{"id":21505,"date":"2016-07-17T01:55:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T05:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=21505"},"modified":"2020-07-29T11:12:11","modified_gmt":"2020-07-29T15:12:11","slug":"the-toxic-avenger-1984-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/17\/the-toxic-avenger-1984-fantasia-international-film-festival-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"The Toxic Avenger (1984) [Fantasia International Film Festival 2016]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"toxicavenger\"<\/a>The character that helped build Troma in to the company we know and love it as today, is still a wonderful and fun anti-hero who finds himself dropped in to fate\u2019s door after a mean prank pulled on him one day. In Tromaville New Jersey, Melvin is a young janitor for a local health club dominated by a pair of muscle bound bullies. By day, the bullies roam around the club taunting Melvin and hanging around with their busty girlfriends, but by night they\u2019re vicious hit and run murderers that take joy in killing children and helpless animals. After Melvin accidentally runs afoul one of the bullies, his girlfriend invites Melvin to a private rendezvous on the condition he wear a pink tutu.<\/p>\n

After realizing he\u2019s been the victim of a prank, Melvin crashes through a window and falls in to a drum of toxic ooze. Disfigured and transformed in to the muscle bound Toxic Avenger, he roams the streets of Tromaville murdering criminals and rapists, and laying down the law with his handy mop. Despite the very low budget, \u201cThe Toxic Avenger\u201d works as a simultaneous superhero action tale and monster movie. A lot like \u201cRobocop,\u201d Troma\u2019s superhero gets the job done in the most violent manner possible.<\/p>\n

Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman are never above being as splatterific as possible, showing off a ton of gruesome moments including Toxie taking off a thug\u2019s nose, and tearing another\u2019s arm clean off. Of course a lot of the movie doesn\u2019t reserve the grue for the bad guys, eliciting genuine cringe inducing moment when Melvin is turned in to the Toxic Avenger. Even for an indie film in 1984, the sight of Melvin\u2019s skin pulsing and bulging from the toxic waste is grotesque and you hate to see such a goofy protagonist be reduced to this monster. Toxie is kept in the dark for most of his introduction, as he begins feeling his way around his strengths and weaknesses, and realizing his mutation allows him a chance to fight evil.<\/p>\n

He begins to take on the bigger nemesis when he realizes the local police force is run by a corrupt chief and his sergeant whose attitude is very Nazi like. Herz and Kaufman give Toxie some time to even fall in love with a beautiful blond girl, and do battle with the villains from the gym. \u201cThe Toxic Avenger\u201d is still a fun and off the wall action horror movie with its own twist on the superhero sub-genre. Leave it to Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz to take typical superhero tropes and twist in to something wonderfully gruesome and absurd.<\/p>\n