9 Non-Toxic Trivia Tidbits About Troma’s Toxic Avenger
If you’ve never seen a Troma film, they’re difficult to describe. They’re horror films, they’re comedies, they’re parodies and they’re also full of sex and gore. The most famous Troma title is The Toxic Avenger, the story of a 98-pound weakling who falls into a vat of toxic waste, transforming him into a violent superhero.
Troma founder, Toxic Avenger creator and B-movie legend Lloyd Kaufman is the subject of the new book Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews, edited by Mathew Klickstein. The book, which consists of interviews with Kaufman’s dating from 1981 to the present, is filled with insight into the man and his outrageous movies. Below are the most interesting tidbits from it about 1984’s Toxic Avenger as well as its three sequels.
Toxie’s Inspiration
In a 1992 interview with Tabula Rasa, Kaufman was asked about the inspiration for The Toxic Avenger. He recalls seeing a news headline that read, “Horror Movies Are Dead,” which was enough to push Kaufman, already a filmmaker, to move into horror. “(That headline is) what gave us the idea to move into (horror), yes. Just the fact the experts were saying that horror was dead. We knew from film history that, since the beginning, the horror film was very viable, and wasn’t going to go away. We figured, well, if people weren’t going to make horror movies temporarily, maybe there’s an open window we could jump into and make a film in that genre, so when the vogue comes back we’ll be at the forefront, and that’s how The Toxic Avenger came about.”
Troma’s Humble Origins
“We started in a broom closet with no windows,” Kaufman said in a 1995 interview in I Am an Evil Carrot. “Staring across from me was a mop and a bucket, which were part of the fixings of the broom closet. About 10 years later, The Toxic Avenger was born, and that mop stayed in my mind the whole time.”
Influences on ‘The Toxic Avenger’
“Comics were a big influence on me, along with recreational drugs and masturbation,” Kaufman said in Art Interviews with Vittorio Carli in 2004. He also spoke of his friend the famed comic book writer Stan Lee, saying, “Stan Lee wrote a script with me called Night of the Witch. Cannon optioned it, but it was never made. Lee and I have been friends for 30 years.”
Toxie Is No Sexist
Due, in part, to its purposefully gratuitous nudity, Troma has at times been called sexist by some critics and viewers. When asked about this by Tabula Rasa, Kaufman said that simply wasn’t possible. “Anyone who has ever seen our movies would not say that. The only people who would suggest that Troma is sexist are people that have not seen the movies. Toxie has a girlfriend who is much smarter than he is; she is the one who has the moral high ground. Toxie is always true to his gal and takes good care of his mom. He’s definitely not sexist.”
More Comedy Than Horror
Of the genre-mixing of Troma films, Kaufman has said that the movies, including The Toxic Avenger, are comedies first. “Most of what we do is comedy, and even though we deal with horror, and science fiction, and sex, and war, and all the different genres, whenever we treat them, they’re usually comedies,” he told Tabula Rasa. “Movies like The Toxic Avenger are not really frightening; they are funny. They have elements of gore in them, and fear and monsters; but the end result is fun, not fear.”
A Patriotic Sequel
The fourth Toxic Avenger film is Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000), which features the Toxic Crusader getting swapped with an evil doppelganger, Noxie. Originally, however, the film had an entirely different plot and title. Six years before the fourth film came out, Kaufman told Tabula Rasa, “We are now developing The Toxic Avenger Part IV: Mr. Toxie Goes to Washington.”
‘Toxic Avenger: The Musical’
In 2008, Toxic Avenger: The Musical became an award-winning Off-Broadway success that would go on to tour in various major cities. Prior to that, however, Kaufman allowed smaller productions to adapt The Toxic Avenger entirely for free. “There were a couple of playwrights and composers who wanted to put on Toxic Avenger: The Musical, and one group did it in Oregon and another in Nebraska, and I never asked for a cent,” he told The A.V. Club in 2008. “What harm is it going to do? It may actually help sell some DVDs.”
A Fifth Toxie Film
While it has yet to be made, Kaufman has a plan for a fifth Toxic Avenger film. “We want to make it in Chernobyl. That’s the setting we’re going to use,” Kaufman told Otaku No Culture in 2015. “We actually had a billionaire from Ukraine who was going to give us about half the money but then the civil war in the Ukraine broke out and the Russians came in... So, we’re up a river without a paddle.”
On a Toxie Remake
This year, a remake of The Toxic Avenger starring Peter Dinklage and directed by Macon Blair is set to be released in theaters. Long before it was made, however, Kaufman was asked about his feelings on a remake. In a 2008 Den of Geek interview, Kaufman said, “If Eli Roth or James Gunn wanted to remake The Toxic Avenger, I’d probably give it to them for free. But if Brett Ratner wants to remake it… a guy like that has to pay big money.”
