The Toxic Avenger Collection is a must for any splatter aficionado
Troma's marquee monster-hero franchise gets a 4K upgrade that lets you really soak in the yuck.
This is Re/Play, where we take a fresh look at an older film, TV series, or video game to see if fond memories hold up under remastered scrutiny. Now: The Toxic Avenger Collection 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray box set from Troma and MVD Entertainment.
THE MOVIE(s): The Toxic Avenger; The Toxic Avenger Part II; The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie; Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV
ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE(s): April 11, 1986; February 24, 1989; November 24, 1989; May 15, 2001
NEW FORMAT: 4K Ultra HD scans and restorations of the film’s original camera negatives by Vinegar Syndrome — with some light editing done to Toxic Avenger Part II (missing dialogue snippets from the original print has been cut for clarity). Each film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio in HDR with English DTS 2.0 Stereo audio.
RE/PLAYING: Troma Entertainment has been the de facto bomb shelter for independent splatter filmmakers for almost 50 years. Co-founded by Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman in 1974, this scuzzy outfit has produced and distributed the kinds of goo-besotted gunk you’d find crowding the lower shelves of yesteryear’s more discerning video huts. They’ve adapted to the changing times by finding their online niche with Troma Now, a curated streaming platform that provides a direct line to the level of raunch, horror, and smut for which the brand’s been known (and loved!) for decades. As a minor fiefdom in cinema, Troma is unquestionably the Disney of Trash. Its Mickey Mouse? The Toxic Avenger.
It’s no wonder how Troma has endured for so long after watching The Toxic Avenger (1984), a movie with so much simmering creative energy one questions what’s powering its stores. Its landscape is lampoon, populated by hardbodies and freakazoids, goo, trash, and innards, manic frenzy and tender sweetness. Wandering the post-nuclear wastes of Tromaville, New Jersey, looking for understanding, love, and vengeance is Melvin Ferd Junko III (Mark Torgl/Mitch Cohen/Kenneth Kessler), a vastly unappealing drip who works as a mop boy for the local health club. Jocks and bodybuilders torment him. One prank takes things too far; Melvin gets doused in radioactive chemicals and becomes a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.
It’s easy now to take Toxie for granted as Troma’s cash-producing mutant turtle, but in 1984, he was just “The Monster,” a leviathan powered by latent puberty and an untested heart (and, yes, toxic waste), cruel with his punishments for the criminal bozos of Tromaville but committed to use his newfound powers for good. The Toxic Avenger is horny schlock, no question about that, but if you squint, it also functions as a commentary on unchecked corporate greed and the superficiality of yuppie culture — themes that would get more air to breathe in the next two sequels. As presented here, Toxie is effectively the Eco-Hero of the 80s and the ideal example of budget filmmaking boosted by the creative urge to both disgust and entertain on the basest level possible.
Kaufman & Herz were certainly on one when they cobbled together The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989). It’s meandering movie mush, less provocative and far tamer than what came before (a tough metric to measure in this context, sure, but nevertheless) that puts Toxie in Tokyo of all places to find the Japanese gangster he believes to be his long-lost dad. (Spoilers: he was misinformed.) Not only does Part II shift locales for the majority of its runtime, it disrupts the status quo by swapping Toxie’s main squeeze Claire (Phoebe Legare, herself replacing Andree Maranda’s Sara) for Masumi (Mayako Katsuragi), Toxie’s ostensible tour guide.
While Katsuragi does her damndest to pull off that patented Tromatic energy, the movie doesn’t seem interested in giving her a whole lot to do. In fact, the passive travelogue vibes given off by these Tokyo sequences feel like Kaufman & Herz were shooting their vacation with Ron Fazio in a goop mask. (Fazio became the Toxie of II and III after taking over for the axed John Altamura.) Which is fine. This comes packing a few okay gore gags (a great one pops off during a street fight at a fish market), some baby-face Michael Jai White action (even then, the man was a star), and the introduction of Legere’s accordion-squeezing Claire, the low-key heart of this entire franchise.
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie has my vote for Best Toxie Sequel. Sacrilege? Maybe. Revisiting the film on Blu-ray makes it clear that Temptation is the ideal Toxic Avenger sequel; it’s more clear-eyed than Citizen Toxie about what it wants to accomplish and more intentional about how it explores and/or exploits its satire. Not that a Kaufman/Herz production needs some high-minded shit like theme to drive its movie or anything, but there is actually something to gnaw on in this. Of course, the big moral quagmire for Our Hero is the sinister lure of corporate cash and the soul-sucking prospects of selling out, which I’m sure is something that Troma has contended with many times over its existence. The concept seems to have put Kaufman/Herz in a cerebral mood.
Who knew they had it in them? Temptation features the most compelling imagery of any of these movies, a Grand Guignol surrealist descent into a personal hell, replete with giallo lighting and canted angles, punctuated most prominently by the spiral staircase sequence that visualizes Toxie’s infernal pact with Rick Collins’ rockin’ Mephistophelean CEO character. Its gore gags are, predictably, top-flight; a gooey, genuinely unsettling Toxie degeneration scene tosses the whole enterprise firmly into Stuart Gordon’s backyard. Also, they throw a bus off a cliff! And then they blow one up!
