The Toxic Avenger vs. The Noxious Avenger vs. The Retarded Revenger

As you know, I love Troma. I think anyone who cares at all about independent film can at least respect Troma for what they are (even if they hate their films). So, in keeping the spirit alive of my review of The Toxic Avenger a few weeks back, I decided to sit back and give you a review of the second greatest film ever produced by Troma: The Toxic Avenger 4: Citizen Toxie. Why did I skip part 2 & part 3? Well, even though I don’t HATE the films, they aren’t the greatest. In fact they are basically one long movie’I'll explain later when I someday do a double review of 2 & 3. For now, here’s my review of the REAL sequel to The Toxic Avenger (even Stan Lee says so before the credits roll!!!)

The film starts out innocent enough’at the ‘Tromaville School for the Very Special’ a group of terrorists known as The Diaper Mafia, led by Tex Diaper (Troma regular Trent Haaga) has infiltrated the kids while they are celebrating ‘Take a Mexican to lunch day’. While the group kills any handicapped kids that look in their direction, Mayor Goldberg (Ron Jeremy) decides that all the city really needs to do is pray. As the local news team (Jason & Randy Sklar) search for reasons why the gang exists (taking guesses such as maybe it’s violence in movies and/or videogames such as ‘Kill all the retards’) the bikini news team (led by Carla Pivonski) decide to go inside the school for the full story. While interviewing members of the diaper mafia, the Bikini news team discard their disguises and finally The Toxic Avenger (David Mattey) and his new sidekick ‘Lardass’ (Troma Superstar Joe Fleishaker) appear and a battle ensues. In between Toxie shoving diapers in bad guy’s faces and literally shoving their heads up their collective asses, Toxie takes off to go impregnate his blind girlfriend, Sarah (Heidi Sjursen). After blowing his toxic load, Toxie heads back to the school, just in time to save a couple of kids Tito (Michael Budinger) & Sweetie Honey (Lisa Terezakis). As Toxie runs out of the school, the building blows up, and for some unknown reason the town of Tromaville hates our superhero. Enter Troma’s #2 action hero: Sgt. Kabukiman (Paul Kyrmse) who pulls up in a pimp mobile, starts referring to Toxie as ‘Noxie’ and saves Toxie from the pissed off citizens of Tromaville-cut to the school again and ANOTHER Toxic Avenger comes out of the school and begins to kill the citizens who love him.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, there are two dimensions’one dimension is the town of Amortville, where there is an evil Toxic Avenger (known as The Noxious Offender aka Noxie) and the dimension we are more familiar with-which houses the town of Tromaville and is home to our hero: The Toxic Avenger. It seems that during the explosion at the school a portal was opened that sent The Toxic Avenger (along with Tito & Sweetie Honey) to Amortville and in turn sent The Noxious Avenger to Tromaville’this is all explained on camera by Troma alumni, James Gunn (Dawn of the Dead-remake, Scooby Doo, Slither).

Once in Amortville, Toxie finds out that Sarah is in fact pregnant and he ditches Tito and Sweetie Honey to go find her (unbeknownst to Toxie that he isn’t even in Tromaville anymore). Back in Tromaville, Noxie hooks up with the police Sgt. Kazinski (Dan Snow-who played Cigarface in the original Toxic Avenger!) who isn’t a good cop and wants to go into the crime biz with Noxie (all the while thinking Noxie is Toxie). The citizens of Tromaville are freaking out because now the hero they trusted for so long has turned his back on them (again, not realizing that Toxie is actually Noxie) and the mayor assembles a task force to stop the carnage. Lead by a drunk Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD (again Paul Kyrmse) we meet the team hired to save Tromaville’ The Vibrator: a girl who just dildo’s herself to fight crime (Lauren Heather McMahon), Dolphin-Man: a walking dolphin in a raincoat (Olivier Tendon), The Mad Cowboy: a Man/Cow dude who sprays milk all over the place and Master-Bater: A hip-hop dude who blows a huge load when he jerks off (Anthony Cantanese). Meanwhile Noxie hooks up with Toxie’s girlfriend, Sarah and the two have a close encounter of the toxic kind along with a punk rock lesbian chick’. It’s kinda hot’

