"The Toxic Avenger - Unrated" - Review

In the corrupt, rotting city of St Roma, the chief industry is a heavily polluting pharmaceutical plant. It is here where widowed mild-mannered janitor Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage) works to support himself and his stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay), until a horrifying accident transforms him into a toxic beast ready to avenge himself upon the town that has wronged them!

(Photo Credit: IGN)
This is a movie tailor made for me.
The original Troma "classic" is the cornerstone and touchpiece for their brand of trash, outsider mayhem and gross nonsense, I proudly have Lloyd Kaufman's autograph, and a copy of the film in a trashy DVD on my shelf. I've listened to the musical multiple times (the only one I've done so outside of the Golden Age classics) and just adore this kind of outsider art. And when Macon Blair (behind the fucking excellent underrated genre-bender "I Don't Feel At Home in this World Anymore"), star of "Blue Ruin" and "Green Room" was announced to finally be the one going ahead with this long-squelching remake, my interest was piqued.
With my bona fides out of the way, let's get this part done with: There's nothing quite so Hollywood was taking an underdog cult trash classic piece of punk outsider art and remaking it glossier and with bigger stars; though it has Kaufman (now best known to the kids for his appearences in James Gunn movies) and Michael Herz behind the producing wheels, it still was stuck in development hell. Oh Hollywood.
It was always going to lose some of that lovably incompetent, wild, anarchic jank in the transition. That being said:
I fucking loved this.
From the opening shots being an overly Gothic-lit office with "Award for Good Journalism: Melvin Ferd" (the name of the lead in the Toxic Avenger musical) and him being played by Shaun Dooley (Barnsley represent!) before a bunch of weirdly dressed, chicken-headed, clown-make-up clad, parkour-flipping goons burst in and start trying to murder: I felt that Macon Blair has the same love for this movie as I do.
What follows is bloody, stupid, punky, outrageous, bloody, gory, stupid, juvenile, bloody and campy, with lots of gore and stupid blood to push things to the limit.
Dinklage cuts a man's face in half, revealing a pulsating brain, with a radioactive mop.
The chicken man gets a fucking fantastic gross pay off.
Kevin Bacon (embracing his weird era in films, side note watch "Super" and he's super fun in "Elephant White") hams it up to the extreme with his deliberately snarling, cartoonish dialogue.
Elijah Wood, also relishing his weirdo era, plays a put-upon "Igor" esque brother to Bacon, complete with atrocious hair and cane.
Peter Dinklage proclaims: "Alright, I need to get my dick out!".
Said dick is actually Chekov's gun.
At a murderous "post-hardcore punk" concert, reaction shots consist of flashed titties and penises.
The transformation into the titular creature is a deliberately 50s style psychadelic throwboack with headshots and swirling screens, done to the Mozart monster theme, you know the one.
It still has the outright gall and audacity to be an underdog story, a corporate satire, and a commentary on the American healthcare system (not a subtle one, but, come on man... we're past this) in the final cut.
This movie is far better made than the original, but puts that budget and effort into being gross, stupid, ridiculous and capturing the Troma sense of humour, without the mean-spiritedness (well... almost...)
It's a niche movie for a niche crowd, but I am that niche crowd.
I was laughing a lot, and when I wasn't laughing I was beaming from ear to ear.
I want Blair to go very far after this, unpredictable career that he has.
I guess if you like stuff like "Wolfcop", "Hobo With a Shotgun", "Street Trash", "The Stuff" and "Demons", go for this!
Fuck yeah.

"Maxxxine" - Review

Six years after a massacre at a farm killing best girl and leaving her the only survivor, Maxine Minx (Mia Goth), is attempting to break out of the pornographic film industry and make it into mainstream fare. She has landed a leading role in horror movie "Puritan II" directed by visionary English director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki, always welcome), has a supportive agent in Teddy Knight (Giancarlo Esposito) and seems to be making the best of what life has given her, not settling for a life she does not deserve. But when a private investigator named John Labat (Kevin Bacon) comes sniffing around, upturning her life and making insinuations, things start to go South. And all of this falls against the backdrop of a Puritanical push against pornography and horror, the killing spree of The Night Stalker, and 80s excess...

"X" was a fantastic surprise and homage to horror films gone by, and Hollywood finally learned what I have known and been proselytising since the late 2000s: Ti West is great. It got more people (my partner included) to know who the hell he is ("Innkeepers" is good, "The Sacrament" fantastic, his sequel to "Cabin Fever" far outdoes the original film, and "House of the Devil" is an absolute fucking barnburner and easily his best work) and "Pearl", whilst weaker than "X" in my eyes, is a strong companion piece and ode to envy and the Hollywood Golden era. This movie attempts to mash the two together: the strong character work of "Pearl", the horror and sex of "X" and the Hollywood blending of both.
There are some amazing shots to this effect: the most striking image is of Kevin Bacon in a nightclub chasing after Maxine, lights flashing chaotically and brightly, like things are shot in slower shutter speed and a nightmarish vision of the sequence in "Fright Night". The opening manages to contrast what people THINK the 80s was with the grimy nastiness and terrible parts it actually was. The house from "Psycho" is used for a sequence, and Debicki drolly remarks that "they made a sequel, can you believe that?". Hah.
Bacon's character is dressed as Jack Nicholson from "Chinatown" and honestly steals the show, relishing the part and chewing both dialogue and scenery. Many of the supporting cast have similar fun: Lily Collins gets a scene as a working class Yorkshire girl actress who cannot even be bothered to remember her co-star's name, Bobby Cannavale and Michelle Monaghan have literal buddy cop adventures on the trail of the Night Stalker, and Giancarlo Esposito is refreshingly against type as "Teddy Knight: Hollywood Super Agent". The cast have fun with these parts.
But the film struggles with what it wants to say and be about. It has fun gore effects (an alleyway castration is particularly fine) and its reach attempts to juggle the censorship and hypocrisy of "Christian Values" and the links drawn between the worship of sex, violence and cinema, but it loses its core identity in the shuffle and struggle. Is it about Maxine getting her big break? Is it about fame corrupting? Is it about a woman trying to run from her past? Well the last act gives us some answer where it devolves into "No, it's about a scenery chewing serial killer (sorely missed honestly untilt his point, and yet rather out of place) trying to murder our lead". The film kills off several important characters off screen, seemingly in a "let's get this over with" drive, and tries to recapture the delirium of "Pearl" towards the end. I didn't dislike the film on the whole, but it is certainly the weakest of the trilogy. It will likely get some love from the "You Go Girl, Slay Queen" fandom, and may even drive people to the kinds of movies he clearly loved and attempts to evoke. But the entire exercise feels more akin to a tour through a video shop than a coherent, driven, passionate film. We have hints and glimpses of ambitious greatness, but it focuses on the wrong parts, and whilst it is admirable to have gone in the direction it did, he could have had more fun and better luck and results by embracing the "Video Nasty" style or hitting the beats of "Slasher Movie in the Big City" and playing it straight.
Ironically, West has been embraced by Hollywood in a tale of its excesses, but lost some of the joys which made him great, though he gets some mileage out of his big stars in parts normally played by quirky character actors. He even gets to hint at it a little, with a much-obliged and delightful cameo appearence from Larry Fessenden as a security guard. I appreciate him as a film maker and see this doing well with a queer horror crowd, but would prefer a return to his stripped back affairs.