Laughing to Keep from Puking: The Toxic Avenger Rewatch 🤮

I think I’ve seen The Toxic Avenger about six times now.

The first time I saw it, I was probably about nine or ten years old. I wasn’t familiar with The Toxic Avenger yet, but I was a fan of The Toxic Crusaders. The short lived cartoon spin-off in the early nineties.

I had convinced my parents to rent it. This was when grocery stores had section of VHS tapes to rent. With such a sparse selection I suppose it was easy enough to get them on board.

Back at home with our weekend pizza and movie, the film started. We made it several minutes in. Eyes covered when sex and boobs were present. It was the nineties, we kept going.

Then a kid’s head was run over and exploded like a melon (I believe the film crew used an actual melon). The tape was yanked out of the machine. Glares of confusion and disappointment came afterwards.

I’m glad it was stopped. It shocked the shit out of me. I had never seen anything like it, and I thought about it a lot in the coming years.

I believe The Toxic Avenger was my first real introduction into horror. Before that, I had never been frightened or disturbed by much. I was still at the age of loving Smurfs and Care Bears, and some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I’m sure other things freaked me out, but this was the first time I really considered something unsettling. I loved it. I suppose in the same way kids love Frankenstein or Jason.

Eventually, I did see The Toxic Avenger in its entirety. Mid-teens, I think.

By then I was more familiar with gross-out stuff and Troma. I’d seen Class of Nuke Em High on USA Up All Night! Well, most of the edited for TV version until my mom came in and turned it off. Banning me from watching that show again.

Sometime around watching it, I had discovered Meet the Feebles, Braindead, Svengoolie, Evil Dead 2, and Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. I had become well-versed in the humor in horror. But if you asked me then if I was a fan of horror, I would have told you no.

I wasn’t looking for thrills and scares. I wasn’t interested in Universal Monsters. I was looking for disgust and absurdism. I was into schlock. I was a fan of schlock. Hilariously, dumb schlock.

Some of you may find that offensive. Calling something like Evil Dead 2 schlock, but what do I consider schlock?

To me, anything that had a fine edge of humor and disgust to fit. Things that weren’t really scary, just stomach churning. Buckets of blood or other bodily fluid, creature(s) so disgusting that it’s comical, characters scared in universe but having a blast at the same time in the same way cozy mysteries treat murder.

That to me is schlock.

Over the Pandemic, my tastes in horror grew, and now I’m a lover of found footage, folk horror, slashers, and zombies. With that, my understanding of horror, and its use in other genres grew.

I decided to revisit The Toxic Avenger again. It had been nearly ten years. How much different could it be after ten years?

I changed my mind. Ever so slightly.

I still consider it in the realm of schlock and comedy, but I must admit there are real levels of horror to it.

The scene of the transformation as Melvin writhed on the ground and a crowd formed around him was out of folk horror. The townsfolk admonishing the outsider.

His flesh pulsating and melting. It gives many a werewolf transformation a run for their money.

The stalking of his prey well before we see his face. The fear that the other characters show for him. The constant calling of monster. The beautiful shots of Toxie silhouetted against the New Jersey sky. I could see glimpses of Frankenstein’s shadow.

The Toxic Crusader is a horror. And a comedy. And a superhero flick.

It creates a universe where nearly everyone is awful. Even Melvin is a leering creep at the start. It’s not until his exterior changes that his interior becomes something else. His personality twisting into something that doesn’t belong in Tromaville, just as his flesh had. No longer a timid pervert named Melvin, Toxie is confident and noble.

He’s a monster through and through by Tromaville’s standards.

Unlike Frankenstein’s monster, he’s eventually able to show the townsfolk that he is good, and there is a better way than terror and hate. All while killing anyone he deems evil—with his instinct for injustice—in the most splatter-filled way. Yes, it’s horrific, but he is celebrated for it.

It does what other horror comedies have a difficult time doing. Keeping an edge to itself while it basks in its humor. With this there’s always something in the pit of your stomach or the back of your throat as you laugh at Toxie pulling people apart.

A horror so brutal and disgusting that all you can do is laugh at it.