An altogether different breed of superhero has crawled from the primordial ooze of movie distributor hell and on to our cinema screens. Courtesy of cult actor-writer-director Macon Blair, The Toxic Avenger is receiving the reboot almost no-one, in the grand scheme of things, was expecting, let alone asking for.
Of course, those who know, know. The original Toxic Avenger, released in 1984, was doing the whole ‘hyper-violent superheroes for adults’ thing decades before The Boys, Kick Ass, and Invincible.
It was the product of Lloyd Kaufman and his company Troma Entertainment, the world’s longest running independent film studio, which is responsible for a whole bunch of legendarily trashy B-movies.
Over the years, Troma productions have been early showcases for Hollywood talent. The likes of Kevin Costner, Billy Bob Thornton, and Samuel L. Jackson all made fresh-faced appearances in their films.
This singular production company’s first and defining hit was The Toxic Avenger. We’re here to celebrate that fact, along with the release of the aforementioned glossy reboot, now finally cinemas after a long-delayed release saw it almost shelved forever.
Here’s a potted history of the Toxic Avenger series, starting with the original and best (to date at least) entry.
![The Toxic Avenger (1984) Official Trailer - Troma, Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz [4K Ultra HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/PgauvMrrVEU/maxresdefault.jpg)
The Toxic Avenger (1984)
Troma Entertainment had been ploughing its particular furrow of bawdy comedies and nasty exploitation movies for five years by the time The Toxic Avenger came around.
Filmed with a bunch of no-name actors on a shoestring budget of $500,000 – which wasn’t a lot of money even in 1984 – there were few expectations that it would perform any better than Troma’s previous six films. Suffice to say, you can see every dollar right there up on the screen, and not a cent more.
It wasn’t an immediate cinematic hit, as such, but the movie became a cult favourite and more than made back its budget through midnight showings and the increasingly lucrative home video market. So much so, in fact, that it ultimately spawned the rest of the entries on this list, including three sequels and a recent high-profile(ish) reboot.
The film itself, which tells the tale of a put-upon New Jersey janitor named Melvin Junko (no, really) who falls into a vat of toxic waste, emerging as the titular deformed superhero, clearly struck a chord with the nerds and weirdos of the time.
This was no traditional superhero movie, with Troma’s trademark hyper-violence, gratuitous sex, and juvenile sense of humour all part of the toxic mixture.
![The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989) | Official Trailer | Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz [4K Ultra HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ir0NobagVVg/maxresdefault.jpg)
The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)
Despite The Toxic Avenger’s story paving the way for a sequel, in the end it took Kaufman and Troma co-founder Michael Herz some five years to produce one. Or rather, two.
There evidently wasn’t a lack of inspiration at Troma HQ. By the time he entered the editing suite, it became apparent to Kaufman that he had shot enough material for a pair of movies. So that’s what he did, taking the glut of material and splitting it into two parts.
This first part sees our hero embarking on a trip to Japan, the precise justification being far too tenuous to go into here. Contrary to the franchise’s famously low-fi approach, the production actually shot on location for the relevant sequences, leading to ample nods to Japanese cinematic culture, not to mention plenty of crude stereotyping and a truly abysmal dub.
If we’re being brutally honest, this first sequel doesn’t even get close to stacking up to the original, with an incomprehensible plot and an overlong run time, whilst somehow exhibiting less of the original’s tasteless mayhem. It is notable, however, for featuring the movie debut of actor and martial artist Michael Jai White, who also helped out with some of the fight choreography.
![The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989) | Official Trailer | Troma [4K] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/wmKHhyd9bLM/maxresdefault.jpg)
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie was the second half of that crudely butchered sequel sausage, and boy does it show. This thing’s a mess.
The film’s title, a cheeky riff on the then-contemporary controversy surround Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, also relates to a central plot point that sees our Toxie tempted by the late-‘80s scourge of materialism.
At the outset of the movie, our hero takes on a dubious corporate job (with the evil company he battled in part two, no less) in order to gain the funds for an operation for his blind girlfriend. Suddenly flush with cash, our mutated hero adopts the full yuppie lifestyle – right up until he discovers that his boss is in fact the Devil himself.
It’s all a shaky set-up for a video game-inspired infernal face-off. But then, you don’t watch any of these movies for their tight plotting or character development, do you?
In fact, come the closing credits, you might have forgotten why you watched any of these films at all.
Is there a better film hidden in these two once-singular sequels? Perhaps!
A 2025 re-edit, going back to the original sequel script, stitches the best bits of the two over-long initial sequels together. The so-called 'Mr Melvin' cut is a much tighter vision, stripped of all the dodgy padding and re-used footage, and is probably the best way to...enjoy?... these ludicrous sequels today.
The Toxic Crusaders series (1991)
Given everything you’ve read about Troma Entertainment and the hyper-violent nature of the first three Toxic Avenger movies, a kid-focused cartoon spin-off might not sound like the most natural next step.
