The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Free Great Movies Review

  •  (3.5 out of 5 stars)

The Toxic Avenger is an exercise in bad taste. It relentlessly hurls gags at you that will test your intestinal fortitude and your willingness to be offended. It's set in the fictional toxic waste dump of a town called Tromaville, New Jersey. There, at a health club, works a nerdy janitor named Melvin Ferd Junko III, who is harassed by all the jocks of the gym. After a prank gone wrong, Melvin falls into a barrel of toxic waste and becomes The Toxic Avenger! Thereafter, our hero attacks criminals of all kinds, and the movie plays with the tropes of superheroes fighting for justice. Some people he attacks will have you scratching your head, wondering what they did wrong. The Toxic Avenger befriends a blind girl after her dog is brutally killed at a Mexican restaurant. But after our hero murders an elderly midget, the Mayor of Tromaville has it in for him. It's a stomach-turning test of the audience's willingness to keep watching, with kids getting run over by cars and rapes and other gruesome violence. The humor is juvenile, and the acting and characters are embarrassingly cartoonish. Yet at 80 minutes, it moves along at a pretty good clip and is now a cult classic for those willing to go down the road of Tromaville.

(Summary from Wikipedia)