Melvin Ferd is a feeble man who works as a janitor in a health club in Tromaville, New Jersey, a fictional town. Certain members of the club regularly bully him, and one day the taunting pushes Melvin to plunge through the second floor into a heap of poisonous trash. He transforms into an ugly creature, but one who is beneficent and begins fighting crime in Tromaville, earning him the moniker “Toxic Avenger” from the inhabitants. In the course of his mission, he saves a young blind girl from a gang of criminals who are attempting to harm her.
Our terrible superhero and the girl fall in love right away, but a bad politician accuses him of murdering a seemingly innocent woman and orders the national guard to track him down. Later on, he fights a sinister corporation, whose Chairman turns out to be Satan himself. Toxic Avenger, our Monster Hero, lives a life similar to this. The original film was produced in 1984, and three sequels, a television show, and even Marvel Comics have since followed. Stan Lee and James Gunn made cameo appearances in one of the films. We will also talk about the impending Toxic Avenger picture, which is set to start a Game of Thrones actor as well as Frodo Baggins, assuming you remember who he is. So, let us take a closer look at this franchise that twisted and combined the horror and superhero genres to create something completely new and unheard of.
The Toxic Avenger (1984)
Melvin Ferd is a weak man who works at the Tromaville Health Club in New Jersey. However, the poor man is often bullied by Julie, Wanda, Slug, and Bozo. As days pass, the atrocities of these four bullies intensify to limits unknown. In one of the incidents, they get so consumed by sadistic rage and craze that they ram their car into a young boy on a bicycle and then smash his head by running him over. Anyway, they make the 98-pound Melvin wear a pink tutu, and he is chased around by the others. Unfortunately for Melvin, or maybe fortunately for him, he falls off the second story into a pile of toxic waste, which causes severe and serious disfigurement in Melvin.
Although Melvin bursts into flames due to the chemicals, he survives it and transforms into a deformed being with superhuman strength and size. Later, a group of drug dealers attempts to buy off a cop named O’Clancy, but they try to beat him up when he refuses their offer. Out of nowhere, the now transformed Melvin arrives and saves O’Clancy by killing two goons named Knuckles and Nipples; their leader Cigar face, however, manages to escape, although with smashed testicles. As Melvin gets famous as the Monster Hero, the city’s mayor Peter Belgoody gets worried about the monster Hero because he secretly runs the crime syndicate in Tromaville.
Later, when goons named Frank, Rico, and Leroy hold up a fast food joint and attempt to molest a blind woman named Sara, the Monster Hero comes by and rescues Sara. And let’s just say the bad guys learned their lesson the hard way, their lives’ very last lesson. The Monster Hero or our Toxic Avenger then takes Sara back to his place, and the two of them gradually fall in love. Back at the health club, he takes out another drug dealer and then fights off a gang of pimps to save a young underage girl from being pushed into the flesh trade.
The Monster Hero soon becomes the people’s favorite and becomes a hero for his heroics and kind acts like helping elderly women cross streets. Meanwhile, Belgoody starts worrying further because this new hero in town is not only slaughtering his thugs, but some of his men start to surrender to the cops fearing death at the monster hero’s hands. He then goes on to avenge himself by confronting his tormentors.
Bozo and Slug had attacked an older woman and stolen her car, the Monster Hero arrives at the spot and settles his score with the bullies. However, one day he kills a seemingly innocent woman. Mayor Belgoody uses the opportunity to defame the Monster Hero and even tries to have him murdered by calling in the National Guard. The townsfolk and the National Guard surround the Monster Hero. However, the Monster Hero had been good to the people of the town, and they are unwilling to see him as a criminal. Meanwhile, O’Clancy reveals the true face of the mayor. By the end of the film, Melvin is hailed as the Toxic Avenger.
This film is about love and romance. It acts as a noble message to all the men who feel that they are ugly, and the message is that even if you think you’re ugly, you can still get a girl who’s way beyond your league with your kindness and courage. So folks, never lose hope and never feel any lesser. However, the recipe of a blind girl and an ugly man is not uncommon in films, and the perfect example would be the relationship between The Thing and Alicia Masters from Marvel’s Fantastic Four, or well, maybe Beauty and the Beast. These films take a novel stand at how we see love and relationships and tend to explain how love goes beyond looks and outer appearances. But then, do we really think this deep before falling in love? Nevertheless, The Toxic Avenger has now turned into a cult classic, and its success led to the making of three sequels and one animated series.
