31 Days of Halloween - Day 4: The Toxic Avenger Part 2

For the last few years I always do a 31 days of Halloween month. The past few years I re-read all the original Goosebumps books and before that I'd watch 31 horror movies. However I realized every single time I watched 31 Horror movies I exclusively picked ones I enjoyed. I decided to do something slightly different. I composed a list of every horror movie I owned and put them in alphabetical order. Then using a random number generator I generated 31 numbers and watched the movies that corresponded with those numbers. Some are great films and others… well… are less than fun let's say. I hope you enjoy!

Day 4: The Toxic Avenger Part II (Movie #478)

My history with the Toxic Avenger is a pretty bizarre one. I was first introduced to Toxie from the 80's cartoon series The Toxic Crusaders. I was a massive Toxie fan and had all the toys and watched it every week. I had an uncle who was basically the person I'd grow up to be. He collected toys, arcades and b-movies. He also did really detailed decorations for Halloween every year. One day at his house I stumbled upon a copy of The Toxic Avenger and thought "THEY MADE A MOVIE ABOUT TOXIE". I excitedly popped it in the VCR.

About 30 minutes later I was crying my eyes out in fear. I had never seen anything so gross and gory at that point. Eyeballs were gouged out, bodies melting down and various other gross things. My mom found me and comforted me and I never watched it again until college when I finally rewatched it.

The second time around I discovered not only was this a comedy but I absolutely loved it! I went out a bought Toxic Avenger Part II. This is a pretty bad movie. It's not the worst Toxie film (That honor goes to Part III) but there's something charming in this film. It's got a ton of nudity as well as some delightfully bizarre death scenes, so basically it's a typical Troma movie.

In general however this film along with Part III I only own because I'm a franchise completist. If I buy the first part of any movie I feel drawn to own ALL of the films (this would explain why I own Hellraiser III-VIII and Jaws the Revenge). This was a fun enough movie for early in October but if I had drawn this as my final film of October to "ring in" halloween I'd be annoyed and disappointed.

Matt Kelly is the host of the popular podcast The Saint Mort Show, a frequent contributor to Geekscape.net, the founder of Chords for Cures and the co-writer/co-director of the upcoming comedy Describing the Moon. He also loves it when people surprise him with purchases from his Amazon Wishlist… just saying.