Revenge of the Ferds

Hey, gang! Just over a week to go before I complete my goal of posting 31 daily reviews. March has been typically weird and busy but mercifully quick, especially due to this endeavor. I haven't had time to sign on to MySpace (apologies to those who have sent unanswered messages), the condo is in shambles, the fridge is empty, I need a new phone, my hair is in bad need of a trim and I haven't even been to a concert in weeks. The latter changes Monday: Parenthetical Girls and The Dead Science at the Abbey Pub. Don't think I've forgotten about cooking, either... there's something potentially porktastic in the works. As for the writin', it's certainly fun, but it will be nice to get back to normal. Since I finally finished reading the slight tome yesterday morning, here is my first-ever attempt at a book review.

"The Toxic Avenger: The Novel"
Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke
(Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006)

If you have never seen "The Toxic Avenger," you either live under a rock, hate America or have better things to do. Lloyd Kaufman has made more ambitious and more disgusting films since Toxie first appeared in 1984, including two cheesy sequels somewhat redeemed by the magnificent third, but this one remains a classic for many reasons. I mean, Google "head crushing scene" and see what comes up first. The flick is lousy with violence, nudity, cheap sight gags and taboo-ignoring glee. Everything and everyone in it looks tawdry and seedy, the special effects charmingly homemade and the cartoonish acting pitched to the rafters. It is both the epitome of '80s excess and the ultimate criticism of '80s excess. It's deviant junk food fun with smarts, and thus laid the template for the majority of Lloyd's subsequent films, as well as what my young mind expected from popular art after seeing it during my formative pre-teen years. If Entartete Kunst had a mascot, it would be Troma's hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and stength. The Toxic Avenger is basically Spider-Man, a dork turned into a confident and powerful crusader for the weak by a freak accident, but Tromaville is a much trashier place than New York City and Toxie actually fucks his girlfriend. He's a nice guy surrounded by filth. It is this mix of outrageous sleaze and genuinely sweet righteousness that I believe keeps the film a favorite for many kids of the era. Before we go on, here's the original trailer, blessed with the kind of blustery, vintage 42nd Street voice-over that should have been used for the "Grindhouse" ads:


Never one to not milk a good idea, Lloyd made his third book (and first foray into fiction) an adaptation of Troma's early triumph. Like in "Everything I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger" and "Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director," it's unclear how much he actually wrote himself and how much came from his co-author. The frequent asides and self-referential footnotes do not shed any light on this. Components of Lloyd's public persona include shameless self-promotion, ruthless manipulation of his minions, juvenile scatological obsession and indignant independence, all of which shine through here. At several points, "guest authors" appear, the best being a chapter written by "J.D. Salinger" describing the thoughts of loser Melvin Ferd as he transforms into The Toxic Avenger as if he were Holden Caulfield. The section by "Oliver Stone" is less successful - he remains one of Lloyd's favorite satirical targets since they were early business partners, but he's poking fun of the crazy conspiracy theorist Stone of the "JFK" era, not the studio hack of today who helmed "Alexander" and "World Trade Center." Lloyd's usually hipper than that. On the plus side, the graphic descriptions of the transformation and various gory demises truly do allow for greater detail than what film can convey.

Why novelize a 22 year-old movie? In the book's preface, the authors say to consider it a big-budget remake that no major studio would ever allow and that Troma itself could never afford. As Kaufman and Jahnke recount the plot of "The Toxic Avenger," they insert colorful back stories for incidental characters such as random bad guys dispatched by the hero and the owner of the dry cleaning business where he kills an old lady. We get a lifetime history of the grossly fat mayor, extra scenes where the police chief gets carnal with Melvin's withered alcoholic mom and a ridiculous subplot about one of the eyeballs that pops out of the cross-dressing thug during Toxie's first battle. There are copious in-jokes that are handled very well, including references to Marisa Tomei's cameo and the fact that Toxie's blind girlfriend's name changes from Sarah to Claire in the sequels. The footage of the green sedan flipping over which finds its way into just about every Kaufman movie is cheekily described as "exactly the kind of incredible, once-in-a-lifetime explosion that you want to see over and over again in all sorts of different contexts." Needless to say, the bigger a fan you are of the movie, the more you will enjoy the book. My only major gripe is that after a lot of enjoyable dawdling, the ending comes up really fast, as if they were rushed to finish. I really could have gone for a few more chapters of this silly shit. It's okay, I still love you, Lloyd. For those who haven't seen it, here's the picture my buddy Jorge took depicting last month's historic meeting of Mr. Kaufman, yours truly and some hot Troma girl. Note the freshly signed copy of "Everything I Need..." in my left hand, Toxie and Sgt. Kabukiman frolicking in the background and the Tromette's amazing taste in figure-accentuating outfits: