I have been meaning to get back to this series for a while and what better opportunity than randomly finding a collection of The Toxic Avenger (parts 1 through 4) randomly on sale.
Here’s a bit of random movie trivia I love: Troma has subsidiaries. One of them is called 50th Street Films and they distribute independent movies for mainstream audiences. For a time, they distributed the greatest family movie of all time: My Neighbor Totoro. So, if we simplify this, Troma once distributed one of the greatest movies of all time.
I’ve talked about this before and I will probably talk about this again, but if Troma didn’t exist we would have to invent it, but that doesn’t mean that their work is good. They just do something very different. Their irreverence is good, even if the end result is not.
The Toxic Avenger is kind of a mascot for Troma. There was a short-lived series called Troma’s Basement (you can find it on YouTube on Troma’s channel) and it featured Toxie every week. The movie also got a remake which was kind of fun. Actually more fun than the original.
Troma has this feel of hustling. They do all sorts of things all the time to make money. At the same time, they do have strong brand. Well, strong in the sense of identifiable and understandable, but not in the sense that you can trust them to make good movies. They just don’t. Their movies are just stuff happening. They are true B-movies: plot and characterization are secondary to memorable moments, even if those moments are not memorable because they are good. They are memorable because they are wild and not always (or even usually) in the best possible way.
I have seen plenty of Troma films, but the ones below are the ones I actually remember, so these are the ones I’ll talk about. Also, as I’m writing this, I can’t help but think about how badly some of this shit has aged.
The Toxic Avenger
USA, 1984, dirs. Lloyd Kaufman, Michael Herz
A half-star review from Letterboxd: A i was watching some more interesting content for most of the movie lol
A five-star review from Letterboxd: In honor of my uncle Lloyd Kaufman being my top director AND actor of 2025 I owe it to him to start 2026 with my favorite monster hero. 🖤
Young Melvin mops floor at a gym where he is despised by the clientele (the same people we also see driving over people as a sport). Melvin is also an incel and easily tempted into a trap by a woman. In order to escape, Melvin jumps through the window and just happens to fall into a vat of chemicals, which turn him into the superhero he is.
I mean, that’s pretty much it. There’s a story. Sort of. Toxie becomes beloved by the locals by fighting the evil mayor that has been ruining the city through his corruption.
The Toxic Avenger Part II
USA, 1989, dirs. Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman
A half-star review from Letterboxd: , said evil larry
A five-star review from Letterboxd: New year old me
Well, Toxie saved Tromaville, so the company behind the corruption needs to get rid of him, so they let him know his missing father is in Japan and Toxie goes to find him. He also learns sumo wrestling.
That’s pretty much it.
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie
USA, 1989, dirs. Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman
A half-star review from Letterboxd: i need paw from a furry girl
A five-star review from Letterboxd: He may be unstoppable
Not much more to say here either. There is a long fight sequence between Toxie and Satan, but it isn’t very fun. Actually, even the next film calls this and it’s predecessor bad and apologizes for the existence of these.
For a second I though I had made a mistake with the year of release, but no… this was indeed released in the same year as the previous film.
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV
USA, 2000, dir. Lloyd Kaufman
A half-star review from Letterboxd: A film that tries to be as offensive as possible, while ignoring the first 3 films. Watching this will just make your life worse.
A five-star review from Letterboxd: I guess it’s ok to quote my beloved Tito in public again… most unexpected and unnecessary “perk” of the Trunplestiltskin years. I still love Tito.
So, apparently the double-sequel year of 1989 wasn’t that great for the franchise, because they decided to take another 11 years before this. Did it help? Kind of. This is more fun, but not in a meaningful way. Again, they disavow the previous two sequels in an introductory monologue by none other than Stan Lee himself. Despite making this a direct sequel to the first movie, this seems to forget about a lot of the things that happened in it.
Toxie gets transported to a mirror universe where his evil counterpart, Noxious Avenger, is terrorizing Amortville. There is a lot of metastuff here, which, I guess, is ahead of it’s time, but not really good. Also, at times, just problematic and there’s plenty of other problematic things going on.
Also Lemmy cameos in a very awkward way.
All in all, these movies, the whole series, is pretty bad and definitely problematic. There is liberal homophobia and transphobia, r-word is used way too much and it’s often hard to say whether the movie is being racist or not (which usually means it is, but it’s just hard to put your finger on the exact moments). So, don’t watch them except for historical understanding of the phenomena. The movies below are all superior.
The Toxic Avenger (2023)
USA, , dir.
A half-star review from Letterboxd: Even when you know it’s not to be taken seriously is still a toxic pile of waste. So bad it’s just bad. Sorry to say as I was hoping it would be a fun ride.
A five-star review from Letterboxd: Pays homage to the originals while doing it’s own thing. Saw it opening night and just got the steelbook.
I wrote a longer piece on this, so just read that.
I guess I would like to add that this wasn’t actually distributed by Troma and while Troma took part in the production, this is actually a Legendary Pictures movie. You know, the company that made Nolan’s Batman trilogy among many other films.
