The Toxic Avenger

 So: we're over three hundred posts and have never covered a Troma Team production. In honour of its upcoming remake, let's have a look at The Toxic Avenger, the one that put them on the map.

 Just so we get it out of the way: Troma films are infamous for pushing whatever boundaries they can as far as they think they can get away with. There's ethnic insults, gratuitous nudity, over-the-top gore (often coming out of animals and children), all done in a style I can only describe as gleeful, tasteless exploitation. You'd think we'd be inured to this sort of thing after things like South Park have gone mainstream, but at their best Troma still manages to shock. And this is definitely one of their best.

 The action takes place in Tromaville ("the toxic waste dumping capital of the world!", played by New Jersey on the film) - a place so corrupt the mayor and the police captain take a cut from all crime proceeds.
 The film at first follows four juvenile delinquent health freaks as they lord over a gym: absolute psycho Bozo (Gary Schneider), his equally psychotic girlfriend Wanda (Jennifer Babtist), and horndog  accomplices Julie (Cindy Manion) and Slug (Robert Prichard). Their favorite pastime when not working out: running over people with Wanda's car, going by a Death Race 2000-style points system that prioritizes ethnicities, children and the elderly. In the movie's most infamous scene, a kid gets his head graphically squashed as the girls coo appreciatively and take pictures of the bloody mess. Later, Julie diddles herself while looking at the photographs. Classy!

 So when this lot stages an elaborate prank to mortify Melvin, the gym's goofy janitor (Mark Torgl), by their standards it really is a harmless lark. Until he ends up waist deep in radioactive waste, and everyone around - not just the psycho quartet - takes turns laughing at him even as his flesh turns into hamburger meat and spontaneously combusts. Rough.

 It's not all downsides, though. Melvin is mutated by the toxic sludge into a six-foot tall monstrosity (Mitch Cohen) with superhuman strength and a mellifluous, comically articulate voice. It also imbues him with a sort of radar for evil and a compulsion to brutally beat up bad guys and leave a mop on their face. Other than that, he remains a sweetheart - I'd  argue even more of a sweetheart, since he seemed a bit of a perv in his previous incarnation.

 Toxie sort of blunders into a dumb/cute love story with a blind woman , fights his way through the criminal hierarchy and wins the hearts of the Tromaville residents. Just like a Marvel movie, except for all the sexual assault, dog killing, and mauling people with their own dismembered arms.

 His first fight involves several Three Stooges moves, but taken to their most extreme consequences: eyes are poked out, and when heads are knocked together, you can bet skulls will crack. That's basically this movie's sensibility in a nutshell.

 The tone of is over-the-top in all senses, which helps the brutality not register that much, the very goofy humor land at least some of the time, and its corny, daft sweetness seem more charming than it probably should be. Joe Ritter's script is very simple, relying on wall-to-wall slapstick taken to all sorts of bloody extremes. Meanwhile, Troma co-founders Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman direct with enthusiasm but little flair, with a focus on filling the frame with boobs, gore and dumb visual gags, and an over-reliance on cheesy reaction shots.
 The acting is... well, there is no acting in this movie: every one mugs and waggles their eyebrows maniacally, looking for all intents and purposes like they're having a grand old time chewing as much scenery as possible. It's sometimes kind of painful to watch, but also kind of cute, and it pays off in a big way with Bozo's theatrical rage, which is never not hilarious.

Bozo, in a weirdly matching shot to Toxie's.

 The action is extremely bloody and relatively well staged, all things considered. All the bad guys know Karate or some kung fu, which they deploy in pointless flourishes to some basic choreography. It's fun to watch, if a bit stiff and repetitive. The makeup effects excel - not just the gore, but the monster himself is a great, expressive design (by Jennifer Aspinall, Ralph Cordero and Tom Lauten).

 It does experiment a little, and stretches its legs in interesting ways. There's a very eighties car chase with good stunts, crashes and explosions, for example. But the most interesting scene for me this time around was when Toxie decides to go after Wanda: He chases her through the gym into some derelict tunnels, and for a while there the movie turns into a decent horror movie that plays with the hunter/hunted roles, based on what you know about the characters. I'd forgotten all about it. It's a cool scene that doesn't really work in context (as part of a half-assed subplot about Melvin becoming evil), but it's still noteworthy.

 Elsewhere a pimp tries to get an unwilling tween to turn tricks (twelve years-old for twelve dollars!), a dog gets shot in graphic detail, and hairy fat people are shown getting massages for a cheap laugh. It's undoubtedly trash, by design, a cheesy, juvenile movie destined to be discovered and treasured by fourteen-year-olds of all ages until the end of time.