Michael's Splatter Lase-O-Rama: The Toxic Avenger; Unrated Director's Cut (1998, Troma Video)

modernzorker (66)in #film • 5 years ago (edited)

If you thought your teenage years were tough, well, I can promise you Melvin's were worse. First of all, Melvin (Mark Torgl) lives in Tromaville, New Jersey, the toxic waste capital of the world. Secondly, he's employed by the Tromaville Health Club as the mop boy -- he's the one responsible for cleaning up all the sweat, spooge, piss, and crap once the health-obsessed nuts have left for the day, and then he's got to do the toilets. And finally, he's the biggest nerd in the whole town. People are always playing practical jokes on Melvin, because he's 98 pounds of pure wimp, but the joke inflicted upon him by Julie (Cindy Manion), Wanda (Jennifer Babtist), Slug (Robert Pritchard) and Bozo (Gary Schneider) is the worst yet.

Dressed in a full-size set of dress tights and a tutu on the promise of making it with Julie, he's led to a dark room where he instead begins loving on a sheep. When the lights come on, the whole health club is watching and laughing. Humiliated, Melvin runs through the health club to escape the ridicule, and dives through the second-floor window. He, of course, lands head-first in a barrel of radioactive toxic waste, because Melvin's life is worse than yours.

Over the next few hours, Melvin's life becomes even more miserable as his skin blisters, his features deform, and he transforms into a 6'4" slab of pure muscular terror, determined to crush all the crime out of Tromaville, and make it a better place. Using mops shoved into the mouths of his victims as calling cards, Melvin rampages through Tromaville on his idealistic crusade, subjecting evil-doers to eye-gouging, head-smashing, groin-crushing, body-flinging, arm-ripping justice as...The Toxic Avenger! He's even scored himself a girlfriend, the blind Sara (Andree Miranda), who can see only Melvin's inner beauty.

Unfortunately for Melvin, while his avenging antics become a rallying point for the citizens of Tromavilla, not everyone is happy to have him cleaning up the streets. Mayor Peter Belgoody (Pat Ryan) and his goose-stepping Chief of Police (David Weiss) are horrified that this mutant miscreant is tearing through the profits of their criminal empire. They've united what's left of the scumbags on the street to stop Melvin, and if that doesn't work, Mayor Belgoody can always call in the National Guard...

After watching Riki-Oh: Story of Riki yesterday, I kept thinking about how, despite being one of the most batshit insane films I've ever seen, it still manages to be completely engaging in a way that so many similar films are not. Riki-Oh is compelling because it's so earnest in its presentation. Everyone present knows they're working on something completely crazy, but despite all the visual hyperbole on display, it's all played completely straight. It's believable in its unbelievability.

The same can be said of 1984's The Toxic Avenger.

Shot on a shoestring budget of under half a million dollars, it somehow manages to combine some excellent stuntwork, decent make-up, and a slew of unknown twenty-somethings hamming it up for the camera in ways that don't instantly make you want to turn the film off. Everybody involved with The Toxic Avenger was 100% committed to turning this ridiculous premise into something resembling a coherent story, and by God, they succeeded. The Toxic Avenger is as close to a Western Riki-Oh as you can get, and it's a thing of beauty -- metaphorically speaking, of course.

You couldn't ask for a finer transfer, for one thing. The Toxic Avenger has never been a "pretty" picture, but whoever was responsible for cleaning up the print for this LaserDisc went above and beyond the call of duty. The color timing is correct, the contrast is excellent, the aspect is restored to its proper 1.85:1 ratio instead of the inferior 1.33:1 pan-and-scan version available up to this point, and a lot of scuffs and nicks to the film were patched up. It's a superior print to even the two-disc DVD version Troma released a year earlier.

As you might expect, the violence excised from the various cinematic and home video versions over the years has been restored for this unrated director's cut, including both infamous head crushing scenes (one where a boy is run over by a car, the other where a criminal gets his noggin caved in by a weight-lifting machine) in all their g(l)ory. There's even a commentary track recorded by Lloyd Kaufman on the right Analog channel, in case you want to learn more about the making of this 82-minute disaster-piece.

Much like Riki-Oh, this is basically a live-action anime. The characters (especially the villains) are all caricatures who behave like they've walked out of a comic book. The violence is gratuitous to the point of hilarity, and I can just imagine writers Kaufman and Joe Ritter trying to one-up each other in coming up with the completely over-the-top deaths:

"Okay, okay, I got it. We'll have the monster tear off this dude's arm, right? And then he'll use it to beat another guy to death!"

"Sure, and after that, we'll have him stuff the one-armed guy who is still alive and breathing into...into, uh, the pizza oven!"

"Pizza oven? I thought they were fighting in a Mexican restaurant."

"It's a Mexican restaurant with samurai swords hanging on the walls, Lloyd! Of course they're going to have a pizza oven!

"YES!! Yes, naturally! And then, uh, and then, we'll have him grab the other guy, the one who had the nunchucks, and stick his hands into the deep fryer! Now, what about the third punk, the guy who was threatening that kid with a shotgun and killed the blind girl's dog?"

"I don't know. We need something good though. Say...what if the restaurant where they're fighting also serves banana splits and milkshakes? So they have this blender, right, and, all the whipped cream and little cherries...?"

"I like where you're going with this, Joe, I like it a lot!"

The makeup is extensive. The nudity is pointless. The songs composed for the soundtrack are delightfully cheesy. The fight scenes are well-choreographed. The dialog is awful. But things keep splattering, so you just keep watching right up until the end credits.

Look, you either love this movie, or you've never seen it. There are no in-betweens. I'm an unashamed fanboy, and I hope after reading this and watching the trailer, you will be too: