Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on November 1, 2001, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Who says Troma movies can’t be educational? Before I saw Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, I never knew what a “chocolate starfish” was; if you don’t know, I ain’t gonna tell you here, but anyone familiar with Troma fare won’t be surprised that there are jokes about what comes out of one and what can be inserted into one.
Troma has frequently been acknowledged for pioneering the strain of gross-out humor that has recently become the domain of major-studio comedies, and Citizen Toxie finds them staying defiantly ahead of the curve. You won’t find a commercial mainstream picture attempting to mine laughs from the Columbine High School shootings, or the Texas racist dragging incident. On the other hand, you’re unlikely to find one trusting the modern youth audience to get jokes about Dr. Stephen Hawking or Citizen Kane either; a complete parody of the Xanadu newsreel from Orson Welles’ classic is one of Citizen Toxie’s highlights.
And, like Peter Pan, Troma is certain never to grow up. That’s in marked contrast to, for handy example, the Farrelly brothers, whose new Shallow Hal tries to promote a message about judging by appearances and ends up embarrassingly, unbearably mawkish. In Hal, the Farrellys present characters suffering from spina bifida and facial burns as if expecting to be congratulated for their open-mindedness; if Citizen Toxie plays deformity and the mentally challenged for humor, it also refuses to sentimentalize them. Its two disabled youths and the victim of that dragging (reduced to a talking head) even manage to attain a certain dignity.
Meanwhile, back in Citizen Toxie’s main plot (which is to say that yes, it has one), an explosion propels Toxie into the parallel, criminal world of Amortville, while that dimension’s crime kingpin, the Noxious Offender (or “Noxie”) finds himself in Tromaville, and is soon salivating over the prospect of corrupting this fair village. The result is the expected, sometimes hilarious, sometimes just disgusting barrage of gore jokes, sex jokes, bodily function jokes, overstuffed production design, cheerfully excessive makeup FX and cameos by such pop-low-culture figures as porn fixture Ron Jeremy and the late Howard Stern sidekick Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf (who has one of the film’s funniest lines).
The movie’s prologue makes reference to the two previous “rotten” follow-ups to the classic 1984 Toxic Avenger, declaring this to be “the real sequel.” (The fact that Toxie’s girlfriend in Tromaville is named Sarah, as she was in the first film, while her evil Amortville double is Claire, as Toxie’s beau was called in Toxie II and III, points up this idea. Or maybe noting this fact just reveals that I need to get out more.) While I kind of enjoyed Toxie III, Citizen Toxie can indeed be said to be the best of the series since the original. Even on its own willfully trashy level, however, it’s not without problems, chief among them the fact that, like Troma’s previous Terror Firmer, it’s just too long. A 100-minute-plus running time is too much to sustain this kind of knockabout farce, though the fact that Citizen Toxie, unlike Firmer, has a semblance of a structured narrative helps.
Bottom line: If reading the phrase “chocolate starfish” at the beginning of this review made you smile or giggle, even a little bit, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV is likely to be your kind of movie.
