Atomic Hero
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Atomic Hero |
| Original title | The Toxic Avenger |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1985 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Michael Herz , Lloyd Kaufman |
| script | Lloyd Kaufman |
| production | Michael Herz, Lloyd Kaufman |
| camera | Lloyd Kaufman, James A. Lebovitz |
| cut | Richard W. Haines |
| occupation | |
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| chronology | |
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The Toxic Avenger is a low budget - horror film of Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz from the year 1985 .
action
Melvin Junko is the biggest loser from Tromaville. He works as a cleaner in the local fitness club and mops the floors there, while the rest of the small town's youth indulge in the unrestrained body cult of the 1980s. Because of his clumsy manner and his inconspicuous appearance, Melvin is a constant victim of nasty jokes and harassment of all kinds. The clique of teenagers from the gym hunt people at night , one boy is seriously injured before he is deliberately run over and killed.
One particularly vicious joke by the group eventually ends with Melvin being chased around the gym in a pink tutu. The only way to save himself from the constant humiliation is to jump out of the window. Instead of fleeing his tormentors, however, he ends up upside down in a barrel with radioactive toxic waste on the back of a truck that happens to be parked in front of the gym. With unbelievable pain, Melvin's skin peeled off his body, eventually it even burns. He escapes from the scene of the accident and lies down in the bathtub at home, where he finally mutates into the monster superhero Toxic Avenger .
At night, a few men torture a policeman before they can hurt him worse, the Toxic Avenger comes to his aid. He saves the victim, but seriously injures the men. The Toxic Avenger then apologizes to the policeman and helps him up. The next day, the whole city is looking for the hero .
The city's mayor wants to put the toxic waste bin near the water supply while a gang raids a diner. They kill a young heroic man and torture a blind woman and kill her guide dog until the Toxic Avenger shows up and beats her up, one of whom he tears off an arm and the other he deep-fried the hands. Then the Toxic Avenger caringly helps the blind Sara and accompanies her home.
The police can hardly believe the employees of the diner who saw the rescue of the monster, but gradually bigger and bigger waves pull in. Meanwhile, Melvin and Sara get closer, until the Toxic Avenger shows up in the fitness club and rages there too. Then he makes his way to the sauna, where a girl from the gang is masturbating, he takes the naked woman and puts her on the hot stove in the sauna room.
When a man offers him a young girl for sex, Melvin beats him and his assistants. Then he takes care of the girl. The Toxic Avenger is becoming more and more of a hero: he saves children, helps with the household and he leads criminals to the police. Sara and Melville kiss and make love, and they move in together.
Melvin goes to the gym again to get revenge on the second young woman, he chases her through the building. She screams and you can see him picking up scissors. Meanwhile, the two young men are totally crazy, they hit an older woman and steal her car. Then the Toxic Avenger runs into them , they want to run over it, but it hangs on their roof. He throws the passenger out of the car and bruises the driver, he pulls the steering wheel out of its anchorage and the car falls down a slope where it goes up in flames.
The Toxic Avenger survives the crash, next he turns to an older woman who is in the laundromat. Melvin puts it in the washing machine, activates the machine and then irons it. Then he returns to Sara, he finally confesses the truth to her, that he is the monster . The two decide to flee. Then it turns out that the older woman was not innocent, she was the head of a girl trafficking ring, but the mayor wants to cover it up in order to hunt the monster , so he instructs the police chief. The rescued monster want to help the monster and are looking for him.
Sara and Melvin are in hiding, but they are tracked down by the police. The governor sends the National Guard and wants the monster to be captured, but the mayor wants to kill the Toxic Avenger . They all gather on the meadow where the couple hid. The rescued persuade the police to do nothing to the monster, but the mayor shoots him. The Toxic Avanger cannot do that, however, he hits him in the stomach and pulls his guts out. Melvin helps the fallen Sara and kisses her deeply, celebrated by the bystanders.
Meaning and interpretations
The film was praised as a brilliant satire on the merciless body cult of the 80s, which in turn is a symptom of the superficiality of US society. Melvin's mutation from nerd to superhero, however, does not follow the usual pattern of the ugly duckling who is ultimately loved and integrated. His actions as a hero are not limited to the usual commitment to law and justice according to the prevailing norm; instead, his crusade against the authoritarian and corrupt power structures of Tromaville is very explicitly criticized by society. The resolution of the film, in which the “little people” of the place rescue the monster Toxie from the local police and the national guard, is remarkable for the genre of horror-B film. The military force and the state do not appear here as protectors of the common good at the side of the superhero, but as the protection of the corrupt, mafia-like elite and as a threat. Only the solidarity of the common people with the monster forces the state authority to break off its campaign against the outsider.
The Swiss film critic Achim Menze wrote in his fanzine Eidgenossen im Bild : “Toxic Avenger is a real cuckoo's egg of subversion - on the one hand, it embodies all the virtues of classic B-movie horror, and it is precisely this convincing power that makes it shine through every corner of the film radical-critical swipes at the dull, brutal everyday life (not only) of US society all the more aptly. "(Confederates in the picture # 4/1988)
The film was indexed by the federal inspection agency for media harmful to minors until September 2013 , but after the 25-year period had expired, it was deleted by them. A re-examination of the voluntary self-regulation of the film industry is still pending.
criticism
“Dilettantisch staged and acted B-picture, which uses current phenomena only as a vehicle for a repulsive trip through horror film history; sexist and inhumane in the basic attitude. "
"[It] may be trash, but it has a maniacally farcical sense of humor, and Tromaville's evildoers are dispatched in ingenious ways."
“There is probably no film from the eighties that deserves the heavily overused term" cult "more honestly than the radioactively contaminated superhero Toxie, who hunts criminals with his mop. The threatened Hollywood remake of this subversive classic can only be a bad joke. "
On September 20, 2019, the film was shown as part of the Tele 5 series The Worst Films of All Time .
Sequels
The Toxic Avenger experienced a total of three sequels. The first two, Atomic Hero II ( The Toxic Avenger Part II ) and Toxie's Last Battle ( The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie ) were shot in one go in 1988 - originally only one film was planned, but at the end of the shooting it was found that there was far more material in the box than would have been necessary for a single sequel. So they made two films out of it. In 2000 a fourth part was published under the title Atomic Hero IV (English Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV ).
New edition
In 2013 preparations took place for a new edition of the material, which should come to the cinemas in 2013. Directed by Steve Pink ( SHIT - Die Highschool GmbH ). The script was to be written by Daniel C. Mitchell and Akiva Goldsman to be producer . In contrast to the original, the remake was supposed to be an action comedy for the whole family, in which Toxie fights as a green superhero in environmentally conscious times. Not much will be left of the black humor and the bloody, tasteless scenes of the original.
Web links
- Website for the film
- The Toxic Avenger in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Toxic Avenger at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Atomic Hero at Metacritic (English)
- Atomic Hero in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Atomic Hero. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 27, 2018 .
- ↑ Stephen Holden: FILM: 'TOXIC AVENGER' . The New York Times
- ↑ filmtipps.at
- ↑ cinema.de