The Toxic Avenger (1984)
Directed by Lloyd Kaufman
A gang of thugs devise a cruel hoax that goes horribly wrong as Melvin, a nerdy emaciated janitor at the local health club, is cast through a third story window into a vat of hazardous toxic waste.
3 connections found
View:
3 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Toxic Avenger to
Paying tribute to his Lloyd Kaufman roots with a shot in which The Toxic Avenger is on TV in the background, James Gunn's Slither is more in line with the hipster revisionism of his screenplay for Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead .
His screenplay is both a tribute to and a send-up of the gruesome 1980s Troma Pictures shockers he loves -- there's even a clip from the company's best-known film, "The Toxic Avenger" -- and his cast plays even the most ridiculous scenes with admirably straight faces, which makes the material that much funnier.
After homegrown talents like Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon and Lloyd Kaufman (co-founder of Troma Entertainment) reinvigorated the genre in the '80s with Evil Dead II, Re-Animator and The Toxic Avenger respectively, audiences have generally had to look overseas for movies that brought both the funny and the scary.
Before breaking through in the horror realm as the screenwriter of 2004’s excellent Dawn of the Dead remake, James Gunn spent years toiling for Troma Entertainment, the New York company famous for campy, no-budget shockers like The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High .
Writer/director James Gunn cut his teeth with the Troma Studios filmmaking crew (“The Toxic Avenger,” “Tromeo & Juliet”), so naturally the camp factor in “Slither” is high.
However, Gunn — who even includes a clip from The Toxic Avenger — has crafted a much savvier, more professional film than anything his Troma compatriots ever managed.
And since “The Suicide Squad” is probably the first-ever studio blockbuster to contain a reference to “The Toxic Avenger,” it’s being hailed in some quarters as a $200 million Troma Film, without much consideration of how sad such thing might actually be.
…once he is shown the light of day, his design screams Toxie from The Toxic Avenger.