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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Toxic Avenger (1984)

The Portly Politico24 Comments

I watch a lot of trashy horror films, and I like a good many of them.  I don’t, however, like all of them.

When it comes to Troma Entertainment’s The Toxic Avenger (1984), I’m not sure where I stand.  It’s an extremely campy film, and a thinly-veiled, tongue-in-cheek commentary on corruption in modern life and government.  As much as I appreciate those elements, it’s also annoying.

Of course, that’s by design:  the main character, Melvin Ferd Junko III, is an obnoxious, scrawny nerd who spends the first twenty or so minutes of the film making nerd noises and running around screaming.  That first twenty minutes (or so) felt interminably long, so when he finally fell into a vat of toxic waste and became the titular hero, I was relieved.

The plot beats are every Gen X omega nerd’s revenge fantasy (a common thread in 1980s films):  the beautiful people are ugly on the inside (to an absurd degree—the quartet of gym-going villains run down little kids in the street for fun); the gangs work for the mayor; and the nerd, without any personal effort or struggle, becomes a super mutant with incredible strength.

Anyway, Melvin finally becomes the Toxic Avenger, and he sets about avenging for the remainder of the film, which is fairly brisk.  In addition the four murderous beefcakes, there is a gang of drug-dealing transvestites (something that would never fly in 2024:  every homosexual in the movie—and there are a lot of them—is a bad guy and/or a source of ridicule) attempting to kill a police officer for refusing to play dirty.  The Toxic Avenger makes quick work of them in a blind fury, before the befuddled cop runs free.

The mayor, being the one pulling the strings of the various criminal enterprises in town, wants the Avenger destroyed, lest his crime-fighting reveal the mayor’s duplicity.  Melvin becomes a local hero, and manages to get a babe—a hot blind woman who can’t see his hideously disfigured face.  They even shack up together—literally!—in a ramshackle hovel in the local dump.  Melvin/Avenger also gets his revenge on the four gym rats who caused his disfigurement.

The third act turn sees Melvin slay a seemingly innocent little old lady (which makes me think of the deliciously alliterative line from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”:  “little old lady got mutilated late last night”), but the tiny grandma is actually running a human trafficking ring.  In response to what appears to be the Avenger turning bad, the mayor calls in the National Guard, and the townsfolk are, initially divided.

Ultimately, the townspeople rally around the Avenger.  The mayor urges the surrounded Avenger to be killed, but the troops and police officers refuse, and Melvin rips the guts out of the mayor.  Hurray!

Like I said, this flick is intentionally low-budget and bad (after a fashion); that’s the Troma way.  But after the first twenty (or so) minutes of pre-Avenger Melvin adenoiding his way through several scenes, the fun picks up.  As a kid, I vaguely remember The Toxic Avenger being turned into a cartoon, Toxic Crusaders (there was a trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s of turning violent, R-rated movies into children’s programming; we were too young to realize it), so I was excited to see the source material for that foggy childhood memory.

Well, don’t meet your heroes, I suppose, especially the ones disfigured by falling into toxic waste (also the origin for Two-Face).  It’s not a completely terrible film, but it’s a Troma flick, so… you get what you don’t pay for with this one.  Get through the annoyance at the beginning, and it’s a fun way to spend eight-two minutes.

24 thoughts on “Monday Morning Movie Review: The Toxic Avenger (1984)”

  2. That’s the thing about this flick; it’s SOOOOOO bad, campy, and trope-ridden that’s it’s awesome. It goes so far – completely unintentionally I think – as to be a pastiche of the pastiches of the genre.

    Also, much like Godzilla vs. The Bionic Monster, it’s best watched inebriated in some fashion.

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