Toxic Avenger

(1984) *****



I’m breathless. Not in the Madonna Dick Tracy Album sense, but in the sense that I feel like I might have stumbled upon something. Something overlooked. Something special. (And I can’t believe Catfrreeeeeeek broke the Troma seal HOURS before I did. I suppose it was inevitable.)

Now, I feel like I’ve paid pretty close attention to this site over the years, especially in October, and I certainly don’t have the time to comb through all the archives, but it’s my gut feeling that I have NEVER seen this total classic reviewed here. Is that really true? Could I possibly have found the diamond in the rough, the flower in the desert, the…umm…thing…that no one was…uh…looking…um, for?…(I hate when metaphors break down like that, especially when you’re typing live, with no hope of revision…)

Anyway, this was one of the greatest horror slash (un)intentionally comedic movies I’ve ever seen. The history: Back in the day, a man named Jay (JSP, JPX, and Catfreeeeeeeeek, you know who I’m talking about) watched this movie, uncensored and uncut, at his dad’s house on one of the visitation weekends. This is not the forum to go into other weird shit that we experienced with this dad – JSP knows all about “Soda Pop.”

(Okay, just one bit – I went on a sleepover with Jay to the dad’s house, we were probably in 6th or 7th grade, and for the evening’s entertainment, he had selected, for two junior high guys, a movie called “Liquid Sky.” Some of you may have seen this *loud ahem* movie, but as near as I could figure on the plot, it involved various heroin addicts who are attacked by reduced-size aliens who then shot glass daggers into the backs of the skulls of said heroin addicts while they had sex. And some girl gets raped on the stairs. And there’s some weird club scene with trippy music. I don’t know how it ended, or if there was any coherence to it. However that sounded, it was even more fucked up than that. Maybe I’m way off. What I wrote down just now was pretty much what my subconscious has allowed me to recall to this day. To my 7th grade mind, I chalked this one up as “Oooo-kaaaaaaaayyyyyy….”, (with a promise to myself to never, ever go on a sleepover to this man’s house again), but I’d be interested in anyone’s informed, adult opinion of this…um…movie. We picked it out at Blockbuster, too. 1987 was a heady time of freedom at the ol’ Yellow & Blue…

Anyway, Toxic Avenger – for years through high school, we searched far and wide for the real UNCENSORED version, which Jay reported as having some really incredible and comedic gore. And no less than 5 separate times, we would discover, in Strawberries or Coconuts or Sam Goody’s (all on Route 6 or Swansea Mall), what appeared to be the REAL “Totally Uncensored, Uncut, Full-GORE, You’re Gonna Be HORRIFIED” version of Toxic Avenger. We would approach the counter, muttering to each other, “Just look casual, man,” “I DO look casual – you just be cool!” “Shut up! Shh, shh! Here we go!” etc. Like we were buying a Penthouse or illegal narcotics. We would purchase the tape and get it home only to discover that this “Uncensored, Uncut” version actually meant “Censored,” as well as “Cut.” So then we just played Mario Kart. (We weren’t going on many dates in high school.)



Well, a few weeks ago, I’m watching either the G4 channel or Spike TV (i.e., Television For Dudes Who Are Not Currently Getting Laid), and lo and behold, in all its glorious gory splendor, is the VERY version of the damn movie that we had been searching for all these years. Complete with commercials. I mean, full-on, ridiculous, horrific, grisly gore (with the boobs edited out, of course – they didn’t want to warp anyone’s mind), for all to see on basic cable.

I’m not sure if this is a commentary on our society at large, where we’ve been desensitized completely to this sort of thing, or a commentary on the actual violence of the movie, which is pulled off almost in mostly comedic fashion, yet totally, horribly graphically, or a commentary on how retarded the shit actually looks after two decades have gone by. But those boobs – gotta edit THOSE out. Can’t have children seeing boobs, right? But a 12-year-old kid on a bike? In this movie, you can run that fucker right over with a car, and have the brain matter splash all over the street. Fine family viewing.

