s a pathos there. He’s unlike Superman and others. He grows with each movie, gets older.

“There’s a big influence of Charlie Chaplin,“ he continued. “His blind significant other is from ‘City Lights,’ and Toxie is like Frankenstein. We never wanted Frankenstein to die. Also, Toxie’s weapon: it’s a mop. It’s symbolic of the environmental movements.”

Toxie films - also spawning toys, comics and a musical - “have dealt with serious subtexts,” Kaufman said. However, “they contain slapstick humor, great cartoon violence, and sex scenes that I don’t think you get to see in ‘Batman.’”

Of the four “Toxic Avenger” movies, Kaufman likes “Citizen Toxie” best. “It’s unbelievable how many people have not seen ‘Citizen Toxie,’ in large part because our industry has become so consolidated. It‘s very difficult to get a movie out there.”

Troma Now, the company’s streaming platform, houses 50 years of produced, acquired and distributed films, shorts, music videos and more. The library includes works by then-rising talents such as James Gunn, DC Studios co-chairman and -CEO.

“It continues to grow,” said Kaufman, who made cameos in two of Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films. “Rupert Murdoch can spend $200 million on a movie and we don’t spend anything. It’s all word-of-mouth.”

Kaufman started Troma - headquartered in Queens, New York - with friend Michael Herz in 1974. The two attended Yale University, where Kaufman worked on a degree in Chinese Studies and gained a love of movies after rooming with two film fanatics.

Troma’s early productions, a string of raunchy comedies, helped establish the company as a film studio. Though Kaufman worked on outside projects such as “Rocky” and “Saturday Night Fever,” his unconventional style did not fit in Hollywood.

Known for unorthodox filmmaking, Kaufman has “put things in our movies that I’d known in advance that the public would be horrified.” One such scene in “Citizen Toxie,” the dragging of a black man from the back of a truck, recalled a real-life crime.

“We wanted Americans to remember that and memorialize it,” Kaufman said. “Everybody said ’don’t go there,’ but I felt it was important. He gets erased by cement except for his head and becomes Toxie’s sidekick.”

Thanks to boisterous fans, YouTube recently reinstated Troma’s channel - boasting 500,000-plus subscribers - following a second ban for violating “community standards.”

Fans, Kaufman added, “are active and do everything. They give us money for our movies, and they know they’re gonna lose the money.”

Among upcoming projects, Kaufman’s most excited for Legendary Pictures’ and director Macon Blair’s “Toxic Avenger” re-imagining. The film, with Peter Dinklage as Toxie, shows “a totally different Toxie, yet it’s got callbacks to Tromaville and Troma’s body of work.”

To celebrate that body of work, Troma will release “The Toxic Avenger Collection” on home video. The box set, due in late August, commemorates the company’s 50th anniversary.

Whether watching Kaufman’s favorite of his movies, “#ShakespearesS*itstorm,” or “Bloodsucking Freaks,” Troma viewers “know they will have an adventure,” Kaufman said. “They’ll see something they’ve never seen before and have strong emotions. That’s what art’s supposed to do - get your juices flowing.”