| Toxic Avenger, The Released: 1985 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Superhero/Comedy Nuts and Bolts: A heartwarming tale about a boy, a girl and some toxic waste. Summary: Our story takes place in a small suburban town known as Tromaville (Which I believe is supposed to be in New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan). We begin at the Tromaville Health Clinic where we find a 98 lb weakling known as Melvin. Melvin is a stuttering squinty-eyed buck-toothed loser whose sole purpose in life is to mop the floors while scantily clad she-vixens and sexually questionable middle-aged males build their pecs and stretch their muscles. Admittedly, there are a few people at this club that inspires me to stretch my own muscle from time to time. So poor ole Melvin runs afoul of four goons kicking back in the Jacuzzi. They are: Bozo, Slug, Julie and Wanda. Bozo is a complete psychopath suffering from acute stress management issues. Slug is a fruity little he-man type that wears half-shirts while smoking cigarettes during his exorcize regiment. Then there are the token slut ho-bags. Wanda is a brunette token slut ho-bag who enjoys saunas and rubdowns while grease-sticking fruity cigarette smoking half-top wearing he-man types. Then there's Julie. Julie is completely different from Wanda. She is in fact a BLONDE token slut ho-bag who enjoys saunas and Jacuzzis while grease sticking psychopathic stressed out goons with a penchant for poor nicknames. See the difference? Anywho…Melvin is often the butt of their jokes, and he damn near gets his ass kicked when he inadvertently walks in on Wanda and Slug having sex in the weight room. But more on Melvin later. This segment proves to be the most pivotal and crucial element within the entire film as it firmly establishes that we (the viewer) do in fact enjoy watching Wanda's breasts jiggle up and down. As Socrates once so eloquently put it, "Without titties, there is no life". After their 'tiresome' workout, the goons all hop in Bozo's car where they engage upon an interesting new driving game. No, I'm not talking about I-Spy or Six Degrees of Kevin fucking Bacon. These clowns actually go out and play hit and run games with local pedestrians. They even have a point chart system broken down by racial class (Apparently nailing a Puerto Rican earns you the brass ring in this twisted little game of theirs). So as these dickwads are speeding down the street, in comes Skippy. Skippy is your typical freckle-faced twelve-year-old boy who joyfully peddles his pre-pubescent ass down the middle of the street when he should be at fucking home working on his homework. Goddamn kids. Bozo and the gang see him and Julie coaxes her boyfriend into running him down. They plaster the fucker all across the pavement. But you know kids. They never stay down. Resilient little boogers. Bozo notices that Skippy is only partially mashed into the asphalt so he spins the car around ready to finish him off. They blast over him and the tire crushes Skippy's head in like a melon. Julie and Wendy are so overjoyed by their accomplishments that they even stop and take pictures of the kid's splattered head fragments. This pretty much sets the tone for the mayhem that is to follow. So now we move on to the following day. Same gang of idiots, same buck-toothed mop jockey. But they're all pretty much tired of Melvin's geekish ways, so they decide to fix his wagon but good. The voluptuous Julie approaches Melvin in the girl's locker room and convinces the little spanker that she actually wants to tickle his wiener. Melvin damn near cums his pants right there, but Julie staves him off indicating that she wants him to dress up in a pink ballerina outfit with matching tutu. Apparently, pink tutus gets Julie pretty wet in the love valley. But Melvin doesn't care. He's just so overwhelmed at the idea of possibly scoring that he actually wears the damn thing. Mel ain't none too bright. The schlep should have suspected from the onset that something is stinky in the litter box. I mean come on now. Even the most socially inept retards know better than to fall for this kind of prank. But alas, once again a good ole boy finds himself led astray by the promise of cooter. Gets us every time. Now while this is going on, we cut to a scene outside. Two truck drivers are delivering twenty barrels of toxic sludge to the Tromaville dumping station. However they park in back of the Health club for a moment in order to partake of some coke. (Yes, kiddies back in the 1980s, we used to call it Coke! Like the soda? Now we refer to it as Crack-Cocaine. Not quite as stylish as Coke, but for a bucks less this smokeable variant will actually yield similar if not more stimulating results. Ultimately though, it all ends the