It’s a little ironic that The Toxic Avenger, a reboot of the 1984 Troma cult classic, will finally land in cinemas right after one of the studio’s most famous graduates, James Gunn, made $600m at the box office with a Superman film. Troma Entertainment was founded in 1974 by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, and has since provided a steady supply of ultra-low-budget, splatter horror comedies. Gunn, mentored by Kaufman, made his filmmaking debut co-writing and co-directing Troma’s take on Shakespeare, Tromeo and Juliet (1996).
The original Toxic Avenger, a comic book spoof about a nerd who’s dunked in radioactive waste and, as a result, becomes a deep-voiced, sexually virulent mutant, was made for only $500,000 and was Troma’s biggest hit, spawning three film sequels, a stage musical, a comic book series, a video game, and an animated series. There was talk of a remake for over a decade, with Arnold Schwarzenegger briefly considered for a PG-13 iteration (can you imagine?), before the current version – produced by Kaufman and Herz, written and directed by Macon Blair, and shot with a significantly higher budget – was formally greenlit. It premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2023 before disappearing from view – reportedly because distributors considered its violent content unmarketable.
And yet, while it’s finally here, the timing hasn’t particularly done it any favours. Blair, whose directorial debut I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017) had a wildly different, deadpan feel to it, clearly knows his Troma back to front, and the homages here are both attentive and sincere. But the keyword is “homage”. Troma’s current slogan is “50 Years of Disrupting Media” and, certainly, the key (I should stress, artistic) appeal of these intensely juvenile films is that, even if we’re mostly watching horny and beautiful women in high-cut leotards, they maintain a truly scrappy, independent quality.
And that’s hard to fake on a real, Hollywood budget and a screen packed with A-listers. Peter Dinklage voices the Toxic Avenger (with Luisa Guerreiro under all the prosthetics), and plays him pre-radioactive waste bath, when he’s Winston, a humble employee of BT Healthstyle and stepfather to Wade (Jacob Tremblay), whose mother died of cancer.
After Winston receives a deadly diagnosis his BTH insurance won’t cover, his attempts to appeal to the company’s CEO, Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), fall on deaf ears, and, what do you know, a bad day turns worse when he’s transformed into a boil-covered, puke green, mop-wielding monster. With the help of whistleblower JJ Doherty (Taylour Paige), Winston takes on Bob, his Renfield-like assistant Fritz (Elijah Wood), and the metal band Killer Nutz, who have a side gig committing targeted hits for Bob.
The Toxic Avenger is funny and charming, with a joke rate as consistent as this year’s The Naked Gun, and snappy editing that mimics the Edgar Wright brand of genre parody. Blair has his background actors replicate the fevered but flat line deliveries of the original, so, at one point, you hear, “Y’all doing a mob?” “We’re doing a mob!” as the townspeople gather their pitchforks. And Dinklage has always had a great handle on comedy, because he keeps his natural gravitas close at hand instead of desperately trying to prove to us that he can do silly.
But that Troma “disruption” just isn’t anywhere to be found – its so-called shocking violence now isn’t all that removed from, well, what Gunn is doing with his R-rated superhero material. Even its climax caves to the Hollywood mandate that every superhero film has to end with an epic punch-up. A closing credits gag teases a sequel, 2oxic 2venger, which will only be greenlit if the first film makes $1bn at the box office. It doesn’t really land as it should – if only The Toxic Avenger were more distinguishable from the blockbusters it’s trying to parody.
Dir: Macon Blair. Starring: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Julia Davis, Jonny Coyne, Elijah Wood, Kevin Bacon. Cert 18, 103 minutes
‘The Toxic Avenger’ is in cinemas from 29 August
