Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
Today’s lesson in horror history celebrates a hero who has been on ice for decades, a guardian of humanity, a scrawny wimp turned into a muscular protector! And no, it isn’t Captain America. Today, we’re talking about Toxie the Toxic Avenger, a horror comedy hero whose impact on the cinematic landscape is larger than you’d think. With his 2023 reboot finally coming to theatres in 2025 and leaving festival circuit stasis, we’re here to talk about Toxie, the company that made him, and why it took so long for the monster hero of Tromaville to return to us.
Speaking of which…
WHAT IS TROMAVILLE?
The humble town of Tromaville isn’t just home to an abnormal number of maladjusted psychopaths and criminals, it’s also the toxic chemical capital of the world. And it’s located in New Jersey! Hee-haw, hee-haw, very funny, a “New Jersey is a dump” joke, very original. Our dumps look like your nature trails. New Jersey is beautiful, can it.
Played by the real-life stand-in town of Boonton, NJ, as well as several other towns throughout New Jersey and upstate New York, Tromaville is where most of Troma Entertainment’s films take place. Among the citizenry of Tromaville lived the exceptionally pathetic Melvin Ferd (later Melvin Junko), whose job as a janitor at the Tromaville Health Club put him in the path of some particularly maladjusted health nuts: Bozo and Slug. The duo and their girlfriends are revealed to secretly be a gang of murderous hit-and-run drivers who revel in the carnage they cause, documenting their crimes with flash photography.
Soon after their latest kill, they decide to mess with Melvin for his bizarre mannerisms and general buffoonery. This culminates in him being tricked into kissing a sheep while wearing a pink tutu, a prank that sends him out of a window and into the back of a semi-truck carrying dozens of open, bubbling, green toxic waste barrels.
Oozing green barrels of toxic slime are Tromaville’s main export.
WHO IS THE TOXIC AVENGER?
Set aflame by the toxic waste and ridiculed by bystanders, Melvin runs back home, transforming into a monstrous mutant thanks to the waste. With his facial features distorted to grotesque proportions and sliding out of place, Melvin is doubly unrecognizable when he grows freakishly large and strong and develops a silky smooth voice (the voice of actor Kenneth Kessler).
Endowed with a monstrously powerful physique and covered in melted skin, the toxic waste has one other odd side effect: due to “Tromaton particles” inside of his body, he can now sense evil and is driven into a frenzy when he encounters it, forced to destroy it. Melvin soon used his newfound abilities to become a vigilante the media dubs “The Monster Hero”, hunting down the health club gang and taking them out. Having gotten his vengeance, Toxie begins targeting organized crime, and turns Tromaville into a paradise.
In the sequels, he begins taking down corporations run by the actual devil, and wrestling with his daddy issues! He went to Japan to do that last one. Sustaining himself on liquid cleaning chemicals and operating out of the Tromaville dump, Toxie the Toxic Avenger fights for all that is good and clean.
While living in literal trash.
Go figure.
WHO CREATED THE TOXIC AVENGER? WHAT IS TROMA ENTERTAINMENT?
The Toxic Avenger and its sequels are the most popular films created by B-movie filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman. But they’re certainly not the only ones. Founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974, Troma Entertainment stands to this day as one of the oldest and longest active independent film companies in the U.S. (and according to Troma themselves, they are THE longest-running independent film studio in North America).
They’re responsible not just for making films, but for the distribution of many independent films across a spectrum of genres. Fans of the films Def by Temptation and Cannibal! The Musical might be surprised to find that Troma distributed both of them. Because of Troma’s dedication to giving independent filmmakers a voice, many Hollywood filmmakers and actors have found a start with the company. The two most notable of which are Oliver Stone, whose first work on films began as assistant director on Kaufman’s The Battle of Love’s Return, as well as James Gunn, who went from working on Tromeo and Juliet and writing a biography on the making of The Toxic Avenger to becoming the director of Slither and the face of comic book movies for both Marvel and DC.
Dubbed a “leading impresario of bad taste”, Lloyd Kaufman’s work with Troma has become a staple of both good and bad B-horror movies since the 80s. That being said, Troma films have a reputation for being particularly low-budget and especially low-brow because they put such a massive emphasis on not restricting independent artists and pushing boundaries in terms of their content. If you’re squeamish, or can’t stomach offensive content, steer clear.
SO…ARE THE TOXIC AVENGER MOVIES OFFENSIVE?
Immensely so.
Though the first film’s most infamous sequence involves a bicyclist getting their head run over (with effects courtesy of a particularly ripe cantaloupe with makeup applied afterward), all of the Toxic Avenger film’s most offensive parts come from when they engage in “edgy humor”, usually at the expense of a marginalized group.
