The Toxic Avenger (1984) Review

"I'm not just another pretty face."
-The Toxic Avenger



Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgl) is a scrawny nerd who works as a janitor at the local gym in Tromaville, New Jersey.  He is not well liked and manages to find himself facing the wrath of a group of homicidal teens, led by Bozo (Gary Schneider).  Bozo's gang decides to play a prank on Melvin, which results in him falling out a window into a barrel of toxic waste.  Melvin begins to mutate and become The Toxic Avenger (Mitch Cohen), a beastly monster, hideous and violent, but surprisingly well spoken.  He becomes the town's protector as he gets revenge on Bozo and his gang, but also starts to take on the violent psychopaths and scum that are ruining Tromaville.  The Toxic Avenger is cleaning up the streets, but corrupt Mayor Peter Belgoody (Pat Ryan Jr.) will do anything to stop him.


What Works:

The biggest positive The Toxic Avenger has is the over-the-top levels of gore.  This movie is ultra violet, but in a fun way.  This isn't Hostel or Saw.  This gore is played for laughs mostly and it's utterly ridiculous.  We get to see lots of gruesome deaths and it's a lot of fun.

The gore isn't the only thing that's over the top in this movie.  The whole tone of this movie is wild and very 80's.  There are tons of wacky and insane characters, you'd think you were watching a Mad Max movie.  The criminals the Toxic Avenger takes down are not generic henchmen.  They are ridiculous, over-the-top, full-fledged lunatics, and man do they make the movie fun.

Best of all is Bozo, with a wonderfully loony performance from Gary Schneider.  This guy is violent, crazy, and a blast to watch every time he is on screen.  If only he had been the main antagonist.  This guy is pure, crazy gold.


What Sucks:

The actual main antagonist, Mayor Belgoody, is not nearly as interesting as Bozo.  I was hoping more of the movie would be focused on the Toxic Avenger getting revenge on Bozo and his gang, but it's much more about him cleaning up the streets and stopping a corrupt mayor.  In fact, all of Bozo's gang survives the movie, except for Bozo, and they are arguably the most evil characters in the film.  It's a bummer that they took such a backseat when they were the far more interesting story.  And this corruption storyline simply wasn't interesting enough to carry the movie and I definitely felt my interest waining as the movie went by.

A lot of the humor isn't really to my taste.  It's very 80's and very slapstick and I simply don't care for that kind of humor.  I laughed sometimes, but I was much more interested in the insanity of the movie than its humor.


Verdict:

The Toxic Avenger is a wild, insane, over-the-top 80's movie.  That's pretty much all it tries to be, and it delivers.  The story could have been a lot more interesting had they taken it a different direction and the humor is pretty meh, but the gore and just general insanity does make it a fun movie to watch.


 6/10: Ok, But An Entertaining B-Movie 

    

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