The Toxic Avenger

A downtrodden janitor at a factory has a freak accident on the job that will disfigure him for life. His skin melts and he turns into a radioactive anti-hero with a monstruous appearance and super-human strength. When the community is threatened by corruption, Toxic Avenger unleashes his all fury and thirst for revenge; in a greedy, rotten world, the face of justice is the face of Toxie.

COMMENTARY
Once, in the last decades of the 1900s, there was an American studio that produced B movies, and was so proud of the fact that it that it turned out splatter pics which turned into cult classics. Troma had been founded in New York in 1974, by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, who would write, direct, and produce the film that would bring the studio, and its bizarre creatures, global recognition: the 1985 film The Toxic Avenger. Now, Toxic Avenger is back and down on his luck: he’s a janitor at a corrupt pharmaceutical firm, where he falls into a vat of goop and turns into the monstrous, gnarly, and greenish superhero Toxie. His milieu: a brave young woman, a few wealthy nasties, and the violent rap-rock band Killer Nutz.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
In 1986, Mike, my friend Andy’s older brother, said, “You gotta see this!” and showed me a video cassette with a strange mutant monster holding a mop. What happened next is burned into my memory, and not just because of Toxic Avenger’s madcap adventures and bravado, or how corny he actually was; I actually felt that it was like a home movie, something a group of friends might have made in the backyard with a camera, and cherry syrup instead of blood. Remaking the film with the whole team was surreal. The result is a zany comedy way out of the ordinary, but tender and family-friendly.