The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)
This film changed Melvin’s name to Melvin Junko from Melvin Ferd and Sara’s name to Claire. Now that the Toxic Avenger has made Tromaville a safe place without any crimes, he finds himself in depression because there’s no evil to destroy. Claire gets him a job at the Tromaville Center for the Blind. One day, however, the Chairman of Apocalypse Inc. and his associate Malfaire arrive at Tromaville with the intent of taking over the town. But they know about the powers of the Toxic Avenger and plant a bomb at the center to destroy him.
Although Caire manages to get out of the center just in time, almost everyone else gets killed. The Toxic Avenger rises from the debris of the building and massacres the members of Apocalypse Inc. After a high-octane fight, the only survivors were Claire, Toxic Avenger, and a blind woman and her little daughter. After an initial defeat, Apocalypse Inc. hatches a plan to use one of their female associates as Toxic Avenger’s psychologist.
She convinces him to go and find his estranged father, who presumably lives in Japan. With great difficulty and Godzilla-like entry, the Toxic Avenger reaches Tokyo, and naturally, he scares most people. In his quest to find his father, he runs into Masami, who gets assaulted by a Japanese gang. Naturally, he loses his cool and goes after them in a brutal fashion. He even uses his hot breath against one of the gangsters. Masami thanks him for saving her life and joins his quest of finding his father.
Melvin finally manages to find his father, Big Mac Junko. But he turns out to be a Yakuza leader. Melvin is forced to confront his father and, in the process, fights several Yakuza enforcers, a femme fatal, and a few others. Oh, and by the way, Melvin’s father later dies because a fish butcher chopped the old man off. Later, he also learns the art of sumo wrestling, after which he heads back to Tromaville. Meanwhile, Apocalypse had started a brutal and violent takeover of Tromaville. They even went as far as killing two of the protestors.
Upon returning to Tromaville, our Toxic Avenger finds that Malfaire is assaulting his beloved Claire and other women from Apocalypse Inc. Melvin saves Claire, and the town might just be free of the menace caused by Apocalypse Inc. However, the Chairman of the infamous firm hired the Dark Rider to destroy the entire town. The Dark Rider had nitroglycerin strapped to his back and intended to burst once he was inside Tromaville. However, the Toxic Avenger goes after him and makes him burst into flame, killing him in the process. Toxic Avenger had once saved Tromaville from a disaster, but the happy moments hadn’t ended yet because Melvin’s birth father arrives to be reunited with Melvin and his mother. It turns out that the man Melvin met in Japan was Big Mac Bunko and not Big Mac Junko.
While the first film was good fun in its own right, Toxic Avenger 2 seemed to take out most of that fun. Furthermore, it seemed as if they wanted to club two storylines in a single film, the whole episode with Japan could have been dropped, and the film would have saved quite some time and the producers some money. Nevertheless, there’s more gore in Tromaville and more fun in Tokyo, so there are few reasons to complain. Lloyd Kaufman’s humor may sound a bit juvenile, but at the same time, it is entertaining. At the end of the day, the film is humorous but not as much as the first one. And it felt like the story existed to give wind to and elevate the humor while it should have been the other way around.
The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)
Although Toxic Avenger saved Tromaville from the nefarious agendas of Apocalypse Inc, the goons from the firm still attack small businesses of the town. In one such incident, a group of thugs attacks a video store in Tromaville and forces the people to watch their movies and channels instead of the regular ones like MGM, Warner Bros, etc. They even kill one of the customers before shooting the place down. However, Toxic Avenger arrived at the spot and killed the bad guys in the most gruesome ways, including disembowelment and decapitation. We go in a flashback, and the town of Tromaville is at peace again, thanks to the Toxic Avenger. But this also means that he will go back into depression because he has started to enjoy fighting crime and criminals.
Furthermore, he is failing to get any regular jobs because of his hulking size and hideous looks. Soon, Melvin and Claire learn that a novel, groundbreaking surgery can cure Claire of her blindness, but they would need around three hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars for the surgery, a considerable amount for Melvin and Claire. The only ray of hope is a job as a spokesperson at Apocalypse Inc. itself. Melvin accepts the offer and gets paid enough so that Claire can have her surgery. After her surgery, when she sees him for the first time, she falls deeper in love with him. Well, it is as one says that love is blind and lovers cannot see.
Apocalypse Inc. deals in chemicals, and Melvin soon starts to promote it heavily. The residents of Tromaville get filled with disdain for their superhero, the famous Toxic Avenger. Claire tries to confront him and show him the light but she remains unsuccessful. Melvin goes on acting like a yuppie for the company, and his ego continues to inflate until one day, he sees a group of kids rampaging one of his posters.
