Truly Dreadful Film

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A young, innocent boy rides his bicycle at night, before his fragile body is thrust against the violent face of a speeding car. He is purposefully run over by a maniacal group of masochist teens. The scene in which this atrocity occurs in "The Toxic Avenger" actually works as a comedic highlight.Yeah...it's that kind of movie.This is the cult classic posterchild of Troma's line of horror comedies, and it is certainly among the most memorable and chaotic cheesy flicks of the 1980's. Unlike many other ridiculous, low budget horror movies, "The Toxic Avenger" is an intentional comedy; a movie that mixes disturbing themes, black humor, occasionally sharp social satire, and absurd, surrealist HORROR MOVIE MADNESS! This is a movie that refuses to hold back any punches. Gore, drugs, sex, violence, masturbating to photos of dead children-it's all here, and it's all darkly hilarious!Recommended for those who enjoy B-movies, satirical black comedy, and shocking exploitation cinema.

That this movie is rated 6.2 on IMDb undermines hope for humanity. There is nothing even remotely engaging, good, or well done in this movie. Perhaps if you are under the influence of mind-altering substances, or are a pubescent male there might be something in it for you, but otherwise forget it. The acting is not just over-the-top, which may have been intentional, but it doesn't work because it is just plain bad. There is not a single actor in this movie that can do exaggeration in any convincing way, and so they all simply look nothing but stupidly ridiculous, and not in a humorous way. There are a few attempts at crafting a humorous-looking scene, but as soon as you spot it and your hopes increase for a comedic laugh, the direction and staging dive immediately downward and dash all hope for something truly amusing. The writing couldn't be less moronic, so when coupled with inept acting, makes for a disaster of a movie. So, as last resort, could this movie possibly be saved by well-crafted make-up and effects? Once again, all hope is lost, as the make-up and effects are notably cheesy and unconvincing. Oh, wait a minute...lest review of the so-called action sequences be unfairly omitted here, it is sufficient to say that they are poorly choreographed and edited, and the stunt work is consistent with being as unconvincing as everything else in the movie. This movie can't even qualify as being good as a guilty pleasure flick. It does, however, achieve top honors as being remarkably repugnant.

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

I've always loved this movie. I wanted to put in a short review here for why.I think most humans are basically horrifying savages, and that the only thing keeping us from living in a jungle of rapists, murderers, drug addiction, and diseased whores are the artificial constructs of civilization. Most movies try to lie about this in order to sell some kind of agenda. The Toxic Avenger not only sh*ts all over the myth that there aren't a lot of truly terrible sociopaths out there who cruelly exploit the weak. It shows these people's actions coming around to not just bite them in the ass, but literally CRUSH THEIR SKULLS. Young, old, ugly, beautiful, male, female, rich, poor, powerful, pathetic -- NO ONE escapes judgment. I don't know if it was the intention of the filmmakers, but to me that makes this a movie with a deeply moral message. It doesn't surprise me that people think it's "politically incorrect" to hold people unconditionally accountable for their actions, which is what I think people find offensive about this movie far more than the violence. Like the hot slut (Julie) who was an accomplice and a lover to a murderous child-killing psychopath (Bozo). Does she get merely intimidated, or shamed, because she's an attractive young woman? No, the seed gets gutted alive with a pair of scissors! =) =) =) The instinct to be in touch with one's personal divinity is every bit as savage - has to be - as the evil turds who want to turn the world into their sadistic playground. Finally a movie that "gets it"!This movie's a tongue-in-cheek primal scream for someone who hates evil.