The Toxic Avenger
The Toxic Avenger
R | 01 November 1985 (USA)
The Toxic Avenger Trailers

A gang of thugs devise a cruel hoax that goes horribly wrong as Melvin, a nerdy emaciated janitor at the local health club, is cast through a third story window into a vat of hazardous toxic waste.

Reviews
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Yazmin Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.
O2D It takes a special kind of person to appreciate Troma movies.They definitely aren't for everyone.This is considered to be their best movie but I would say it's only in the top ten.This movie(like many other Troma flicks) takes place in the imaginary town of Tromaville, New Jersey.A town that has become a dumping ground for toxic waste.For some reason all the cool kids hang out at the local gym where poor, geeky Melvin works as the mop boy.Of course the cool kids hate Melvin and decide to play a trick on him.A hot girl tells him if he puts on a pink tutu she will have sex with him.She makes him close his eyes to kiss her and he opens them to find out he is kissing a sheep in front of all the cool kids.He runs down the hall and falls out a window into an open barrel of toxic waste that is on a flatbed truck that has pulled over so the driver can snort coke.The waste transforms him into a monster that loves to violently kill anyone who hurts people.For a low budget film the plot and special effects are pretty good.The jokes can get a bit cheesy but that's what Troma is all about.Six stars.
Jack Hawkins (Hawkensian) I have been informed that The Toxic Avenger is one of Troma's better films, so it was perhaps not the most appropriate introduction to their notorious catalogue that contains titles such as Nazi Surfers Must Die and Class of Nuke 'Em High.I was expecting gratuitous nudity and violence, and I was presented with it, but one thing I didn't expect was the pantomime acting. There's an array of absurd caricatures, including Bozo (Gary Schneider) a psychotic, gym frequenting idiot who enjoys running children over with his friends Slug (Robert Prichard) and Julie (Cindy Manion). Whilst at the gym, they antagonise the janitor Melvin (Mark Torgl), a ridiculously dorky moron who spends much of his screen presence squirming and baring his comedy-looking teeth. I thought there would be a good old fashioned revenge film to be found in The Toxic Avenger, and there is to a certain extent, however the relentlessly silly acting broke any modicum of investment I may have had in the characters to the point where it became almost unwatchable.Other characters include Mayor Belgoody (Pat Ryan Jr), the corpulent, corrupt mayor of 'Tromaville'; the German police chief (David Weiss), who accidentally exposes his closeted Nazism by compulsively performing the Nazi salute and referring to the mayor as his Fuhrer and Sara (Andree Maranda), the Toxic Avenger's attractive, blind girlfriend whose condition is often the subject of juvenile jokes, the most frequent one being her stick inadvertently making contact with Toxie's crotch.I'm sure most are familiar with the premise – during a particularly humiliating session of bullying, Melvin the janitor falls out of a window and into a barrel of toxic waste, transforming him into a super strong and super righteous mutant – The Toxic Avenger.Performed by Mitchell Cohen, the Toxic Avenger's, or Toxie's, screen presence is the film's chief merit. The prosthetics and makeup applied to Cohen's body are very good considering the budget and Troma's reputation. The scene in which Melvin transforms into Toxie is also appropriately painful looking and gruesome, reminding me of the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London released three years prior.What I found particularly funny was the Toxic Avenger's voice. He initially only grunts and roars, I assumed he could no longer speak, however the toxic waste somehow provided him with a silky smooth mid-Atlantic accent (the voice acting provided by Kenneth Kessler). Kessler's diction is made for radio, it never gets old hearing it emanate from such a grotesque mouth. Amusingly, whenever Toxie speaks in this accent, his back is always facing the camera; this I thought was a reflection of the budget, so I was surprised when in the latter stages of the film you see Toxie speaking directly into the camera with no technical hitches at all – a sudden influx of money, perhaps?Like everything else in the film, the violence is amateurish. At times it reminded me of my friend and I's home movies. Using the 'DigitalBlue' camera, we created whole horror film franchises including the terrifying 'Oven Glove Man' series and homages to the infamous Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th. Inevitably, the two characters eventually clashed in a Freddy vs. Jason fashion, my friend was the 'Oven Glove Man' and I, wearing a fancy dress hockey mask, was Jason Voorhees.If my memory is correct, the majority of the films followed the same format of a murder scene followed by a still shot of the victim covered in terrible blood and gore effects that I applied with relish using the software's paintbrush function. Now and again the film felt like this, there would be lengthy fight scenes with little in the way of tangible choreography and nothing in the way of viscera. The viewers' bloodlust is only given slight satiation when Toxie deals a finishing blow and the incapacitated victim's wounds are shown in often motionless close-up shots, some of which being very gory, particularly the scene in which Bozo runs over a teenager's head.With gore, scantily clad women and ridiculous campy humour, The Toxic Avenger has many earmarks of a Troma film, however, unlike most comparable films, there are enough laughs to make its 87 minutes bearable and at times somewhat entertaining.60%www.hawkensian.com
TheBlueHairedLawyer I was put off at first by the title. I like pollution and go out of my way to pollute the planet so I wasn't sure whether or not this low-budget comedy would have some underlying hippie environmental garbage message or not. Nevertheless, I decided to buy it... Oh my god, it was hilarious! Melvin is a lonely, awkward, ugly geek working as a janitor in the local health club, in Tromaville (known as the toxic chemical capital of the world). During a harmless if not somewhat cruel prank on Melvin, he gets into an unexpected accident involving hazardous waste, and hurries, terrified, back to his mom's house, where he mutates. Unsure if he can survive in society, he lives in the garbage dump on the outskirts of town... but it isn't long before he dons his mop and literally cleans up the town, getting rid of psychos, perverts, pedophiles, drug dealers and corrupt cops. He also falls for a very nice girl, Sara, who happens to be blind and can't see his mutated appearance.Aside from the constant crude humor, which I found annoying and rude, The Toxic Avenger is a comedic movie you just can't hate. From the catchy 80's soundtrack to the weird sheep kiss prank played on Melvin, the acting, the gore effects, the very original idea, this is a movie you won't want to avoid! I don't recommend you let your kids watch it, there are a few disturbing scenes, some violence, sex jokes, nudity, a couple of racist/homophobic comments and a rather misleading and stereotypical portrayal of the blind girl. Adults can enjoy the film while knowing better than to say these things, but kids could easily pick up various phrases from the film. A children's version of the film, Toxic Crusaders, is the better thing to show your kids.I don't know if I'll be watching this film again but I'm certainly going to view the others in the series! If you want something comedic, action-packed, low-budget and original, you'll love this.
bigdoublej74 Troma movies are what got me into acting. Horrible video quality, terrible sound, awful actors and visual effects that are made in a basement....and its an amazing movie.A nerd turned superhero that has no limits. If you want to see a mutated superhero kill hundreds of bad guys and still hook up with the hot blonde in a red dress with red shoes this is your movie.Toxie delivers in every way possible. Ypu feel sorry for him, you cheer him on to kill more and more and you fall in love with the ridiculous and eccentric villains from the heath club, yes the Tromaville health club, Toxies true origin!Considered by many the greatest Tromaa movie of all time, I cannot recommend The Toxic Avenger enough! It really is one of my favorite movies.