Let me tell you a fun little story about my literal first ever memory. I remember being maybe five years old. My lounge room back then had sort of sliding/folding doors, and they were open a tiny crack. I sat beside that small gap, and through it I saw the movie my dad was watching with my cousin. That movie was The Toxic Avenger, and it scarred me for life. Of course, I didn’t know it was The Toxic Avenger at the time – and when I finally watched the cult 1984 horror comedy many years later I had an unbelievably weird moment of attaching an actual movie to the weird traumatic memories I had retained from childhood.
Anyway! According to Deadline, The Toxic Avenger is the latest property to be revived from the grave for a big-budget reboot. Legendary Entertainment has acquired the rights, and have tapped original directors Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz as producers.
For those unfamiliar, the original Toxic Avenger films had a very simple – some might even say universal – plot: a virgin nerd named Melvin falls into a vat of toxic waste and is transformed into the horrifying mutant superhero of the title. Despite my childhood cinematic trauma, I assure you it is at least ostensibly a comedy.
Here’s the trailer for the original. I won’t embed them for crime reasons, but there are multiple uploads of the entire movie on YouTube. I’m not holding your hand for you!
The film spawned two official sequels, one unofficial sequel, and – bizarrely – a children’s TV series called Toxic Crusaders. Suffice to say that the original movies contain too much in the way of tits and gore to be suitable for consumption by kids.
Anyway! Consider this another glorious childhood franchise absolutely ready to be strip-mined by a nostalgia-hungry 2018 audience. Yeah baby!