In addition to the kid on the bike (he had a helmet on – it didn’t help) and his brain parts literally flying everywhere, there’s a guy in a gym that gets placed under the descending vertical chrome pipe on a Nautilus machine that holds all the weight (it goes straight through his eyeball), a guy that gets his face stuck inside a shake blender in a fast food restaurant, and a dog that gets shot. Like, blown away with a shotgun and the carcass slides across the floor. All horribly, grotesquely, and honestly, comedically satisfying. Oh, and there’s a blind girl (the dog owner) that falls in love with the Toxic Avenger and has sex with him.



Jeez. I guess I should sum up the plot., which I kind of danced all around. (I picture a bunch of you scrolling down, going, “But WHAT of the plot? For God’s sake, the PLOT, man!”)

So, Melvin is a janitor at the Tromaville Health Club, a totally nerdy, dorky guy who bears a distinct resemblance to David Cretella (JPX, JSP, don’t pretend like this isn’t true).



He is abused and treated horribly by the asshole pothead jocks at the club, as any dorky janitor with a stalker-crush on the hot blonde should be. And, of course, after a humiliating prank in which he’s forced to wear a pink tutu, Melvin falls out a window into a vat of toxic waste, transforming him into a green-skinned, totally disfigured, foot-taller version of himself, with superhuman strength. And a pink tutu. (Why the toxic waste truck is parked right there, and why every single barrel of toxic waste on the back of the flatbed are completely open is left to the viewer’s imagination.)

Melvin, with his newfound powers, like anyone else, instead of immediately fighting crime and righting wrongs, decides to exact some petty vengeance on those total assholes in the health club. Among other grisly vengeances, he takes the hot brunette (who is of course in the sauna at the time), picks her up and plants her naked buttocks down onto the steaming rocks on the sauna room. “How do you like that, hot ass?” being the totally-dubbed line of dialogue during the critical moment. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of absolutely terrible, hackneyed, wonderful dialogue.

Witness the hot blonde’s boyfriend, Bozo (his actual scripted name), demanding that his girlfriend watch him hit a racquetball: “You watchin’ me, Julie? Cuz I’m gonna kill this fuckin’ ball! You watchin? You WATCHIN’?!?”

And a brief word on The Mayor:

The Fat Mayor is not only the best fat mayor you have ever seen, but every line out of his mouth is delivered with such terrible-actor aplomb, that you can’t help but like the guy. The viewer first encounters him 90% naked and sweaty, getting a massage, and spewing forth proclamations about how to control the city, all while eating a footlong sandwich. I mean, honestly – does it get any better than that? (Well, naked Penelope Cruz, maybe, but…) And everything that comes out of his mouth from that point on is absolute GOLD. Between the actor and the screenwriter, there was some sort of quantum mystical synergy that occurred, where the parts that were put in to it, in actual summary, equaled something greater than the whole.

The horrendous yet brilliant casting, the crackling dialogue, the absolutely ridiculous 80s hair and wardrobe choices – it all adds up to a cinematic tour-de-force. Like, if you actually set out to make a movie this bad, you would probably succeed in simply making a terrible movie. The beauty of Toxic Avenger is that while they (the producers, et al) clearly had a sense of humor about what they were doing to a point, it’s also apparent that they definitely took themselves seriously. (Like if you stumbled onto the set, and asked them what they were doing, they would probably say, with grave seriousness, “We’re making a horror movie. And why didn’t Handsome Stan stop you from walking through here?”)

Only through the cosmic aligning of idiocy, terrible acting, awful writing, an apparently non-existent budget, and of course the 80s in general, could we have been blessed with what could only NOW be called a Masterpiece. And like a fine wine or certain type of cheese, the further away we get from its actual birthdate, the better and better it gets. And the worse and worse the smell gets.

And it really is gory as shit. Just make sure you see the REALLY Unrated version.