same way. Face down in a puddle of your own puke while your midbrain tries to figure out where the fuck all your money went and why you listed your kid sister as a 'Buy-it-Now option on e*bay). Anyway, let's get back to Melvin. So Melvin runs out of the locker room wearing this silly ballerina thing. The main weight room is dark and he can hear Julie calling out to him. He edges up close and starts nuzzling and mewling when all of a sudden the lights come on. The room is full of fitness gurus and Melvin realizes that he has actually been smooching on a sheep. The kids keep laughing and laughing and poor ole Mel can't take it anymore. He tries to run away, but the only place to run is towards a window at the back of the building. You see where this is heading don't you? Melvin crashes out of the window and falls down into the open canisters of toxic waste on the flatbed below him. He screams in agony as his skin and hair burns away. People gather round as he emerges but everyone he touches catches on fire. Melvin's shrieking flesh-sizzling body lopes off into the night and thus…a hero is born. Some time later, the Cigar Face gang is hanging out on a street corner waiting for Officer O'Clancy to stop by. O'Clancy is one of the few cops in this wretched city who isn't completely corrupt. But Cigar Face tries to force a payoff on him. O'Clancy ain't buying it, and he doesn't yet realize that Cigar Face's gang actually answers to Mayor Peter B Belgoody. O'Clancy pulls a gun on Cigar Face, but CF quickly knocks it out of his hand. He then stabs the copper in the forehead with his cigar (Ergo the name Cigar Face. What? You thought his mamma gave him that name?) Things are looking pretty grim for our friendly neighborhood traffic cop, but lo and behold! A HERO arrives to save the day. Yes, he may be ugly. Yes, he may growl a lot. And yes, he may be wearing a half-burnt pink tutu, but sometimes salvation comes in the strangest packages. He is…the TOXIC AVENGER! With mop in hand, the former geekoid known as Melvin is now pulsating with radioactive biceps and a haircut only a chemo patient could love. He whoops the shit out of Cigar Face's pansy-ass gang. He even goes to such lengths as to shove CF into a trash dumpster while repeatedly punching him in the sack with his meaty ham-fists. Ah…but now it comes time for the coup de grace! As each of the whimpering little shitbags flop around on the ground, Toxie takes his trusty mop and grinds it into each of their faces permanently stamping them with the trademark Toxic Avenger seal of disapproval. Go Toxie! But see, now its time for Toxie to go home and face the music. His mom doesn't recognize her darling Melvin anymore and so, she banishes him from the house. Nice eh? Your son is obviously going through a transitional phase, and the best you can do for him is to boot him out into a cold heartless world filled with people who want to kick his ass? What a bitch! If I was Toxie, I probably would've taken the shrew's head off with my bare hands and shoved it up her shit canal prior to taking a nice oily piss down the length of her neck stump. But that's me. Anyway, alone and rejected Toxie decides to build himself a little chemical waste bungalow down at Rollins Toxic Dump. But peace is far away as our hero finds himself called into battle once again! Elsewhere in the city, the weed of crime is bearing some pretty bitter fruit indeed. Three gun-toting thugs bust up into a rather nondescript Mexican restaurant and hold up the patrons (Leroy, Rico and Franklin). Leroy has this bizarre red and black grease paint decorating both sides of his face like some kind of satanic mime. Marcel Marceau's in da house and he's freebasin' yo! Marcel…uh…err… Leroy rather, levels his rifle at some scared mother clutching her infant child. Frank meanwhile takes notice of an attractive yet subtle blonde woman in the corner. He learns that she is in fact blind and requires a Seeing Eye dog to help her along her way. Frank decides to have a little hanky panky with the optically challenged woman much to the chagrin of her dog Carey. Carey begins barking his discontent but he is quickly silenced as a shotgun blasts pulverizes his flank. But hope still abounds as in walks…the TOXIC AVENGER! Toxie leaps onto Frank and literally tears his arm out of his socket. Frank freaks as a geyser of blood begins spraying from the stump. Now the thugs concentrate their efforts on our crud-covered he-man and the fight carries over into the kitchen. Here's where the fun begins. First Toxie grabs Rico and forces his hands into the grease strainer that they use for French fries. He crushes the thing around his hands so that he can't escape. Then he grabs Leroy and begins shoveling ice-cream toppings down his throat. He then places his head beneath a blender and skewers the shit out of him. Frank is the last to go as Toxie picks him up and shoves him into one of those Betty Crocker E-Z-Bake ovens. Once again, our hero has saved the day and the citizens of Tromaville are grateful. Seeing as how the blind girl's dog Carey has been taken out of the picture, Toxie elects to walk her home. It is here that we learn her name is Sara. Toxie takes her to her crib and a romance between the two starts a' brewing. She tells him that she can read palms and reaches out for his hand. However, she accidentally grabs Toxie's little avenger sending shivers all up and down his crusty corroded body. So the two play the 'get to know you' bit for a little while before it's off to save the world again. This time Toxie returns to the Health Club where he used to work. He finds Wendy, one of the asswipes responsible for his misfortune masturbating inside of the sauna. No I'm not exaggerating. She's actually playing stink-finger with herself inside the goddamn sauna! Some bitches have no fucking class at all whatsoever. Anyway, Toxie busts up in there and we get to see his face for the first time. He grabs Wendy and slaps her hams down on the hot rocks. He keeps her there until her ass blisters and boils. Afterwards he goes outside to take a piss. Eerily enough, his urine is the same paisley green color as the sludge he was dumped in earlier. But as luck would have it, a man can't even choke his chicken in this town without somebody getting up in your face. A gang of killer pimps pulls up and begins harassing Toxie. Poor guy doesn't even have time to straighten his tutu before its action time again. The pimps try to shoot the shit out of him, but Toxie deftly evades the gunfire allowing the pimps to shoot one another. As the days go by, word of Toxie's exploits begins to make headline news. Mayor Belgoody realizes that the Avenger is only attacking the criminal element. Worried that this trail of blood may someday lead back to him, he appoints a special task force to take the monster down. But before any of that can go down, Toxie has to take care of the three remaining goons responsible for his death and subsequent rebirth. Going back to the health club he comes upon Julie. She actually gets off pretty light. All he does is cut her hair off. In my own little world of make believe fantasy I like to think that he took the time to shtoop her as well. Then he moves on to Bozo and Slug (I can't get over these names). He finds them cruising down the street looking to knock off a few errant biker lads. He flops his swarthy ass on top of the hood of the car and reaches in to the passenger side to grab at Slug. He easily snaps his neck like a potato chip and chucks him out of the car. Then he concentrates his efforts on Bozo. Bozo swerves all over the road trying to get rid of Toxie, but ultimately he crashes his car off the side of a steep hill. The car explodes and Toxie is the only one to emerge. By this point, the Mayor has rallied the citizens of Tromaville against our hero. He calls in the National Guard and begins initiating a plan to bring the big man down. A team of soldiers surrounds the tent that Toxie and Sara had been sharing. Things are looking pretty grim for our tutu wearing macho-man. But try as they might, the steadfast soldiers simply cannot bring themselves to shoot the ole boy. Toxie emerges from the tent and walks up to Mayor Belgoody. He punches his fist through the fat fuck's stomach and rips out his entrails. Squishy. With evil finally eliminated from Tromaville, the people's champion and his lovely blind girlfriend are now free to blaze their own path of heroism and fortitude. The world is their bloody fucking oyster. Acting/Dialogue: Even if you haven't already seen this movie, I don't think I have to tell you that the acting fucking blows. But for some reason, the shitacular performances actually work for this flick. I don't think I could appreciate it as much if these losers were actually trying. But hey, what can you expect from a film that costs LESS than a million dollars. Don't take it seriously and everything will be just fine. Gore: I won't say that the gore is realistic, but it certainly is effective. The most gruesome scenes involve Skippy's tire-track head, Carey the exploding dog and Franklin the armless wonder. As far as visceral gore is concerned, this movie is the cream of the crop. Sure, it may not be as blissfully colorful and tantalizing as Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, but it definitely earns itself some hallmarks. Guilty Pleasures: This movie is the KING Of the guilty pleasures. There are plenty of boobies to go around. At least four different women show off the goods throughout the course of this flick. In the pre-plastic era of sexual exploitation, these chicks have a lot to be proud of. Aside from nudity, just about every other aspect of this film probably counts as one big orgasmic guilty pleasure. This includes the gooey splatter scenes, the cheese dick acting and the eardrum-shredding soundtrack. Admit it…you found yourself tapping your foot to some of those god awful 80s tunes. