The Toxic Avenger

Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman's The Toxic Avenger is determined to fill its frame with as much repulsive imagery as possible. This interest in the relentlessly off-putting goes beyond the special make up effects that depict the bubbling skin of a teenager who has fallen into a radioactive barrel or the caved-in heads of thrill-kill victims. The camera pushes in on cackling faces, not to inspect them but to leer, to probe from such close proximity that these pitted landscapes begin to twist and warp. If the character is particularly repellent they might even have food spilling out of their mouths as they motor through their lines - chewed-up grub utilised as a cheap way to achieve the viscerally grotesque. Male faces - particularly the one owned by Mark Torgl, the fearless actor who plays the weedy pre-dip incarnation of the eponymous hero - are screwed up into the kind of honking, cartoonish caricature you'd expect to see adorning the cover of Mad Magazine. Set in Tromaville, the chemical waste capitol of New Jersey, Toxic Avenger details a crimefighting spree that draws from television's The Incredible Hulk and the murder musculature seen in the many Friday the 13th sequels. When battling other men, this over-inflated putz growls like Lou Ferrigno as he tears limbs off would-be muggers. The violence visited on women though is much more intimate, adopting the stalking rhythms of a slasher film as this mutant initiates humiliating assaults on the slobbering gym rats who mocked his sexual inexperience. The crown jewel of the Troma video library, The Toxic Avenger is available in an extended cut that adds several blurry montage clips (apparently sourced from analogue tape) that either burn screentime with stock footage of trundling tanks or by recapping the sub-90 minute film that we're all already watching.