From racism, to homophobia, to transphobia, to fatphobia, to ableism, all in a variety of different forms, if there’s a protected group of people on the planet, they’ve probably been made fun of by The Toxic Avenger films. Especially in the fourth Toxic Avenger film, that was way more egregious than I remembered, and borderline unwatchable for how offensive it gets! If you’re going to skip any of them, skip IV!
Needless to say, you will probably find yourself mildly offended at best and appalled at what you’re watching at worst.
WHY ARE THE TOXIC AVENGER MOVIES SO OFFENSIVE?
Kaufman has justified the shocking content of his movies as a byproduct of his ethos in filmmaking. In an interview with fanzine Schokkend Nieuws for The Flashback Files, Kaufman addressed the inclusion of particularly brutal and offensive scenes in his films like Tromeo & Juliet and Terror Firmer, putting most of the motivation on large film studio’s practices:
“The reality of American life is constant racial and sexual violence. My movies are a reflection of that. From THE TOXIC AVENGER on we have been involved in fighting hatred and violence and the puritanical dictatorship in America. It’s always been there in our movies and these important buttons have to be pushed. […] The United States is run by a cartel, as is Western Europe. It’s a fixed club in which no one who is independent can enter without selling his or her soul. So, it doesn’t matter which subjects I use in my movies. I’m economically blacklisted anyway. […] So what do I care what they think of Troma? What do I care what anybody thinks of our movies?”
How effective a method this is in addressing that violence is certainly up for debate. It was never the offensive parts of the original Toxic Avenger that made it great, or entertaining, or even a particularly good social commentary. But it felt necessary to mention that if you dive into the Toxie films headfirst in preparation for the new one coming out, they do have a lot of questionable material you will probably find hard to watch.
HOW DID TOXIC AVENGER GET A CHILDREN’S CARTOON?
That being said, the absurdly out of pocket nature of the Toxic Avenger franchise and Troma’s “no limits” approach to filmmaking has one especially odd animation artifact, a decidedly not envelope-pushing or offensive children’s cartoon.
This interesting point in The Toxic Avenger’s legacy was a short-lived Saturday morning cartoon produced in 1991 called Toxic Crusaders. Released two years after Toxic Avenger Part III, Toxic Crusaders was part of a small number of odd attempts to capitalize on existing IP while aping the unbelievable success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. As Rambo and Robocop got their own children’s cartoons, turning their bloody gunfights into bloodless shows meant to market toys, so did Toxic Avenger. Crusaders even got an NES game in 1992 the following year.
You too can go from watching Toxie rip a guy’s arm off and smash a man’s nose in a taiyaki press, to watching him teach kids about the importance of recycling and environmental conservation with his gang of quirky and colorful mutant friends!
IS THE NEW TOXIC AVENGER MOVIE A SEQUEL OR A REBOOT?
After over two decades of silence, The Toxic Avenger franchise’s fifth film came out in 2023 but is only now seeing widespread release in 2025. All of the media coming out promoting The Toxic Avenger (2023) confirms the film is a reboot, ignoring previous entries and replacing Melvin with a new victim-turned-monstrous superhero, Winston Gooze (played by Peter Dinklage). In interviews, Dinklage has mostly focused on the production aspects of the film and its spirit, which is similar to that of the original film, but has confirmed it is not a remake.
The synopsis details our intrepid hero is a janitor trying to reconnect with his young son when he’s cast out of the trash frying pan and into the proverbial toxic fire. Now, it’s time for a mutated Winston to clean up crime, with the same mop swinging and bare-handed eviscerating methods Melvin used to clean Tromaville of its crime.
WHY DID TOXIC AVENGER TAKE SO LONG TO COME OUT?
Directed by Macon Blair (a Jeremy Saulnier film mainstay and director of I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), the new Toxic Avenger film found itself in distribution limbo following its premiere in 2023 at Fantastic Fest despite being made under the banner of Legendary Pictures. Outlets talking about the ongoing struggle to find a distributor claim the film was deemed “unreleasable” by several companies due to the film’s extreme violence and graphic content.
In January, it found a home with distributor Cineverse, who has tee’d the film up for an August 2025 release. In an interesting reflection of Kaufman’s philosophy on limitless filmmaking and making transgressive media, CEO of Cineverse Chris McGurk found some resonance in the importance of The Toxic Avenger and why its release is so vital in the current landscape of film: “This is the kind of movie that major studios are averse to release because it dares to push boundaries, but Cineverse is rooted in championing bold, uncompromising storytelling. We believe audiences are ready – and eager – for films like this to take center stage.”
Here’s to Macon Blair, Peter Dinklage, and the rest of the cast and the crew’s hard work, which will finally be shared with horror fans in theaters soon. Hopefully, reviving New Jersey’s first monster superhero at the box office will be just as fun as the buzz around the film has let on!
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class, and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!