10 Movies Inspired by the Original ‘Toxic Avenger’ From the ’80s

Released in 1985, The Toxic Avenger was produced by Lloyd Kaufman’s Troma Entertainment and became the company’s first notable success. It influenced not just Troma’s output for the next 50 years, but dozens of other movies which revel in the same kind of outrageous practical effects, absurd humor, and tasteless hijinks.

The movie itself took inspiration from classic body horrors and creature features from the 1950s, exploitation and grindhouse cinema from the 1970s, and the campy sleaze of cult director John Waters and his willingness to push the boundaries of good taste. A cult classic phenomenon, it blends outrageous gore, gooey practical effects, dark humor, and social satire as it follows Melvin, a meek janitor transformed into the grotesque yet heroic Toxie, who battles crime in Tromaville.

To celebrate the long-awaited release of the recent remake starring Peter Dinklage and Elijah Wood, we take a look back and explore 10 movies that were influenced by the outrageous original.

10

‘Class of Nuke ‘Em High’ (1986)

Following the success of The Toxic Avenger, Troma Entertainment transformed overnight from a sleazy sex-comedy peddler to a cult phenomenon with a dedicated fanbase eagerly awaiting the next move from the twisted mind of Lloyd Kaufman and his studio.

‘Class of Nuke ‘EM High’ is Troma’s Follow-up to ‘The Toxic Avenger’

The next movie happened to be Class of Nuke ‘Em High, released two years later. It follows a group of students who are transformed into rampaging freaks when toxic waste leaks into the water supply. Following in the steps of its predecessor, it’s full of outrageous gooey gore, absurd humor, and over-the-top social satire.

While the movie was panned by most mainstream critics, Troma’s growing fanbase was impressed with its crass, gory, trashy, fun-filled hijinks, helping the movie achieve cult status like The Toxic Avenger before it.

9

‘Turbo Kid’ (2015)

Turbo Kid chronicles the adventures of a teenage comic book fan turned superhero in an alternate 1997 post-apocalyptic Earth as he teams up with a mysterious girl and an arm-wrestling cowboy to stop a tyrannical warlord. Outlandish, outrageously gory, and out of this world, Turbo Kid is an undeniably fun ride that’s full of adventure and independent spirit.

‘Turbo Kid’ Is Full of B-Movie Charm

Made on a shoestring budget, it’s full of nostalgic charm that not only brings to mind the ’90s era in which it is set, but the ’80s movies it so clearly takes inspiration from, including The Toxic Avenger, with whom it shares a gleefully violent yet oddly sweet tone. Its over-the-top violence, heartfelt heroics, and ridiculous villains serve as both a loving tribute and a fresh, independent take on the Troma-style madness.

8

‘Terror Firmer’ (1999)

Terror Frimer is a meta horror-comedy that revolves around a low-budget film crew led by the unhinged and egotistical blind film director Larry Benjamin. Not only do the crew find themselves struggling against the typical trials and travails of a Troma set, they are also preyed upon by a sexually conflicted, bomb-toting serial killer.

‘Terror Firmer’ Is a Low-brow Meta Masterpiece

Directed by The Toxic Avenger’s Lloyd Kaufman, not only does Terror Firmer share the movie’s same ridiculous sense of humor – there are several direct references to it, including an appearance by Toxie himself, as well as the presence of multiple glowing green toxic waste barrels that created Toxie, littered throughout the movie.

7

‘Bad Taste’ (1987)

Before The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, the Oscar wins, and becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, Peter Jackson began his directing career with the micro-budget slapstick splatter-fest Bad Taste. Made for just $25,000, it sees aliens invade the fictional New Zealand village of Kaihoro to harvest humans for their intergalactic fast food franchise, where they face off against a four-man paramilitary force.

‘Bad Taste’ Was Peter Jackson’s Debut Movie

With its tongue placed firmly in its cheek, Bad Taste offers an absurd and very bloody take on the alien invasion genre that shares The Toxic Avenger’s gleeful embrace of over-the-top gore, low-budget charm, and audacious violence. Jackson takes the same spirit of excessive shocking fun and applies it to his own DIY splatter comedy, which went on to garner a strong cult following of its own.

6

‘Dead Alive’ (‘Braindead’) (1992)

Talking of Peter Jackson and cult movies, there’s more than a passing chance that the famed director would have been exposed to The Toxic Avenger before starting work on Dead Alive (or Brain Dead as it’s also known) – the ultimate in schlocky, sleazy, over-the-top splatter fun. The plot, or what there is of it, follows a young man named Lionel who is followed by his domineering mother as he takes his lady friend, Paquita, on a date to a zoo. At the zoo, his mother ends up getting bitten by a “rat-monkey” and becomes infected.

What follows is absurd set piece after absurd set piece, culminating in the whole town becoming rabid zombies, except Lionel and Paquita. After unintentionally enhancing the zombies’ murderous abilities with animal stimulants, the pair are left to defend themselves with anything they can get their hands on, including a lawnmower, which results in what is widely regarded as one of the bloodiest scenes ever committed to film.

