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Released by: Troma
Released on: September 8th, 2015.
Director: Lloyd Kaufman
Cast: David Mattey, Clyde Lewis, Heidi Sjursen, Trent Haaga
Year: 2000
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The Movie:
Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV, directed of course by Lloyd Kaufman, begins at The Tromaville School For The Very Special right in the middle of a Mexican food fiesta! As one class starts to dive into, the Diaper Mafia (led by Trent Haaga) - a gang of grown-ups in diapers - take the class and its very pregnant teacher, Ms. Weiner (Debbie Rochon), hostage. As they rape and pillage their way around the class, the Toxic Avenger (played by David Mattey and voiced by Clyde Lewis) and his morbidly obese sidekick Lardass (Joe Fleishaker) show up to save the day… just as the timer on a bomb starts ticking away.
Thankfully, the Toxic Avenger is a speedy sonuvabitch and he's able to head home, have sex with his wife Sara (Heidi Sjursen) - they're trying to have a baby and he's got to stay on top of her cycle - and then get back to the school in time. When he and Lardass, who sadly sacrifices himself to save the kids, leaves the school, however, something is different. Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD (Paul Kyrmse) is confused by the Sgt. part and the NYPD part of his name and everyone in Tromaville seems to be… off. The two kids from the school who leave with Toxie, Sweetie Honey (Lisa Terezakis) and Tito the 'Retarded Rebel' (Michael Budinger), seem to be their normal selves but everyone else? No so much.
And that's because Toxie has somehow entered an interdimensional portal and landed in Amortville while his evil doppelganger, the Noxious Offender, has landed in Tromaville. Noxie is causing plenty of trouble too. When he comes out of the school he rips the arms off of the police chief in front of a news crew, causing the mayor (Ron Jeremy) to bring in some help in the form of superheroes Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, Mad Cowboy (Anthony Catanese), Dolphin Man (Olivier Tendon), Master Bator (Jarred Alterman) and The Vibrator (Lauren Heather McMahon).
Rather than take aim at any one specific target, Kaufman and company unload with two hours of cinematic buckshot, hitting anyone and everyone in their path. Troma have had no problem with pushing the boundaries of good taste in movies made prior to Citizen Toxie but with this film the boundaries aren't so much pushed as they are pissed on, shit on and obliterated. No offensive stone is left unturned, as the film takes shots at racial groups, politicians, corporations, news reporting, mass shootings, drug use, the mentally challenged and every sexual orientation out there. The film is a non-stop barrage of sex (particularly lesbians - there are a lot of rad lesbians in this movie), violence, scatological humor and over the top gore with just enough of a plot to see it through to the end (and what an end it is).
The intro to the film tells us to disregard Toxic Avenger Parts II and III, and that this is the true sequel to the original film. The storyline makes it easy to do just that as it doesn't tie into those earlier follow ups at all, but it does tie into the first one. In typical Troma style it's got some funny cameos (look for the aforementioned Ron Jeremy as well as Lemmy, Corey Feldman, Stan Lee, James Gunn, Al Goldstein, Hank The Angry Drunken Dwarf, Tiffany Shepis, Eli Roth, Julie Strain and husband/TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman, Hugh Hefner and of course, Kaufman himself) and that trademark car flip footage. It's pretty long for what it is and again, the story goes off target more than a few times, but it's hard not to appreciate this one for the insane exercise in bad taste that it is.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Troma's 1080p AVC encoded 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen high definition transfer of Citizen Toxie isn't going to blow you away but it looks okay. For an early nineties low budget production it looks quite good, particularly when compared to the muddy looking fullframe DVD that was released years back. Colors are improved over that prior release but are still a bit faded looking at times. There's a fair bit of grain and some minor print damage is noticeable but it doesn't really take away from the experience much, and let's face it, you wouldn't want to see a movie like this DVNR'd to death anyway. The source material obviously wasn't in perfect condition but there's a noticeable increase in clarity, quality and detail from previous versions of the film.
Unfortunately, the only audio option available for the movie is a standard definition English language 48 kHz 224 kbps Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo track. No lossless option has been provided, and there are no alternate language dubs or subtitles options available. The quality and clarity of the mix is fine, but it's a pretty basic affair. There isn't a whole lot of channel separation to note but dialogue is easy enough to follow and understand and while the mix is a bit low (meaning you'll have to turn up the volume a little bit higher than you may be used to), once you compensate for that you won't experience any major issues. This isn't a fancy mix by any stretch but it gets the job done. Lossless audio would have been nice though, given that this is a Blu-ray and all.
Most of the extras are carried over from the older 2-disc DVD edition, starting with the first commentary. Here we get input from Lloyd Kaufman covering the direction he wanted to take things with this movie, what it was like working with the different guest stars, budgetary limitations and the effect that they had on the movie and more. The second commentary track features producer Trent Haaga and actor Michael Budinger and it's also pretty interesting as they cover a good bit of ground that Kaufman does not. They talk about working with him as a director, some of the effects work, the different contributions of the cast and crew and quite a bit in addition to that. The third and final commentary is with editors Friedman and Sean McGrath. This is a bit more technical than the other two pieces and, as you'd guess, it focuses on putting together the production after it was shot. It also covers some bits that were taken out of the movie and does a decent job of explaining the flow of the film.
Also familiar to those who owned the previous DVD release will be Apocalypse Soon, the epic making of documentary that runs almost three hours in length. This follows the making of the production from the early parts - like casting, writing and pre-production preparation - right through to the actual shoot and then post-production and it's a pretty revealing and honest look at the up's and down's of making a low budget feature like this. There's plenty of footage showing Kaufman being Kaufman and hamming it up but we also get some surprisingly honest bits where you can see the guy is having trouble keeping it all together. There's a lot of the typically amusing behind the scenes type of material in here but it's more than that - it stands as a genuinely interesting documentary on its own and is worth seeing regardless of your feelings on Citizen Toxie itself.
The disc also features a brand new intro by Lloyd Kaufman shot at Stan Lee's Comickazee Convention that plays before the main feature plays, but along with that we get an eight minute Tribute to Lemmy segment that covers the Motorhead front-man's contribution to different Troma productions, the two minute The American Cinematheque Honors 40 Years Of Troma piece that has made the rounds on most of their recent Blu-ray releases and trailers for a few other Troma productions (though no trailer for the feature).
This is a DVD combo pack, however, and if you pop that DVD into your player you'll find a whole bunch of other supplements also seen on the older disc including a collection of deleted scenes, outtakes, a featurette covering James Gunn in Citizen Toxie, interviews with 'The Citizens Of Tromavilla', an interview with Debbie Rochon and trailers for a host of other Troma films. Both discs include menus and chapter selection.
The Final Word:
Citizen Toxie is a mess but hot damn if it isn't one of the craziest messes you'll see from Troma. It's completely over the top and an equal opportunity offender if ever there was one. The transfer won't blow you away but it does trump the previous DVD version and carry over the core extras and, unfortunately, the audio from that DVD set as well. If you don't already have the DVD version, this is the way to go.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