Back in Amortville, Toxie (which everyone thinks is Noxie) meets the opposite version of everyone who he loved and cared for in Tromaville, such as Lardass (who in Amortville is a cock sucking man whore/physicist named Chuck) and Toxie’s girlfriend (who is named Claire in Amortville). In Amortville, she is deaf instead of blind, the sex slave of Noxie and the former girlfriend to Chuck. Evil Sgt. Kabukiman figures out that Toxie isn’t Noxie, the (evil) Amortville version of Mad Cowboy tries to kill Toxie alongside of Sgt. Kabukiman, Sweetie Honey & Tito almost become Hot Dogs, along with a bodiless African American man-head, named Pompey (Barry Brisco) and after a climatic battle Toxie, Tito, Sweetie Honey & Pompey make a break for it. Meanwhile, back in Tromaville, Noxie kills the mayor only to become the new mayor and turns Tromaville into a cocaine-fueled hell. Noxie kills the task force led by Sgt. Kabukiman and Sgt. Kabukiman drunkenly stumbles into Toxie’s shack where he finds Sarah all fucked up after her encounter with Noxie and the punk chick. Sarah then goes to see her Gynecologist (Corey Feldman!!!) who explains that she is pregnant with TWO babies’one evil and one good. It seems that these two babies are going to fight inside of Sarah’and she is going to give birth to the winner within a couple of hours. After Toxie hooks Chuck back up with Claire, Chuck decides that he will help reverse the effects of what has happened and send Toxie back to Tromaville. After some chaos, Toxie & Sweetie Honey arrive back in Tromaville (Tito decided to stay in Amortville to fight crime as The Retarded Revenger) only to find the hell that Noxie and Sgt. Kazinski have created. Sgt. Kabukiman gets Toxie up to speed with what Noxie has been up to and Toxies heads to the hospital where Sarah is going to give birth’After Toxie takes out Sgt. Kazinski and his men, Toxie & Noxie finally duke it out in the delivery room (as do the babies in Sarah’s womb). Just after Noxie almost Rapes Toxie (with the penis monster from Troma’s opus: Tromeo & Juliet) Toxie begins to rip Noxie apart, piece-by-piece’. Now that Noxie is dead he reverts back to his Melvin form (played by Mark Torgl-the ORIGINAL Melvin from The Toxic Avenger) but is all fucked up (because he’s from the alt world, remember?) After Toxie disposes of Melvin, Sarah gives birth to baby Toxie AND another child’who is the second baby you ask???

Considering I spoiled the REST of the movie for you, this secret you are going to have to find out on your own’Just go buy the fucking DVD, and if I could make a suggestion by the special double disc edition with the awesome documentary ‘Apocalypse soon: The Making of Citizen Toxie’-it’s almost as good as the film itself.

If you had a hard time following all that, I apologize; it’s hard to explain exactly how the story progresses in words, hence why it took 6 or 7 writers to script this madness. That said, it’s fucking awesome. Citizen Toxie is the Troma movie to end all Troma movies. If director Lloyd Kaufman and crew would have hung up their mops after this (and thankfully they haven’t) I would have been satisfied knowing this was the last film Troma would have made. Finally after 2 lackluster sequels (The Toxic Avenger 2 and The Toxic Avenger 3:The Last Temptation of Toxie), a sequel comes along that truly deserves the title of The Toxic Avenger. This movie has everything that makes Troma politically incorrect: gore, nudity, jabs at the medias portrayal of violence, jabs at pro lifers, jabs at jesus freaks, the same car flip that is in a million other Troma films, troma-riffic actors/actresses such as Rick Collins (who was in Toxie 3), Bill Weeden (who was in the Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD movie), Julie Strain, Lemmy from Motorhead, Stan (Marvel Comics) Lee, Hugh Hefner, fuck man, even Eli Roth is in this fucking thing WELL before you even thought about downloading Hostel 2. All that good shit aside, hands down the best moment of the movie IS the appearance of Mark Torgl, the man who started it all as Melvin the mop boy so long ago. I nearly cried when I heard him confusingly say ‘Julie? Bozo?’ Thank you Mark Torgl for making it out for Citizen Toxie, it truly bookends the series completely.

If you haven’t seen a Troma movie before, I advise you to not watch this one first; this is the money shot of Troma movies. For maximum effect follow these steps: get a copy of ‘The Toxic Avenger’, then read the novel version, then read ‘All I needed to know about film making I learned from the Toxic Avenger’, then watch ‘Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD’, follow it up with ‘Tromeo and Juliet’, and end your quest with ‘Citizen Toxie’. If you want to get some of the inside jokes regarding the poor sequels and the Sarah/Claire connection you can chase it all with a viewing of Toxie 2 & 3, but this isn’t mandatory.

Until then I’ll be blowing Lloyd Kaufman while Mark Torgl watches.

Charlie ‘I forgot to zip up’ Brown.