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We've all done it in the past. The Good: So one day I'm sitting at home masturbating when I notice a rather gruesome little bunion forming on the joint of my big toe. Maybe it wasn't a bunion. Maybe it was a corn. Or maybe even a scab. It could've been some bizarre new venereal disease brought on by multiple acts of self-pleasuring behavior for all I know. Whatever the case, it was fucking gross. Now most guys usually take the namby-pamby way out of a situation like this. They get one of Doctor Scholl's medicated footie pads and place the offensive little adhesive on their digit in the hopes that maybe within a week's time the swelling will go down. But then they have to walk around with this irritating piece of cotton rubbing up on them, which we all know damn well is eventually just going to flake off and become lost somewhere in our sock. This is the sort of situation where physics goes awry. You pull the sock off and finger the inside trying to find the squashed up little band-aid (Which is by now a germ-crested crumpled black strip of goo). You shake the thing up and down hoping that by the mercy of God, the little podiatrical maxi-pad falls out of there. But no matter what, as soon as you pull the ole argyle back on, you will feel it bouncing around between your fourth and fifth toe. There's no science that can adequately explain this, so you'll just have to take my word for it. It happens and it is indeed one of the great mysteries of the universe. So being a man, I simply said "Fuck that!" and ripped the little fucker right off of there. Now don't be fooled. This IS painful. Excruciatingly painful even. But even as you are stabbing your testicle with a shrimp fork in the desperate hope of diverting your concentration from the inflamed toe, a stark realization strikes you. Pain actually feels pretty good! Sure, maybe not in that testicle-stabbing sort of a way, but more in a candle-wax on the nipples kind of way. And during this charmingly blissful moment between golden euphoria and spastic suffering, you have an epiphany. THIS is my threshold for tolerance! I think the Toxic Avenger works well towards establishing an individual's threshold for tolerance. This film is certainly not for everybody. Those who possess an abnormally diseased frontal lobe (such as I) will naturally come to appreciate the inherent artistry of such a masterful film. If you are the type of person who takes pride in their sensitivity and refuses to cheapen themselves by way of controversial cinema (Or as I like to call them - 'Pussies') then maybe the Toxic Avenger is a bit much for you. Like a persistent herpie, the Toxic Avenger will linger in your mind long after the initial effects have settled down. This is the little gem that made Troma studios a household name. I do believe that director Lloyd Kaufman is Roger Corman's evil twin lesbian brother. He is Richard Pryor's crack pipe. He is Michael Jackson's deformed nose. He is Pee-Wee Herman's last emission. The guy is just sick. I respect any director that decides to go for broke and just put his balls out for the world to see. And Kaufman delivers in that arena. This is politically incorrect cinema at its most glorious. Where else can you see graphic images of some snotty little bastard getting his braincase mashed into the tarmac? Where else can you see a guy get his face crushed by a mop? Do you think Kubrick or Lynch or Bergman would have the balls to show a guy getting punched in the dick 15 times? Hell NO! What I loved most about this movie was Toxie's voice. As Melvin, he has this grating, squeaky stutter and half of his groans are damn near inarticulate. But once he transforms into the ultra-buff Avenger, he replaces the squeaky chitter with a bold echoing manly voice that sounds not unlike the guys who do those crappy voiceover pieces for the Godzilla movies. The music in this movie goes a long way towards forming its personality. Toxie's primary theme is a classical piece (the name of which escapes me for the moment) and brings a heroic if somewhat campy feel to his intro. The rest of the soundtrack consists of songs that weren't even COOL enough to be released by a major record label in the 1980s. Let's face it. If your blistering hot single was turned down by anyone in this time period than you are without a doubt a four-score loser. Yes, I'm talking about the same generation that brought us such classic noteworthy bands like Wang Chung and Flock of Seagulls. (Did anything good EVER come out of this dark period in American history?) Now while these suckass little ditties would have suffered in any other film, they actually work in the Toxic Avenger. That's the beauty of this movie. It takes trash and turns it into art! The Toxic Avenger is a comic book hero without the comic. But if you look closely, you will find that he follows all of the classical rules of comic book super-heroism. Our title character is an outcast nerd forced to survive in a world that hates and fears him. Through no fault of his own, he is subjected to bizarre circumstances that force him to re-evaluate his life and gives him the strength and temerity to rise above the pack and strike back at those who would oppress him. All that and he gets the girl! This is classic storytelling in the making. Move over Willie Shakespeare, there's a new playwright in town and his name is Lloyd Kaufman. Boo-yah! The Bad: Now remember when I was talking about having a threshold of tolerance? Well, there is one aspect of the Toxic Avenger that actually succeeds in breaking mine. Now this may come as a shock to some of you, but I'm really quite a sentimental, loving, huggable teddy-bear of a man and I simply can't abide watching a scene where somebody's poor old dog gets blasted through the guts with a double-barrel shotgun. These guys are known as Man's best friend for a reason. They don't ask for much, and all they really want out of life is some water, a few morsels of kibble and the occasional leg to hump on. But once again, dogs are shown to get the shit-end of the cinematic stick. By turning his intestinal tract into alphabet soup, you are denying this pooch the vainglorious opportunity to take place in one of those blonde bombshell bestiality videos that I routinely download off Kazaa. Thanks to this fuckwad, poor fluffy little Carey will never know the joys of being sucked off by a professional. Bastards! All of them! Pure bastards! There are a lot of grizzly circumstances shown in films that I can watch and nary bat an eyelash at. Hell, most people likely won't get past the part where Skippy gets his head caved in or even the thug who waves his shotgun at the baby. This is the part of a movie where viewers will unabashedly screech, "Not the CHILDREN! They're so cute and INNOCENT!" Innocent huh? Let's not fool ourselves hear folks. There is NOTHING innocent about these little spittle-slurping, nipple-nibbling crumb-crunching crap factories. Anybody with more than three semi-workable brain cells in their skulls knows that practically 90% of the world's living breathing tax-cheating community is populated by assholes. Once you accept this truth, it only stands to reason that the law of averages would apply to the young ones as well, who as we all know are really little more than just assholes-in-training. Am I supposed to feel bad for a kid who will end up addicted to heroin and taking it up the ass for a candy bar in ten years time? Am I supposed to weep tears of injustice for some little fuck who's monumental claim to fame will be the fact that he has the privilege of filling my car up with high-octane gas rather than the watered down unleaded piss I usually use? Or maybe I should click off the video in disgust and lament the fact that poor ole Skippy will never be able to suffer the agonies of deciding whether or not to put my groceries in a plastic bag or a paper one. Innocent my fat smelly ass. I also thought that the four main losers got off rather easy. I mean…THESE guys are the Lex Luthors of this little drama are they not? By cinematic dogma, their deaths are REQUIRED to be the most sloppy, gut-churning, hemorrhage-inducing spectacles of the whole bunch. It's a fucking law. I wanted to see Toxie burn Slug's face off so he can dry-hump his dead fucking skull. I wanted to see him tear Bozo's spleen out and use it as dental floss. You know…all those things that Army drill instructors threaten to do to you but never deliver on? The Toxic Avenger is an extreme movie that elicits an extreme reaction. It might make you laugh. It might make you cry. It might make you sodomize your neighbor's pet pig during the Spring fertility festival. But one thing is for sure. You will NEVER…EVER…forget it. Great Lines: "My little Melvin has finally reached puberty!" --Melvin's mom listening outside the bathroom door as her son groans in anguish during his final transformation into the Toxic Avenger. "Do you think I look inconspicuous enough?" -- Toxie talking to Sara. This is amusing by virtue of the fact that Sara is blind. Overall Rating: 7 out of 10 severed heads. |
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