What puts Temptation over the top is Phoebe Legere, who takes the stock “Toxie’s blind girlfriend” role and gives it nuance (the way her voice shifts from Harley Quinn squish to a throaty contralto and back when the scene calls for it!), and she puts her back into the character’s precious few singing-for-the-cheap-seats moments. She makes this so much better than its iffy reputation would have you believe. And while Toxie teases a Part IV in the movie, in 1989, this sure felt like the last dispatch from Tromaville we might ever get. Melvin would have gone out on a high note if it had been.
This brings us to Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV. It’s considered the best Toxic Avenger sequel, and in many ways, it is; gone are the hand-holding narrations that blighted the prior two films, and the vastly smaller budget requires the same sweaty DIY creativity that first put Troma on the map. With this comes an insurgence of the irreverent, outright hostile social commentary that has imbued all of Kaufman’s work, though it seems that as the world has become far more chaotic than it was in 1984 (somehow), Kaufman has trouble focusing his ire. Abortion is a topic up for caricature (Claire/Sara, now played by Heidi Sjursen, gets knocked up by two versions of Toxie), but not really. Mass shootings are the topic of the riotous opening sequence, but it soon goes away. More notable is how it depicts a borderline fascist police force that falls completely into racist authoritarianism with only the slightest nudge.
Citizen Toxie is a nastier movie, and angrier, indicative of modern Troma, where budgets are smaller and productions feel more raw. The Claire character sadly reverts to the dim-bulb sweetheart of Part I. David Mattey is a great-looking Toxie (the monster makeup is the best it has ever been), and Clyde Lewis should voice him again at some point; his Clark Kent earnestness is adorable. What gives Citizen Toxie its oomph is how it coherently dabbles in concepts like alternate dimensions, well ahead of the multiversal chicanery of recent comic book movies and somehow, perversely, more interesting. (Also interesting is that this multiverse movie features a cameo by Marvel/DC Golden Boy and Troma postgrad James Gunn.)
Kaufman, directing his first Toxic movie solo, oscillates between the Amortville/Tromaville-Toxie/Noxie stuff with a clarity that puts it in the same heady genre space as Part III, minus the sweeping European phantasmagoria that went with it. Yet its cheapie production represents the spirit of independent filmmaking, a stirring reminder that any freak can make a movie so long as they have a camera, some goo, and a few friends hanging around who aren’t embarrassed to show their asses in the name of art.
ACTUALLY SPECIAL FEATURES: This rerelease doesn’t have much new material for the die-hard Troma nut, just four new intros from Kaufman on the 4K sets. But for the uninitiated, the special features — culled from various DVD releases — are a proper head-first Troma primer. The most fascinating among them is Apocalypse… Soon: The Making of Citizen Toxie, an over two-hour-long 2002 behind-the-scenes documentary (found in Citizen Toxie’s Blu-ray disc) that chronicles the agony and ecstasy (mostly agony) of Citizen Toxie’s frequently chaotic production. Also good stuff: an interview with the elusive Troma co-founder Michael Herz (on the Toxic Avenger Part I Blu-ray), who displays a dryer sense of humor than his more unctuous cohort but proves he is decidedly of the Troma make. Yale makes strange alumnus, let there be no doubt about that.
RE/PLAY VALUE: Owning The Toxic Avenger Collection is a must for any proper splatter aficionado. It’s a physical media milestone for Troma and a big green chunker that stands out on a shelf. That Last Temptation of Toxie 4K disc snafu is unfortunate — discs will have playback issues for certain players — but it isn’t a deal-breaker. (4K users are well-advised to request a new disc here.) Traipsing through Tromaville has never looked this good, and, honestly, it never needed to. But the newfound fidelity sure does make all this blood and goop pop. - 8.5 / 10
The Toxic Avenger Collection box set is available in Ultra HD and Blu-ray editions now. For purchasing information, click this.
Directed by Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman.
Screenplays by Lloyd Kaufman; Joe Ritter; Gay Partington Terry; Patrick Cassidy, Trent Haaga, and Gabriel Friedman.
Starring Andree Maranda, Mitchell Cohen, Pat Ryan Jr., Gary Schneider, Mark Torgl, Ron Fazio, Mayako Katsuragi, Rikiya Yasuoka, Rick Collins, Dan Snow, Michael Jai White, Phoebe Legere, David Mattey, Heidi Sjursen, Joe Fleishaker, Paul Kyrmse, Trent Haaga, James Gunn, Corey Feldman, Michael Budinger, Lisa Terezakis, and Stan Lee.
Produced by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz.
All films are presented in their unrated Director’s Cut versions. All contain various forms of extremely gunky/splashy violence, rampant nudity, drug use, and other instances of sordid shenanigans.