He realizes what he has indeed become, an absolute monster. He now decides he would help Tromaville once again to clean up the mess and save the day. He returns to Tromaville, and the flashback ends at the video store. But The Toxic Avenger now has to face a bigger enemy, Satan himself, who is apparently the Chairman of Apocalypse Inc. He is shown as a green demon who challenged the Toxic Avenger to a video game called “The Five Levels of Doom.”
In the first level, called Earth, the Toxic Avenger gets sucked into the Earth. In the second level, called Fire, both he and Satan burst into flames, but he gets saved by a few Tromaville residents who douse the fire with water. The Devil was still on fire and laughing, so the Toxic Avenger urinates on him! In the third level, called Wind, the Devil managed to send a few kids on a hilltop on a bus and unleashed strong winds upon the bus, putting the kids in danger. However, our superhero reached the bus in time to save the children, and the bus later falls on Mayfair. The fourth level was called Water, and in this one, the Devil tried to drown Melvin, but he saves himself using a Sumo trick that he had learned in Tokyo.
All this while, Melvin uses his brains and brawns, well, mostly his brawns, to save the day and win. So, in the fifth and final level, the Devil transformed Toxic Avenger back to his Melvin form, lean and thin and weak. Furthermore, Claire is rendered blind once again. Because he has returned to his original form, he once again becomes the victim of bullying and taunts. Claire manages to find Melvin’s contract document with Apocalypse Inc. and find a clause that says that an act of God would terminate the contract. An angel appeared in the form of a messenger and gave Melvin a scroll. Soon, it began to rain and Melvin is transformed into his Toxic Avenger form, while Claire’s sight also returns. Now with his strength back, he defeats the Devil. The Toxic Avenger had finally defeated Apocalypse Inc for good, and he marries Claire.
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2001)
A diaper mafia takes over the Tromaville School For The Very Special, and it soon turns into a hostage situation. The Toxic Avenger and his obese sidekick Lardass attempt to save the day, but things go awry because of an unforeseeable event. An explosion creates a dimensional tear between Tromaville and its dimensional replica named Amortville. While The Toxic Avenger gets trapped in Amortville, his evil doppelganger named the Noxious Offender arrives at Tromaville to wreak his havoc. Meanwhile, his wife becomes pregnant with two children from different fathers. But the Toxic Avenger eventually finds his way back home and rids Tromaville from the menace of the Noxious offender. Interestingly enough, the film had an immense number of cameos by the big guns of the industry, including Stan Lee as the Narrator and James Gunn as Dr. Flem Hocking.
Toxic Crusaders (1991) The Animated Series
The 90s were the era of animation that brought us stuff that was in equal parts unconventional and addictive. This era gave us a bit of everything from extreme violence and extremely disastrous characters to beautifully crafted fight sequences and gripping plots. For instance, Robert E Howard’s Conan or Marvel Comics’ Conan was a ruthless and somewhat immoral warrior who did heroic tasks, but his means were never as righteous as his ends. But the cartoon series couldn’t show Conan’s true character and personality as it was quite kid-unfriendly, so they diluted his character and toned down his murderous and thieving traits.
Likewise, prior to Toxic Crusaders, R Rated films like Rambo were diluted and toned downed to make them presentable for a younger audience as the cartoon series Rambo: The Force of Freedom. But the issue with Toxic Avenger was far greater because it not only had immense brutality and violence but also packed a great deal of nudity and sexual content. Naturally, the controversy was to be far higher than other similar ventures. Although only thirteen episodes were produced, Toxic Crusaders became a cult favorite, much like the films.
As far as the plot is concerned, the Toxic Avenger was still a grotesque and hideous being but with a good heart and an affinity towards abiding by the law. In the cartoons, the toxic waste mutated his mop as well, which became sentient and often fought the bad guys on its own, even sometimes giving Toxic Avengers ideas about fighting his enemies. Although the villains of the series were polluters, they came from different worlds now. Czar Zosta, Dr. Killemoff, and Psycho hailed from the planet called Smogula and wreaked environmental havoc on Tromaville with the help of its mayor named Grody. Furthermore, a bully named Bonehead joins the villains in their ordeals.
Future of the Franchise
According to the latest news Julia Davis, Elijah Wood, Peter Dinklage, and Jacob Tremblay will be a part of Legendary’s new film Toxic Avenger 5. For director Macon Blair, it is rumored that Kevin Bacon and Taylour Paige will also be on board. Also, Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz will be producing the film. The new film will be a contemporary reimagining of the cult classic and would race against time to save his son, friends, and the people of his town from the forces that seek to take away everything from him.