The Toxic Avenger

There's a bit later on in the proceedings in The Toxic Avenger where the titular hero, janitor-turned-viscous-vigilante Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage) sings Motorhead's "Overkill" and that was a highlight for me – a clear statement of irreverent intent.

Motorhead and Troma go way back – Lemmy narrated 1996's Tromeo and Juliet, and it is something to hear that cod-Shakespearean language in Lemmy's gravelly tones. That cod-Shakespearean language was co-written by James Gunn, currently Monitoring (capitalisation intentional, and IYKYK) the DC Universe for Warner. He put his co-writer, irascible Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, in Superman, and a bunch of other stuff besides. There's not much of the Troma vibe – cheerfully cheap, pugnacious, ribald, bloody, and big-hearted – in Superman, but there's a ton of it in Gunn's gnarlier stuff. Peacemaker is drenched in it.

Which is to say that Troma, the legendary indie studio that begat the original The Toxic Avenger in 1984, casts a long shadow, culturally speaking. And Toxie is their flagship character, the hulking hero so popular at one point that he got his own Saturday morning cartoon, Toxic Crusaders. There were even action figures! So, taking on the task of reimagining the studio's breakout film is no small task.

But actor and filmmaker Macon Blair gets it. He knows the secret formula has to include heart. It has to cleave to some kind of ethos in among all the gratuitous gore, obviously fake severed limbs, and shameless nudity. A lot of creators trying to operate on Troma's patch don't get that, or they slather any potentially resonant emotion under an insulating layer of irony. That's why so many films pointedly striving for lowbrow cult status come across as pointlessly mean-spirited and annoyingly arch.

Not here. Here we get the tale of put upon Winston Gooze, single stepfather to his troubled kid, Wade (Jacob Tremblay). Soulfully embodied by Dinklage, he's a workaday slob just trying to be there for his anxiety-addled son, and failing in hilariously relatable ways. Life is bad enough before a terminal diagnosis crashes headlong into a health insurance rejection, a quick series of events sees Winston plunge headlong into a vat of toxic goo, and Winston merges all green, lopsided, and hungry for justice as the titular Toxic Avenger (tada!).

From there we follow our hero as he teams up with activist J.J. Doherty (Taylour Paige) to take down corrupt health supplement CEO Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon really enjoying being a smarmy prick) and his mad scientist brother Fritz (Elijah Wood looking weirdly like Danny Devito's Penguin), who have been poisoning the local community, running a bizarre Insane Korn Posse style band as a personal hit squad, and generally being the kind of unrepentant bastards you can enjoy getting eviscerated by a muscly mutant with a glowing, magic mop.

It's all ridiculously good fun, if your idea of fun involves decapitations, amputations, grossout humour, and the sight of an Emmy-winning actor pissing on his own face (well, technically the sound – while Dinklage is still on vocal duties post-transformation, stunt performer Luisa Guerreiro is in the suit). The jokes-per-minute ratio is staggering.

The Toxic Avenger never lets you forget that you're watching a movie, and it punches the fourth wall without hesitation if it'll help land a good gag, but it's got no time for ironic distance. This is a film that celebrates the gross, the word, the outcast, and the downtrodden. It's gutterpunk cinema, and while all eyes are on the Man of Steel's latest incarnation over at the DCU, the real hero of the moment is down in the gutters with the rest of us.