In the 1980s, every video store in America had The Toxic Avenger and they ALL stocked it in the horror section. However, it, like all of Troma’s in-house films directed by Lloyd Kaufman, is a comedy more than anything else. And an influential one, too. Tasteless humor is big in the mainstream today, but in 1984 not many movies dared to take crushed heads, plopping entrails and savagely gouged eyes and play ’em for laughs. There was the great early work of John Waters, but those films came with the distinct whiff of queer bohemian subculture, midnight movie anarchy for adult eyes. Lloyd Kaufman meanwhile is more of an anti-corporate clown and gutter-level mogul. He gives the exploitation crowd all of the violence and pretty naked ladies they want, bless him. Troma’s ideal audience might be young boys sneaking some filth past their parents.
The Toxic Avenger is certainly childish enough. It’s a superhero movie, for Chrissakes. It starts with the biggest virginal geek of the the year, a bottom shelf wimp with No. 2 pencils for arms and who works as a janitor at a health club (the perfect campy setting for cute girls in little to no clothing, tough-guy bullies and odd background characters), getting pranked by some psychos and then falling headfirst into a barrel of green toxic waste. He becomes a hulking mutant as a result and not only goes after the bullies, but he also fights crime all over Tromaville, always with over-the-top brutality that Jason Vorhees might consider a tad excessive.
If one was of adult age when this came out, it’s easy to see why they might have skipped it.
If they were a kid though, it’s easy to see why they might have rented it ten times and maybe laughed their head off at the death by french fryer or the stumbling antics of our hero’s gorgeous blind girlfriend.
Those kids are now grown up. And they’re making comedies.
Joe Camel didn’t do as good a job at poisoning the minds of the young as The Toxic Avenger.