No Surrender Cinema: The Toxic Avenger
Last month for No Surrender Cinema I reviewed the Cannon Films’ ode to street culture, Rappin’; a movie that was heavy on the hip hop, but light on on the action. I can guarantee you that the March edition of NSC will more than make up for it. Get ready for a review full of death, dismemberment, bloodshed, and splatter as I cover one of the ultimate cult classics in cinema history. I’m talking of course about The Toxic Avenger!
Odds are strong that even if you’re not the most avid moviegoer, you’ve at least heard of The Toxic Avenger. What was originally conceived by Troma head Lloyd Kaufman to be a horror film set in a health club (the very appropriately named Health Club Horror) morphed into something more along the way, and the final product became the breakout film for Troma Studios. Kaufman and co. had previously relied on procuring the rights to cheapie flicks with stars who went on to become big names, and their in-house productions were predominantly goofy comedies. All of that was about to change, because The Toxic Avenger took everything to the extreme, and would become the standard for every ensuing Troma release. There are no famous faces here, and the only place you would have seen a lot of the cast were in other Troma productions. You won’t find any A-listers in The Toxic Avenger (unless you count a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from a young Marisa Tomei as an extra). What you will find are all the ingredients that Troma has mastered since their inception. Violence. Sex. Comedy. Gore. Every aspect was pushed to the nth degree here, and those pieces put together created an outlandishly entertaining superhero origin story.
Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgl) is a skinny little nerd working as the mop boy at the Tromaville Health Club, a place that seems to have every stereotype you could think of locked into a membership. Melvin’s days are spent mopping up after all the meatheads and miscreants that inhabit the health club, and his mere existence seems to agitate Bozo (Gary Schneider) and his crew. In fact, Bozo is such a stressed out soul that he spends his nights looking for relief in the form of running down innocent children. Rather than turn him in, his friend Slug (Robert Prichard), Slug’s girlfriend Wanda (Jennifer Babtist), and Bozo’s own girlfriend Julie (Cindy Manion) all seem to enjoy the sick game as well, right down to taking Polaroid pictures of the kid Bozo crushed with his car. I mean, good for Bozo for pressing on and feeling better, but methinks there are more constructive ways to deal with your anxiety than a game dependent on vehicular homicide.
Hit and run isn’t as fun as torturing Melvin The Mop Boy though, and Bozo and his gang devise a plan to humiliate Melvin as payback for all of Melvin’s mess-ups. Since Melvin has eyes for Julie, she seduces him and talks him into wearing a tutu. As if that’s not embarrassing enough, she also tricks him into kissing a sheep. Once the lights come on, Melvin sees that everyone in the health club is in on the gag, so he attempts to flee the scene. The crowd gives chase, and their pursuit sends Melvin crashing through a window and down into an open vat of toxic waste! The members of the health club watch on with little concern as Melvin convulses on the sidewalk, and Bozo adds insult to injury for saying that he stinks if he can’t take a joke. Panicked, Melvin runs off as he bursts into flames, and makes it home in time for the final portion of the mutation. As he skin pulses and oozes, Melvin transforms into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength (though his mother just thinks he’s finally reached puberty).
If the members of the Tromaville Health Club weren’t unappealing enough, there’s a crimewave running through town that would make any normal citizen second guess a move to Tromaville. Cops can’t do anything about it, Mayor Belgoody won’t do anything about it (since he’s secretly the man behind it all), so who is left to keep civilians safe? We get that answer in short order, as the now monstrous Melvin dispatches of a pack of scumbags who were about to off Officer O’Clancy in fairly gruesome fashion. The same thing happens when another crew of criminals invade the local taco shop. Melvin, now known as the “Monster Hero” due to his affinity for eliminating evildoers, squares off with them all. After ripping them apart (literally) and using various pieces of kitchen equipment to kill them, Melvin rescues the beautiful and blind Sara (Andree Maranda). Not only is she the first friend Melvin has ever really had, but their bond becomes love, and the two make themselves at home in the Tromaville dump.
