The Toxic Avenger 3: The Last Temptation of Toxie

The Toxic Avenger series is a pitifully stupid-bad saga of comic book fantasy from the cinematic dumpster fire that is Troma Films, a parody of splatter horror superhero epics that is, somehow, still pretty damn entertaining—though admittedly redundant as hell.

In these films, Melvin Junko (a.k.a. “Toxie”) is a hulking, mop-carrying mutant freakazoid and otherwise perfectly likable Marvel Comics-style hero from Tromaville, New Jersey. He wages war against the evil forces of A.I. (Apocalypse Inc.), which is headed by a corporate villain I once believed was Jello Biafra in disguise. (But I was stoned at the time.)

Toxie (voiced by John Altamura, bodied by Ron Fazio) is a soft-spoken good guy with a blind, bleach-blonde girlfriend named Claire (Phoebe Legere), who spends the movie running around in a lacy Victoria’s Secret boudoir ensemble and sleeps with her legs dramatically splayed, apparently. Apocalypse Inc. is a comic-book cesspit of absurd villainy, populated by mutant horse faces, hot chicks in leather and leotards, Cigar Face (Dan Snow, from the first film), the late great Joe Fleishaker shaking his morbidly rotund moneymaker, and Lisa Gaye (“Mona Malfaire”)—who gets crushed by a school bus and whose legs shrivel up like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz.

I found Lisa insanely bodacious in 1989. Hope she’s doing well.

This time, A.I. is being led by CEO Satan Himself (Rick Collins), who gives Toxie a job and hands Claire $350,000 for surgery to cure her blindness. (Her surgeon is played by Robert Prichard—“Slug” from the first movie—who weirdly reminds me of Dee Dee Ramone.)

What follows is a wild, gross-out, Mad Magazine-meets-Mel Brooks sleaze-fest—a long and indecent slog through nearly 142 precious minutes of your life you’ll never get back. But it was a shit life anyway, wasn’t it?

There’s gooey gore, sexual titillation, bad sight gags, cartoon violence, lobotomized idiocy, and enough low-rent vulgarity and cinematic retardation to satisfy a nitrous-huffing treeful of Rhesus monkeys. You might wonder if everyone involved received a lobotomy at birth—or were simply dropped down a flight of stairs “accidentally” as infants—but either way, the result is the same: a garbage-pail movie that’s not afraid to be what it is—a piece of stinking, putrid offal straight from the slop bucket.

("Bloody Bones in the Slop Bucket"—don't you just love that title? I think it was a short film by Pericles “Redneck Zombies” Lewnes, who, wonder of wonders, also worked on this picture. I’ve never seen Bloody Bones. Yet.)

Toxie eventually battles the Devil, who bursts out of Rick Collins like an Alien chest-burster or that one scene from the Ramones’ “Psychotherapy” video. Satan reveals himself as a horned, spiky beast with snot dripping from his mouth and a Hell Comes to Frogtown kind of snout. Toxie—who was “tempted” by the Devil earlier in a scene with a healthy dose of sacrilegious mockery—rises to the occasion. The finale is a combat sequence mixed with sight gags that feel ripped from cast-off panels of Mad Magazine.

The film drags, though. It could’ve been hacked down by at least forty minutes and come out swinging. Instead, it becomes a redundant slog. It’s never exactly boring, but it’s a lot. This isn’t a film to be taken seriously—but 141 minutes is a long time to not take something seriously.

With just ten minutes to go, my Last Temptation was to shut the whole thing off.

But, like Toxie, I persisted. Sometimes, you just gotta get your hands dirty.

As Elvis once sang: “They’re all waiting. The Devil may care.”

Addendum

I can find no mention of a film called "Bloody Bones in the Slop Bucket," so I reckon 'ol Pericles ended up not using that title, although he told Gorezone he was going to back in the 1980s. This film was, incidentally, directed by Lloyd "Uncle lloydie" Kaufman, and Michael Herz. Pericles Lewnes did the special creature and make-up effects. Bloody bones and slop buckets indeed.

TOXIC AVENGER III - THE LAST TEMPTATION OF TOXIE (1989) HD TRAILER

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