By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay and Taylour Paige
Written and directed by Macon Blair
Cineverse
A lot of people have tried for a lot of years to remake THE TOXIC AVENGER (everyone from Guillermo del Toro to Arnold Schwarzenegger has been attached), which speaks to the challenges inherent in updating such a specific cult favorite. One is that the original Troma production was casually cavalier and quite self-aware in its embrace of low humor, bad taste and gross gore. It simply was what it was, and knew what it was, and attempting to recapture that might come off like making an in-joke on a movie that was already in on its own joke.
The other is that its combined extremes of violence and comedy have become a standard in movies since then, both big and small. What is ROBOCOP, which came out a little over a year after AVENGER first hit theaters, but an alternate version of Toxie’s story, a mix of savagery and satire about a guy who becomes a superhuman and goes after crime and corruption in general and the goons who laid him low in particular? There’s even a toxic-waste transformation scene in the Paul Verhoeven hit.
It is therefore quite odd that the new TOXIC AVENGER, written and directed by Macon Blair, is only now emerging into general release four years after it was filmed. Obviously it is not for all mainstream tastes, nor should it be, but movies even more outrageous and splattery than this one have had little trouble finding distribution in recent years.
Which is to say that although the film contains its share of exaggerated-to-the-point-of-cartoony spurting blood and damaged body parts, it’s far from a nonstop parade of such moments. Blair’s solution to the fact that Troma’s blending of extremities is not such an outlier as it was four decades ago is to infuse it with just a bit of heart amidst the insanity. He also made the unexpected but, as it turns out, right choice to scale Toxie down from his prior muscleman size and cast Peter Dinklage as the new central character who becomes the Avenger, Winston Gooze.
There is a Melvin Ferd (the name of Toxie’s ’80s alter ego) in this incarnation, though here he’s a crusading reporter (Shaun Dooley) we meet in the opening moments, visited by J.J. Doherty (Taylour Paige), a fellow journalist who’s been infiltrating Big Pharma monolith BT Healthstyle to purloin evidence of its dirty dealings. The shadiness of CEO Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) includes denying desperately needed health coverage to Winston, the company’s mop boy. An encounter with Garbinger’s vicious enforcers, a bizarrely costumed monstercore band called The Killer Nutz who drive around in a Mad Max-mobile, leaves Winston submerged with his mop in the chemical factory’s deleterious leavings, and he emerges green, mutated and, for a while, conflicted about his new identity.
It’s not necessarily easy to elicit sympathy for a malformed, discolored being who occasionally indulges in ultraviolence, but Dinklage successfully gets us to feel for Winston before he becomes the Avenger (who’s played by Luisa Guerreiro, speaking with Dinklage’s voice). Before his mission becomes cleaning up Saint Roma’s Village (get it?), he’s a single stepdad doing his best to raise teenage Wade (Mike Flanagan regular Jacob Tremblay), and after, he still attempts to maintain that relationship, and that’s where the aforementioned heart lies.
The rest is over-the-top mayhem, humor that vacillates from snarky to satirical to scatological, harsh, sometimes sickly lighting by cinematographer Dana Gonzales, extravagantly tacky production design by Alexander Cameron, intertitles providing a faux-literary veneer (identifying settings as “Ye Olde Shithead District” and “Depressing Outskirts”) and a bit of accidental relevance when Toxie confronts armed thugs angry about a chain restaurant’s name and identity change. In other words, it’s Troma standards writ with a larger budget, and Blair and his team bring an advanced level of technical accomplishment while maintaining the spirit of the source.
Same goes for the cast, who inhabit their exaggerated roles with…well, maybe sincerity is the wrong word, but they play them as movie characters rather than cartoon characters. Everyone’s on the same, proper wavelength here; in addition to those noted above, the ensemble includes Elijah Wood, made up to resemble a mutated version of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW’s Riff Raff as Garbinger’s brother and head of security Fritz; David Yow as Guthrie Stockins, a “Wise Hobo” who lives in the woods and helps Toxie find himself; and Blair himself as “Dennis, The Noisy Slob,” no elaboration needed. And of course, there’s a cameo by Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma and steward of the TOXIC AVENGER franchise. This is one of just the right number of shout-outs to the original flick (from Ferd’s name to “Hall of the Mountain King” on the soundtrack) to let Toxie’s longtime fans know that Blair and co.’s affection for the movie they’re rebooting is genuine.