Tromeo and Juliet
United States, 1996 , dir. Lloyd Kaufman
A half-star review from Letterboxd: I definitely need therapy
A five-star review from Letterboxd: I know Shakespeare would have LOVED this
If you think of James Gunn as that guy who makes those superhero movies, think again. This was the start of James Gunn’s career in many, many ways. He was a writer, had a small role in it, was an associate director (whatever that means) and executive in charge of production (again, whatever that means). These are his first credits on any movie. There’s even two songs from his now-disbanded band, The Icons. He went on to co-write Kaufman’s biography a couple of years later. There clearly was a strong mentor-mentee connection between the two.
The tag line for the movie was “Body Piercing, Kinky Sex, Dismemberment. The Things That Made Shakespeare Great.” Shakespeare truly was a man of the people (and indeed he was as he wasn’t always just someone interested in only by the art dorks, but in his time he was an actually popular artist).
This is indeed Romeo and Juliet with that Troma touch. We start with Lemmy of House Motörhead reciting Shakespeare and acts as the narrator through the rest of the film. The story we already know. We have Capulets and Ques (the patriarch of which is called Monty Que, you know, Montague), who are in a war. Then one of Que’s sons falls in love with the Capulets’ daughter. Then again, I don’t remember Romeo playing a porn game on his computer or Juliet having a nightmare in which the man she is about to have sex with turns out to have a gigantic, vein-y dick with a face.
They use Shakespearean dialogue quite a bit, but they are not afraid to juxtapose that with pure Troma humor. You know, the kind of humor that got Gunn fired by Marvel in 2018 (although that was an old tweet even at the time). I am putting too much emphasis on Gunn here, as Kaufman was a sort of visionary himself. He knew he was making garbage, but he still wanted to do it in his own way and he wanted to have fun with.
This movie is actually a reminder of how far he got with this philosophy. The masquerade scene where Tromeo and Juliet meet for the first time has people dressed as characters from previous Troma movies (at least Toxic Avenger and Kabukiman).
Father’s Day
Canada, 2011, dir. Astron-6 (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Steven Kostanski, Conor Sweeney)
A half-star review from Letterboxd: this happened to my dad
A five-star review from Letterboxd: Hard not to love everything the Astron6 guys have made when it defines everything Indie made. Oh Canada , I still love you
Leave it to Troma to find a group of people willing to make an extremely transgressive film for less than $10.000. For comparison, that is the base weekly pay for a director in the Hollywood for one week. This movie, as you can see above, has five of those.
Decades ago a man named Fuchman was arrested for the rape and murder of ten fathers, but was let go under a technicality. He never stopped his work and one of his victims was the father of Ahab and Chelsea. The kids were separated, but when Ahab’s adopted father, a priest, is killed, he returns and seeks out Chelsea to help him in finally ending Fuchman’s reign of terror.
So, as I said above, Troma is in general transgressive. Astron-6 work their hardest to top that. I do remember someone suggesting incest in Tromeo & Juliet, but here it is an integral part of the ridiculous plot and presented more like an extended fuck session than just a simple sexual encounter. Even before that, we have a scene in which Fuchman is injecting something in his penis with a needle and cutting into it with a knife. Both actions in close-up, of course. Later, there’s a priest who wants to escape heaven, so he pulls a gun on an angel. Even later still, they stomp a baby into death.
Details like this makes it very hard to claim that the movie is fun, but it is. Considering the budget, the movie is pretty long at 99 minutes, but that is partly, because the filmmakers don’t seem to have any kind of self-restraint as the movie is all over the place at all times. The plot moves fast and doesn’t really care if it goes into the right direction. If they wanted to do something and could figure out how to do it, they just did.
The Troma founder and producer of the movie, Loyd Kaufman, has a double cameo as both God and the Devil (although they don’t just look alike, they are the same being). That could potentially bring up interesting, if meaningless, philosophical questions about the nature of the world.
Cannibal: The Musical
aka Alferd Packer: The Musical
USA, 1993, dir. Trey Parker
A half-star review from Letterboxd: A micro budget can excuse slipshod acting, slipshod sets, and slipshod costumes; but it cannot excuse slipshod story. Cannibal the Musical either does not have the budget or the drive to commit to its but of being—well—a musical. This and the recurrence of Trey Parker’s juvenile racism keep this movie from getting the score it deserves: two stars.
A five-star review from Letterboxd: Never going to miss who I was before seeing this.
Yes, that Trey Parker. This was his first movie.
Also, for the record, I don’t think this movie is racist (unless I missed something) unlike many of the other early Troma movies. Sure, there’s Asians playing Native Americans, but that is the joke. The white folk can’t tell the difference between Native Americans and Asians who are pretending to be Native Americans.
Anyhow, this is loosely based on a real story, which apparently isn’t famous enough. The movie was originally called Alferd Packer: The Musical, but as it often happens with B-movies, they decided to change the name to something easier to sell. This happened all the time back in the day when names were often changed even for specific towns if the local theater owner decided to do so.
The story is a sort of excuse for gags, so I can’t fault the half-star person from above for that. Still, the movie isn’t bad. It does feel like a first attempt at a movie from someone, but then again, it is. As such, it is actually pretty good despite bad editing and/or timing and less than stellar performances.
It is easy to forget that Parker and Stone are also musicians who also have a band (which might be defunct, I don’t really know). Not that this is any kind of a musical masterpiece. It’s more like they manage to satirize various tropes in music from musicals. It’s not bad either. It’s just that the music isn’t especially memorable, but it works in the context.