This Troma film, a piece of symphatetic and not uninteresting trash by veterans Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, THE TOXIC AVENGER (USA, 1985) turned out to be even funnier and genuinely more clever little film as I re-watched it last night on the wonderful Tox Box DVD set released by Troma (including all three films in director's cut versions!)
First of all, I admire the speed the directors manage to maintain throughout the film, minutes just pass by without even thinking about it which is definitely not always the case with B films. The characters are very noisy and irritating most of the time, but that fits to the own world of the film, the Tromaville, and thus doesn't feel annoying anymore. I think this is something many other trash films have never achieved, for example the awful 2002 film THE HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES by musician Rob Zombie, whose film tries to be funny (the characters laugh at their own jokes all the time etc.) but doesn't manage to create an interesting or original world of its own at all - and that's why the idiotic characters and neverending talking/screaming starts to feel very irritating. Unlike THE TOXIC AVENGER, Zombie's film leaves nothing to the viewer's brain.
Especially like the German expressionist piece and cinematically breathtaking achievement DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI by Robert Wiene, the Troma film has created a wild and wonderful world in which the unusually wild and excessively behaving and reacting (face expressions and other representations of one's feelings) characters fit perfectly. Also, THE TOXIC AVENGER has some satiric elements in it, mostly towards the youth in general with its desperate searches for a stronger identity, usually at the expense of the weaker and "uglier." The actors are all great. The scene in which a mother of some brat is "washed" in a very unusual manner strenghtens the mentioned interpretation about the youth even more. The film manages to point out some errors and negative sides of the society with black humor and dares also to show the flag in a little different (and more realistic, as any other flag on Earth) light than, for example, Michael Bay which is great, too.
Of course the film is also full of sex, women's breasts and ultra violence not to speak of awful editing and continuity errors but they kind of add to the unique and over-energetic world of the film. The best thing here is that the makers knew what they were doing - outrageous trash - they knew that the film won't be appreciated by the Academy, for example, but they also knew that despite those facts and "authorities", their film can have many themes and ideas, even more than those that get golden statues.
My greetings to the lunatics at Tromaville!
First of all, I admire the speed the directors manage to maintain throughout the film, minutes just pass by without even thinking about it which is definitely not always the case with B films. The characters are very noisy and irritating most of the time, but that fits to the own world of the film, the Tromaville, and thus doesn't feel annoying anymore. I think this is something many other trash films have never achieved, for example the awful 2002 film THE HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES by musician Rob Zombie, whose film tries to be funny (the characters laugh at their own jokes all the time etc.) but doesn't manage to create an interesting or original world of its own at all - and that's why the idiotic characters and neverending talking/screaming starts to feel very irritating. Unlike THE TOXIC AVENGER, Zombie's film leaves nothing to the viewer's brain.
Especially like the German expressionist piece and cinematically breathtaking achievement DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI by Robert Wiene, the Troma film has created a wild and wonderful world in which the unusually wild and excessively behaving and reacting (face expressions and other representations of one's feelings) characters fit perfectly. Also, THE TOXIC AVENGER has some satiric elements in it, mostly towards the youth in general with its desperate searches for a stronger identity, usually at the expense of the weaker and "uglier." The actors are all great. The scene in which a mother of some brat is "washed" in a very unusual manner strenghtens the mentioned interpretation about the youth even more. The film manages to point out some errors and negative sides of the society with black humor and dares also to show the flag in a little different (and more realistic, as any other flag on Earth) light than, for example, Michael Bay which is great, too.
Of course the film is also full of sex, women's breasts and ultra violence not to speak of awful editing and continuity errors but they kind of add to the unique and over-energetic world of the film. The best thing here is that the makers knew what they were doing - outrageous trash - they knew that the film won't be appreciated by the Academy, for example, but they also knew that despite those facts and "authorities", their film can have many themes and ideas, even more than those that get golden statues.
My greetings to the lunatics at Tromaville!