Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV

-Unrated Collector's Edition

-Troma (2000)

Summary

Boobs, blood and lots of bad jokes.

My Thoughts

The most exposure I’ve ever had to Troma film studios most famous creation of the Toxic Avenger was on the long gone show USA Up all Night hosted by the sexy Rhonda Sheer. Sigh, those were the days. Even though the movies were heavily edited, I thought I’d be prepared for this installment of the Avenger series when I picked up a copy of this film on DVD. Boy, was I wrong.

When the film finally begins (more on that later) there’s an opener narrated by none other than Stan Lee, giving a little background of The Toxic Avenger for anyone who hasn’t seen the first film. There’s also a hilarious apology for the previous two sequels. I’d feel sorry for anyone who was easily offended after this point, because it goes right for the most offensive types of humor and gratuitous violence right at the beginning. A school for the mentally disabled is raided by a gang called the Diaper Mafia. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The Diaper Mafia is made up of a bunch of idiots dressed in diapers who have some unknown demands and threaten to blow up the school. The gang proceeds to blow out the brains of the retarded kids until Toxic Avenger arrives to take care of business by killing the diaper mafia guys and gals in the most violent and disgusting manner possible. Unfortunately, the bomb ends up exploding anyway sending the Toxic Avenger into an alternate universe, while at the same time sending an evil version of him into “our” universe.

The rest of the film serves up a mixture of softcore porn, over the top violence, and pure camp. Whole scenes exist solely for the sake of a pun and the film is so cheap that a cop car is clearly a Saturn sedan with a crappy flashing light on the top. Citizen Toxie is also notable for having film stock that looks like it was left over from the filming of the first Toxic Avenger in the mid eighties. Still, I found Citizen Toxie to be incredibly funny overall. If you don’t take what you are watching seriously it’s a great outing for the mutant superhero. However, if you are the least bit sensitive you’ll hate this film. For example, I normally don’t find jokes involving mentally challenged kids very funny, yet the best character in this whole film is a retarded rebel. You really have to see it to know what I’m talking about. I'm afraid if I explain in any greater detail I’m sure I’ll sound like a horrible person. In fact, there’s nothing taboo with Troma including rape, lynchings, abortions, and even the murder of a child. You read that right. The evil version of Toxie throws a 12 year old girl into a brick wall! Like I said, if any of that disturbs you don’t watch the film. If you can get over those things then this should be an enjoyable film experience and has lots of treats like a super religious Ron Jeremy being brutally murdered or Julie Strain getting her face ripped off. There’s also a bizarre cameo by Corey Feldman playing a heavily mustachioed doctor.

No low budget film is good without nudity so if you want to see boobs, this film has plenty of them (especially if you like SucideGirls.com). However, there are some pretty bad boobs in the mix so you have been warned! There’s also some random old guy nudity that's more frightening than anything I've seen in years.

Citizen Toxie is low budget film making at its absolute finest. The Toxic Avenger IV would have been better viewed hosted by Rhonda Sheer, but I guess we don’t live in a perfect world do we?

The DVD quality is a little bit better than I thought it would be, considering the quality of the film itself. The sound is serviceable and the only complaints I have about this edition could be found below in the extras section.

Extras

At first this edition made me incredibly angry since the menu doesn’t bode well for this edition. The pointless motion menu that resembles something found on a porn DVD looks like you're watching a poor copy of a VHS tape. To make matters worse, when I went back to the menu the ludicrously long opening played again… there was no way past it. Then when you click on “play movie”, it DOESN”T PLAY THE MOVIE. Instead we have a fake news footage and interview with the head of Troma studios which is neat and all… but I clicked on play so fucking play the film already! Anytime you want to watch the film you have to fast forward past this thingy. Gah!

The first disc contains not only the film, but several extra features as well. For fans of bloopers there’s outtakes… watch Ron Jeremy screw up his lines! Hurray! There’s some deleted scenes included as well that can be best noted as containing practically any bit cut from the film. In addition there’s a hodgepodge of bits that don’t really fit into any other category in the “Citizen’s of Tromaville” section. I swear they put everything they filmed in this set. The last thing on this disc is a couple of trailers including one for this film.

The second disc has much more tolerable motion menus and contains a heck of a lot of extras. Highlights include a small bit about the synching of Toxie’s voice that’s fairly entertaining. Also included are both premiers of the film, both are worthwhile to watch especially the L.A. one because it gives some pretty good behind the scenes dirt. Another noteworthy extra is some footage from some radio show where the female star of the film, Heidi Sjursen acts like the biggest idiot I’ve ever seen. Lloyd Kaufman puts in his efforts to sabotage the whole thing as well. It’s actually pretty embarrassing to watch.  Next up is some preproduction stuff that provides an excellent insight into the nitty gritty of independent filmmaking, which is probably some of the best extras I’ve seen in awhile.

Troma wasn’t satisfied with giving you all the previous stuff either and have put a 95 minute documentary called “Apocalypse Soon”. It’s an even deeper, funny look at making an independent film. Although it runs a little long, this thing is entertaining enough to be its own reality series. Looks like I just came up with a million dollar idea!

The rest of the extras are basically just stuff that didn’t make it into Apocalypse Soon and man there is plenty of it for any Troma fan.  There are a couple of versions of this film on DVD, but you'd be a fool not to pick this one up if you're a Troma fan.

Score:

Film: 7.0

Extras: 8.5

Edition: 8.5

-Paul