Yet that’s precisely the direction this plucky franchise took. To explain how such a thing can happen would require an essay on the nature of late-‘80s and early-‘90s Saturday morning cartoons, which were rooted in casual violence and selling action figures. The trick had already been pulled off with both Rambo and Robocop by this point. Our editor Gerald Lynch has written extensively about the craze previously:
The popularity of the Ninja Turtles likely played a part in this too – another action-spoof about mutated heroes which had previously transitioned from cult adult entertainment to light-hearted kiddy fare. And which, crucially, had made stacks of cash on merch in the process.
With this scene in mind, 1991’s Toxic Crusaders cartoon — and accompanying toy line — starts to make a little more sense.
The series expands it focus to a team of superheroes, and leans hard into the original movie’s vague environmental message, which happened to be all the rage in kid’s entertainment at the time. This was the era of a similarly improbable Swamp Thing cartoon spin-off, as well as the infamously cringey Captain Planet and the Planeteers.
And so, instead of busting the heads of murderers and rapists, our improbably wholesome crew spends much of their time mopping up pollution caused by a pair of mucky aliens. Unsurprisingly, the show lasted just a single season of 13 episodes, but it seemed to do the job of selling a few toys.
Fun fact: the pilot episode was written by a certain Chuck Lorre, who would go on to create massive sitcoms such as Cybill, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory.
Toxic Crusaders video game (1992)
We’ve already alluded to the massive merchandising operation that kept the Toxic Avenger avenging throughout the early ‘90s. One of the fruits of that initiative was the Toxic Crusaders video game, which arrived in 1992 as a hastily put-out tie-in for the animated series, which wouldn’t be getting a second series.
Landing on the NES, Game Boy, and Sega Mega Drive (aka the Genesis), it took the form of a crude side-scrolling brawler-cum-shooter. An appropriate digital form for TA’s brand of trashy action, if not the premise for a memorable game.
As you’d expect, the Mega Drive version is the pick of the litter, with smoother gameplay and richer graphics that actually vaguely resemble the source material.
Even so, you can sense the rushed nature of the game, with basic gameplay, dodgy controls, and only three of the five main Crusaders available to play as. The game’s half-baked, low-budget nature might be considered faithful to Troma’s values, but by all accounts it’s terrible to play.
Jumping forward in time, another Toxic Crusaders video game is in the works for later this year, and this one looks to be in much better shape. Think the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, but with a different gang of mutants.
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)
After an 11-year cinematic hiatus, Troma returned for a third Toxic Avenger sequel around the turn of the millennium – and this time they meant business.
Citizen Toxie starts with an acknowledgement (from none other than Mr Marvel himself, Stan Lee) of the “two rotten sequels” that preceded it. It then swiftly sets about attempting to retcon those movies into oblivion. While our eyes will never forget those earlier attempts, and despite evidence of a tortuous production process, it makes a half-decent fist of things.
This “real sequel” returns to the daringly brash tone of the original movie, not so much flirting with bad taste as jumping into bed with it. The movie starts with the siege of a special needs school, while a little later a certain James Gunn turns up to perform a dubious riff on Professor Stephen Hawking.
Despite all of this, there’s actually something resembling a coherent plot to be followed – though it’s only a passing resemblance – with the movie indulging in multiverse shenanigans a full two decades before Hollywood and Marvel would follow suit.
The Toxic Avenger musical (2008-2017)
It would be remiss of us to let this whistle stop tour of Toxic Avenger history pass by without a mention of The Toxic Avenger musical.
Running for the best part of a decade, it opened in New Jersey (appropriately enough) before embarking on a road trip that took in a bunch of other US cities, before then crossing the ocean to play in Australia and the UK. Ten years after its first showing, BroadwayHD released a film of the musical.
The production recounts the origin story of our dweeby janitor-turned-superhero, and again cuts through the boobs and the blood to locate the story’s ecological heart.
As befits the musical medium, the tone is relentlessly upbeat. The songs are just about as catchy as they need to be, with a pronounced ‘80s rock vibe supplied by writer David Bryan Rashbaum, who just happens to be the keyboard player in Bon Jovi.
The Toxic Avenger (2025)
And so we come to the matter at hand. After more than 40 years, The Toxic Avenger has been rebooted – and this time with some genuine talent involved.
It’s been written and directed by Macon Blair, who has appeared in loads of great films (check out Blue Ruin and Green Room), and who previously wrote and directed I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore.
Just as encouragingly, the role of the put-upon janitor (here named Winston Gooze) is played by the brilliant Peter Dinklage, who also voices the character post-hulk-out.
The support cast is well beyond the original’s mob of wooden nobodies, too, with Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood both making appearances alongside British favourite Julia Davis.
It's a thoroughly gory and successful reworking, which tips its hat to the silliness and the hyper violence of the original, but with actual production values and a working script. Oh, and unlike all those sequels, it doesn’t outstay its welcome either.
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