[HorrorScience] The Toxic Avenger 3 (1989)

The Toxic Avenger is an icon when it comes to independent cinema. Not only is it the most well-known and profitable film of Troma Entertainment, but it also had video games, comics, television series and toys.

the original movie was released in 1984 and its sequel It took 5 years to see the light. According to the words of one of the character's creators (Lloyd Kaufman), everyone thought they were going to make sequels to that movie except themselves, who were not willing to shoot the same movie again and would only do it if they came up with something clever.

Taking into account the distance in years between the first and second parts, it is a bit surprising to think that The Toxic Avenger 3 It came out the same year as the second part. I will discuss the reason later in this article, but I think it could be summarized as this film being shot "almost accidentally."

After ending the crime in Tromaville, the Toxic Avenger feels empty and useless. His attempts to look for an ordinary job and lead a normal life do not work and a great feeling of guilt invades this character when he finds out that there is a way to cure his girlfriend's blindness and he cannot get the necessary money.

The only company that seems interested in Toxie at work is Tromaville's main threat: Apocalypse Inc. Despite reluctance, Toxie accepts the job, which will bring him many headaches.

The Toxic Avenger 3 seems follow the low quality thread that the second part had and when I say low quality, I don't mean to compare it with multi-million dollar films, but with other Troma films, like the original film of the Toxic Avenger.

Despite containing jokes, violence (of all kinds) and crazy scenes, the movie is long it is inevitable to be anxious for the end to arrive. The beginning of the film is the same as the previous one (Toxie gets bored and feels useless because there is no crime in Tromaville anymore) but then the film takes a somewhat unexpected turn.

I have to admit that I like the story of this movie much more than the second part,  although it obviously doesn't make any sense for Melvin to join Apocalypse Inc after everything they did to him in the past. The fact that Toxie goes from being depressed because he feels worthless to becoming a life-saver like the rest of the millionaires seems very funny to me and the president of Apocalypse Inc is a totally stereotypical character (as if he were a comic book villain) but within what the movie is, he fits well.  Curiously, that character in his demonic form is one of the few good things I can get out of the movie. The suit is average to bad, the wings are horrible, but the face is very well made and looks great.

In The Toxic Avenger 3 They tried to add many impressive scenes (car and bus crashes, characters on fire) without losing the extreme tackyness that characterizes Troma (those scenes going backwards... each worse) but once again it falls far behind the first film, which is absurd, because when they shot this one they had a bigger budget than when they shot that one. It's as if they had made it without caring in the slightest about the result, something unforgivable for a film about the character who has given the most money to his company.

In short, the film is bad, boring in many moments (something unforgivable in a Troma film) and should only be watched with friends or by unconditional fans of this company.

Curiosities about the film:

• This film was made because during the filming of The Toxic Avenger 2 Too many scenes were recorded. Not being able to cut the film, it was divided into 2 different ones.
• The film is so poorly edited that there are many scenes or situations that don't fit. For example, when Claire is operated on, Melvin's mother is at the clinic, then Melvin drives to work and when he arrives, his mother is there.
• The scene in which Toxie jumps up the mountain to save the bus is actually a scene of a doll of him falling in reverse. The resource itself is bad, but you can see how Toxie's doll breaks during the fall and drops the filling, so that when that scene appears we can see how Toxie "climbs" the mountain half broken and at a given moment rebuilds itself.
• The actor who plays Melvin before mutating is not the same as the one in the first film. The funny thing is that this actor wanted to play the role, but Kaufman refused to pay him what he asked for. Years later Kaufman admitted that he was wrong and that he should have hired him for those scenes.