The 1984 cult classic The Toxic Avenger was horndog superhero schlock that spawned an improbable media franchise. While the long-term legacy of filmmaker Macon Blair’s contemporary remake, in theaters August 28, remains unknown, it faithfully lives up to its predecessor’s uninhibited B-movie nonsense.
Unlike the original’s hatred of ’80s preppy psycho bullies, the I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore writer/director’s latest rages against Big Pharma and the insurance companies and criminals with whom it’s in league. Putting a contemporary spin on its ultra-violent mutant material, however, doesn’t interfere with its campy, corny, and carnage-laden goofiness, all of it spearheaded by Peter Dinklage as a working-class schlub who’s transformed into a deformed do-gooder.
In voiceover, Winston Gooze (Dinklage) confesses, “I didn’t want any of this. Not the grief. Not the illness. Certainly not the heroic voiceover,” thereby setting a self-consciously silly tone for the saga to come. So too does on-screen text that identifies places as “Depressing Outskirts,” “Corporate Fartplex,” and “Ye Old Shithead District.”
That last locale is where journalist Mel Ferd (Shaun Dooley)—the name of the first Toxic Avenger—and protégé J.J. (Taylour Paige) are trying to expose the nefarious crimes of BTH, a pharmaceutical powerhouse founded and operated by Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon). Before they can review their evidence, Mel is murdered by, and J.J. must flee, a gang of outlandish madmen who are members of the “monstercore” band The Killer Nutz—a troupe akin to a lamer version of Insane Clown Posse (if such a thing is possible).
The Killer Nutz work for Bob and are managed by the CEO’s brother Fritz (Elijah Wood), a pale creep who resembles Danny Devito’s Batman Returns Penguin. Those two, along with Bob’s dutiful associate Kissy (Julia Davis), are in trouble due to BTH’s dwindling fortunes, which have angered their mobster backer Thad (Jonny Coyne).
Their problems aren’t more dire than those faced by Winston, who’s the BTH factory’s janitor and is struggling to raise his stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay) in the wake of his wife’s death. No matter how supportive he is of Wade’s upcoming talent-show dance performance (which the boy dubs a “property movement piece”), he’s kept at arm’s length. Worse, a trip to the doctor reveals that he’s dying of a fatal ailment whose specifics, per the proceedings’ absurdity, are drowned out by impromptu construction noises.
With a year left to live and insurance refusing to cover his medical expenses (the operator just babbles incoherently about “tiers”), Winston crashes a fundraiser to make a personal appeal to Bob. When that fails, he robs his place of employment, using a mop dipped in toxic sludge to nab a bag of cash.
On his way out, though, he winds up in the crosshairs of a fight between The Killer Nutz and J.J. and is shot dead and dumped in a pool of toxic waste. This should be the end of Winston, but one psychedelic transformation sequence later, he’s reborn à la Jack Nicholson’s Joker as Toxie, a pint-sized mutant (played, physically, by Luisa Guerreiro) with amazing strength and regenerative powers.
Toxie quickly becomes the savior of his hometown of St. Roma Village (whose colored lettering slyly spells out Troma), felling extremists and outing BTH as a bunch of “ruiners” dedicated to killing the environment and their customers in the name of profit.
At the same time, he strives to reconnect with Wade, who becomes a pawn in his feud with Bob. The villain covets Toxie for his extraordinary blood, which he believes is the key to reversing his company’s cratering fortunes. Thus, The Toxic Avenger simultaneously spoofs its big-budget superhero brethren and skewers an American medical establishment that exploits and abandons more than it nurtures and heals—a focus that’s timelier and more sophisticated than the initial movie (which cared mostly about gratuitous nudity and gore), but not by much.
Blair casts his action as a tongue-in-cheek R-rated cartoon, indulging in excessive splatter and wink-wink humor like a late bit in which Toxie’s attempt to threaten Bob with a stinging one-liner falls flat and is rightly mocked by both his adversary and J.J.
The Toxic Avenger—which originally premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2023, yet struggled to secure domestic distribution because of its over-the-topness—has been designed for midnight theatrical showings and late-night sleepover viewings. If its jokiness is hit or miss, it’s nonetheless in keeping with its ancestor, whose creator Lloyd Kaufman makes a late cameo, bickering testily with Blair’s slob.
Toxie smashes, slices, and decapitates his enemies with his lethal mop, and after being imprisoned in Bob’s evil-laboratory dungeon, he discovers that—thanks to his noxious form—he’s able to escape the chains that bind him via his acidic pee. Such is the proceedings’ puerile nature, whose healthcare and Marvel/DC satire is consistently ridiculous.
Dinklage, Bacon, Wood and the rest of the cast are all attuned to the film’s gonzo wavelength, going big and broad at every turn. Still, Toxie himself could have looked a tad nastier; aside from a brief gag in which his eye dangles from its socket, the protagonist is visually underwhelming.
More amusing is The Killer Nutz, whose musicians include a persistently flipping parkour moron and a silent behemoth in a mohawk-chicken mask whose actual face is the comedy’s biggest surprise. Blair’s vigilante saga is never serious, and its dedication to keeping things light and loopy is to its benefit, allowing it to zip from one gag to another, blithely unconcerned about good taste or sketchy storytelling.
Since the entire point of this fringe property is bizarre farcical madness, it’s impossible to fault The Toxic Avenger for not being a deeper or more nuanced and polished affair. And while its finale is a minor letdown—except, that is, for an inventively gnarly death-via-car engine—it maintains its fourth wall-breaking drollness all the way to a satisfying post-credit stinger that perfectly lampoons such addendums.
Whether or not it follows through on its closing promise of an outrageous sequel, it thumbs its nose at superhero cinema and gives the middle finger to Big Pharma with endearingly idiotic glee.
The post ‘The Toxic Avenger’ Returns Goofier and Grosser Than Ever appeared first on The Daily Beast.