Now a Cult Classic, ‘Dead Alive’ Flopped at the Time of Its Release

Just like The Toxic Avenger, it’s an all-out splatter horror comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously and never lets up on the fun factor. The excessive blood, guts, and gore might not be for everyone, but the light-heartedness of the whole affair makes it a (little) bit more accessible. Made on a shoestring budget, it was a flop at the time of its release but was widely enjoyed by critics who praised its humor, acting, and technical qualities, given the budget, and it has since gone on to garner a large cult following and often makes top 100 lists of the best horror movies of all time.

5

‘Bride of Re-Animator’ (1990)

The sequel to Re-Animator, Bride of Re-Animator focuses on Dr. Herbert West and Dr. Cain as they return to continue their twisted corpse reanimation experiments, seeking to create the perfect woman using various dismembered body parts. All the while, the reanimated, disembodied head of DR. Carl Hill, from the original movie, is out for revenge on the doctors.

While failing to reach the critical success of the first movie, it has more than enough humor, horror, and gross-out special effects to keep fans of the original satisfied. Despite middling reviews, it has since gone on to achieve cult status among fans of horror comedy and body horror.

A Respectable Sequel to One of the Genre’s Most Celebrated Movies

The original Re-Animator came out just one year after The Toxic Avenger, and while it’s a possibility that director Stuart Gordon may have encountered the movie, the overlapping production timeframes make it unlikely. Despite their shared B-movie sensibilities and combination of body horror and humor, Re-Animator is slightly darker in tone, closer to the serialized story “Herbert West–Reanimator” by H. P. Lovecraft, on which it was based.

However, Bride of Re-Animator was almost certainly influenced by The Toxic Avenger and the outrageous, tongue-in-cheek horror culture it helped cement. By then, Troma’s brand of gleeful gore and absurd humor had become part of the genre’s DNA, and Bride of Re-Animator fully embraces that over-the-top sensibility, blending grotesque visuals with knowingly ridiculous fun in a way that clearly echoed The Toxic Avenger’s impact.

4

‘The Greasy Strangler’ (2016)

The plot of The Greasy Strangler revolves around a father and son who run a disco tour. When they meet a woman named Janet on one of their tours, it begins a competition for her love between the two. It also brings to light the fact that there is a greasy killer on the loose who is strangling his victims.

‘The Greasy Strangler’ Takes ‘The Toxic Avenger’s Absurd Humor to the Next Level

Leaning heavily into extreme absurdism, the movie is a deliberate exercise in weirdness. Nothing makes sense – but nothing is meant to. There’s a giant prosthetic old man private part, a grotesque nightly greasing ritual, endlessly repeated catchphrases, and a level of awkwardness in certain characters that makes Napoleon Dynamite seem like a motivational speaker.

Like The Toxic Avenger, it revels in bad taste, grotesque humor, and deliberate shock value, but there’s also a clear influence from cult director John Waters and his love of the bizarre, sleazy, and defiantly anti-mainstream. The result needs to be seen to be believed and certainly isn’t for everyone, but it has managed to find a niche audience who appreciate its outrageous brand of anti-humor.

3

‘Street Trash’ (1987)

Street Trash revolves around a dangerous, out of date alcoholic beverage, popular amongst the city’s homeless population, that once consumed causes them to gruesomely melt. Sick and tired of the corrupt distributors of said drink, the local community fights back.

Troma in Everything but Name

Released just three years after The Toxic Avenger, its grimy setting, over-the-top gore, DIY aesthetics, pitch black comedy, social satire, and grotesque body horror reek of The Toxic Avenger – in the best possible way.

2

‘The Blob’ (1988)

This remake of the 1958 film of the same name follows a gooey, amoeba-like organism that crashes down to Earth in a military satellite, devouring and dissolving anything in its path as it grows. The movie received mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, but has since developed a strong cut following

‘The Blob’ Shares More in Common with ‘The Toxic Avenger’ Than Its Source Material

The original Blob was a straightforward creature feature that, while hugely influential in its own right, shares little in terms of tone with the remake. Instead, the remake embraces a joyously gory, darkly humorous tone that echoes The Toxic Avenger’s outrageous spirit. From the gooey melting effects and shocking deaths to its satirical edge, it captures the same absurdly over-the-top, grotesque style made popular by the likes of The Toxic Avenger.

1

‘Pultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead’ (2006)

Another Lloyd Kaufman-directed Troma production, Pultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead takes the disgusting aesthetics, irreverent social satire, and low-budget charm of The Toxic Avenger and gives it a musical twist. Revolving around a fast-food chicken shop overrun by zombie chickens, the movie embraces Kaufman’s trademark juvenile humor with its inclusion of outrageous deaths, projectile vomiting, and explosive diarrhea, which, as expected, divided critics but impressed his loyal cult following.

The Spirit of ‘The Toxic Avenger’ Lives On

Since the surprise cult success of The Toxic Avenger, Troma has been consistently putting out shlocky, cult classics, and quite frankly, any could have made this list, but Pultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead stands out as an example of how the company has continued to build on the grotesque humor established in The Toxic Avenger.