Nothing makes me feel older than the inescapable, soul-crushing passage of time, which waits for no one and marches ever forward, towards — without any exceptions — our lonely deaths. But coming in second I would say it’s probably Troma, the little independent movie studio that could. And what it could do, was sleaze. Cheap, scuzzy, prurient sleaze with, somehow, a pervasive air of naiveté that miraculously made every production kind of cute. “Oh look, that guy just got disemboweled and his small intestine was used as a jump rope!” we used to say. “That’s adorable!”
Troma’s star doesn’t twinkle as brightly anymore, but for decades it successfully positioned itself as the anti-Hollywood, selling the notion that America was just a toxic waste dump filled with greedy capitalists, evil bullies and innocent victims who, sometimes, became mutant heroes. Not fun mutants with daggers on their hands or laser vision. No, Troma mutants were frozen in time at the moment their faces melted off. Troma’s signature creation, the ultraviolent childlike vigilante The Toxic Avenger, was a physically revolting beast with a heart of gold. Unless you were evil, of course. The presence of evil threw Toxie into a murderous rage, so he treated do-badders like they were defective Stretch Armstrongs full of strawberry jam.
The Toxic Avenger was, somehow, briefly a multimedia sensation. After three films that were so violent you couldn’t find a cable network willing to run them before 1am, Toxie had his own kids cartoon series called “Toxic Crusaders.”
We don’t have counterculture franchises like “The Toxic Avenger” anymore. I wish we did. Heck, if Hollywood had its way we might not even have Macon Blair’s new reboot. The new “Toxic Avenger” played at film festivals two whole years ago and it’s struggled to find distribution ever since. That may have something to do with how outlandishly violent it is, but it sure as hell can’t be because it’s a bad movie. Because it’s a pretty great movie, and exactly the kind of good-natured scuzz that could still become a cult sensation.
“The Toxic Avenger” stars Peter Dinklage as Winston Gooze, a single father struggling to raise his son Wade (Jacob Tremblay) in St. Roma’s Village, a town so dilapidated by neglect and toxic waste that all the signs have faded. Now they just read “Tromaville.” Winston works for Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon), who runs a chemical plant that’s giving everyone in Tromaville cancer. When Winston finds out he’s dying he begs Bob for help with his lousy health insurance. When that fails, Winston tries to rob the factory, but it all goes bad.
You see, Bob is evil as hell, and a whistleblower named J.J. (Taylour Paige) is trying to steal evidence that will destroy his company. So Bob tells his gross little brother Fritz (Elijah Wood) to kill her, and Bob sends an evil monstercore rock band to do the deed. Winston gets in the way, gets tossed into the toxic waste, and becomes a bright green vigilante who rips the arms off of mobsters, rips the faces off of right wing terrorists, and rips a stream of acid urine whenever he has to go number one.
Nobody plays a sad sack quite like Peter Dinklage, so casting the “Game of Thrones” star was a stroke of genius. But that’s not him in the Toxic Avenger costume. Dinklage dubs the voice, Darth Vader-style, but after his transformation Toxie is physically played by Luisa Guerreiro, a prolific performer with credits on everything from “Teletubbies” to “Baldur’s Gate III.” Together they create a wonderful illusion, a complete character sculpted out of two partial performances. Their Toxie is a creature of tragedy who doesn’t always achieve catharsis through his acts of violence. Usually he finds them slightly embarrassing.
Macon Blair is better known as an actor, having starred in the excellent indie thriller “Blue Ruin.” He also directed the acclaimed “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.” Like many filmmakers who got their start on the indie circuit, Blair got swooped up to make a superhero movie. Unlike most of his peers, Blair made a weird and gross one, which demonstrates his canny understanding not just of the title character but the whole Troma vibe. Everything about this movie is unclean. Nobody can pour a drink without sloshing it around and making a mess. The down-to-earth lo-fi Troma aesthetic has barely been updated. It feels just as gross as ever. Good.
The new “Toxic Avenger” also spins gold out of Troma’s sillier tropes, like their outstanding over-reliance of on-the-nose ADR to fill out any otherwise empty moment. You can’t let the audience get bored for a second in a Troma movie, nor can you risk anyone missing all your brilliant storytelling. That’s why when Winston saves a cat at the beginning of “The Toxic Avenger,” someone off-camera yells “He saved a cat!” In Macon Blair’s hands these silly flourishes are expertly amateurish. He’s not above this source material. He’s just got a little more money is all.
Fans of “The Toxic Avenger” are out there, and with any luck, Macon Blair’s film will make a lot more of them. It’s a heartwarming, horrifically violent homage to the most lovable dreck ever produced outside of the studio system. Those studios should sit up and take notice, because this remake feels fresher than the majority of the caped crusader movies Hollywood has been producing for years.
Long live the Toxic Avenger. Long live Tromaville. They’re sticking up their middle fingers in defiance of the studio system and proving — not for the first time — that the greatest avenger is, ironically, toxic.
“The Toxic Avenger” opens in theaters on Aug. 29.
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