The Toxic Avenger

Starring: Mitch Cohen, Cindy Manion, Jennifer Prichard, Mark Torgl, Dan Snow, Marisa Tomei (bit part)
Directed by: Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Comedy, Horror
1984

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A janitor (Mark Torgl) falls into a vat of toxic waste, turning into the superhero, the Toxic Avenger.

Review:

Tim: I still can barely fathom the fact that this movie exists. On the one hand, Troma has produced a stunningly bad movie, one so cheesy and absurd that I wondered if it was the worst movie I'd ever seen. And yet, as the movie progresses, it becomes so bad that it actually started to be enjoyable. It's a pathetically made movie that shockingly has some charms. In the end, I still believe The Toxic Avenger is a bad movie. However, I'd be lying if I said I did not derive at least some guilty pleasure from this film. It's a bad movie, but not wholly unenjoyable.

The first thing that you notice about this movie is how low budget it is. It's shockingly low, which does hurt the movie to some extent. It just makes the whole thing even more laughable. While this is a criticism of the film, it also leads to one of it's greatest strengths- the film they pulled off with the budget they had is a bit miraculous. Some of the special effects (especially the gory ones) are exceptionally well done. Toxie himself looks pretty amazing, considering the miniscule budget. Troma really did great work utilizing their limited funds.

I was impressed with how this film blended action, comedy, and horror elements together. So much of what happens on screen is done tongue-in-cheek, so you never really know if the film was purposely being cheesy, or if a joke just missed the mark. It makes it difficult to know what to think about this film. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle- not everything is purposefully laughable, and therefore, not necessarily genius, although some of it certainly is. There are aspects of this movie that are just so incredibly bad, but they are somewhat balanced with the so-bad-it's-good variety.

The actors are terrible. Mark Torgl made me cringe during every second of his screen time. The guy just overacted every scene. None of the rest of the cast are any good, either. Mitch Cohen might have given the best performance of the film as Toxie, but he's still pretty bad.

It's impressive how this film really embraced it's R-rating. Troma was certainly not concerned with courting controversy with this film. There is nudity, gratuitous violence, near rape, a whole host of gruesome and gory injuries and death, violence toward children and babies, a dog gets shot, and much more. This movie could be viewed as horribly disturbing, and you would not be wrong. In some ways, I appreciated the very mature subject matter here, but in others, the whole thing just felt over-the-top. It certainly does seem trashy in many ways.

I've certainly never seen a film quite like The Toxic Avenger. On the one hand, this is an incredible accomplishment. With almost no budget, they made this unforgettable, bizarre, controversial action/comedy/horror movie that shocks, offends, and entertains you while delivering a powerful social message. On the other hand, this is a cheesy, disgusting, stupid, sophomoric film that is offensive, rude, and idiotic that fails on multiple levels. I can't remember another movie that had so much and so little going for it, all at the same time. In the end, though, the strengths don't outweigh the negatives. This might be a "so bad it's good," but in the end, it's still a pretty bad movie. It might be so bad it's fun, but I could not in good conscious claim this was a good movie- it's pretty terrible, all in all.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Toxic Avenger: Part II