While Melvin’s new life as the Monster Hero seems to be going well, things are not so good for the Mayor and his cronies. Belgoody does everything he can to destroy the criminal killing creature, but all of his efforts are met with more bodies being piled up. Tearing off limbs in the taco shop and decapitating a drug dealer with a weight machine (a scene not scene in full until the original Director’s Cut release of The Toxic Avenger) are just a few of the gory ways Toxie takes out the street trash. He even makes sure to dispatch some toxic justice to those who made him what he is, targeting Bozo, Slug, Wanda, and Julie. While the women get off rather easy (Julie loses her hair as if she lost a match in Arena Mexico, and in Wanda’s case literally, since she was enjoying herself in the sauna a little too much before Melvin sat her on some hot rocks), Bozo and Slug get stuck in a stolen car that is sent careening off of a cliff. Where’s Alanis Morissette to sing “Ironic” when you need her?Amidst all this mayhem, there’s a very Beauty and the Beast-esque love story between Toxie and Sara (it should also be noted that a real life love story developed between Robert Prichard (Slug) and Jennifer Babtist (Wanda) while on set, and the two eventually married). Of course, it probably helps that she can’t actually see him (and her blindness is the basis of many a sight gag throughout The Toxic Avenger’s runtime). When our hero pours his heart out to her and reveals that he’s the Monster Hero who has been violently reducing Tromaville’s criminal population, rather than run in fear she stands by her man. Toxie’s seeds of doubt are pushed even deeper into his mind when he steampresses a little old lady to death (literally steampresses a literally little old lady…say it three times fast), one that Mayor Belgoody feigns is an innocent bystander to the bloodshed. In reality she was actually the leader of a white slave trade ring, but all Belgoody needs is to spin the story to make the Monster Hero look like a remorseless killer, earning him extra support in his quest to kill the monster. Toxie and Sara move out of their dump and into a tent towards the Tromaville city limits, where he hopes he can better control himself. It’s not long before they’re found, and Belgoody, his cronies, and even the National Guard all descend on their hideaway for a climax that many might not have the stomach for…Mayor Belgoody included.
For something that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, The Toxic Avenger is a movie that made huge waves in the 35 years since it’s been released. It spawned three sequels, a Marvel Comics series, a Toxic Crusaders cartoon series for kids (capitalizing on the Ninja Turtles craze), a toy line, t-shirts, and loads more merchandise established what was intended to be a superhero parody as a pop culture phenomenon! The Toxic Avenger is as synonymous with Troma as Mickey Mouse is to Disney, and every single effort from this movie on featured the same formula of splatter, sex, and silliness that won audiences over. I’ll say right here and now that as someone who has seen a ton of Troma in his lifetime, it doesn’t get any better than this. I consider myself a big fan of some of their other efforts (Class of Nuke ‘Em High and Surf Nazis Must Die especially), but nothing comes close to the original Toxic Avenger. It helped established Troma’s identity in the film industry, so much so that Toxie became the official mascot of the studio, an honor that remains to this day. It also gave audiences something very different from what they were used to regarding both the action and horror genres. The Toxic Avenger is a movie that pulls no punches, and that is a theme that would only increase with every ensuing Troma release. In fact, this first film in the Toxic Avenger series is one of the tamer Troma releases! If this one sounds like it might be too much for you, then stay far away from films like Tromeo & Juliet and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV. Those are considered two modern Tromasterpieces, but at that point Troma knew what people wanted (expected?) and delivered it in spades.
(Oh, and stay far, FAR away from Troma’s Redneck Zombies, which ranks among the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I sat through Blackbelt II again for the sake of this column, but don’t expect Redneck Zombies to get a writeup anytime soon. As far as that “film” goes, No Surrender Cinema is waving the white flag!)The Toxic Avenger is currently streaming free for Amazon Prime members, and can often be found on free streaming apps like Tubi and Popcornflix. It’s also available on all forms of physical media separately or in collections like “The Tox Box”, which is where my DVD copy comes from. I was a huge fan of The Toxic Avenger ever since I was a kid (I still have issues of his Marvel comic book, as well as the original Toxic Crusaders Toxie toy), and have loved this movie ever since I first recorded off television years ago. This was the one that started it all for Troma and Toxie, and truly is a B-movie masterpiece. Sit back, relax, and enjoy it in all of its gory, green slimed glory… just don’t do it while you’re at the dinner table.
