Troma's Citizen Kane... and its Lost in La Mancha By Justin Remer Justin Remer is an Ohio-born writer and filmmaker, currently living and studying in New York City.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Troma -- and somehow, this is possible -- it is an American independent film studio specializing in exploitation movies which incorporate gratuitous nudity, inexpensively extravagant gore, and a barrage of jokes, many of them cheaper than the special effects budget. Their most famous film is The Toxic Avenger, a horror comedy which got enough mainstream play on pay cable and in video stores to prompt the creation of a late-'80s animated series, Toxic Crusaders, and a couple of sequels.

The latest sequel, Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, is new to DVD and may very well be Troma's most tasteless and best film. If you mourned the death of Pink Flamingos -era John Waters, this is your movie.Before I continue, I must disclose that I am an intern at Troma, and Lloyd Kaufman, the president of Troma and director of Citizen Toxie is, well, my boss. I am not writing this review, however, out of loyalty to my job -- I really think this is an interesting movie people should check out. May I offer to further mitigate: despite having scripted Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, afterward thumb-pointing reviewer Roger Ebert continued to review Meyer's movies. (Meanwhile, I didn't even fetch coffee on this movie.)

Citizen Toxie follows the mop-toting Toxic Avenger (David Mattey), a former nerd turned hero after exposure to toxic waste three movies ago, as he is sent into a parallel dimension while his evil doppelganger Noxie, the Noxious Offender, tries to take over his home turf: Tromaville, New Jersey.Citizen Toxie is a comic-book superhero movie completely foreign to Hollywood's Spiderman and Daredevil, partly due to its slasher-movie body count (which does make it similar to the Blade franchise, without being so brooding) and utter lack of concern about things like getting a rating -- the first five minutes alone would probably get it an NC-17 for over-the-top violence. The flick opens with a school shooting and ends with the massacre of a neo-Nazi army in a hospital hallway, with quite a few disembowelings, dismemberments, and lurid sex scenes in between.

What keeps it from becoming an audience-battering slew of senseless gore is the film's keen use of irreverent satire and a cast of endearing characters -- including Tito, a mentally retarded mockery of movie teen rebels, and his naive classmate Sweetie Honey.

Yet just as one finds in late-career Mel Brooks, some jokes can be seen coming from a mile away and their arrival prompts relief they are finished rather than prompting laughter. But people still watch Mel Brooks movies, so it must not be too much of a bother.

The two-disc DVD of Citizen Toxie comes with all the trimmings, including the two-hours-plus feature documentary Apocalypse Soon, about the film's making. I have yet to sift through all six hours of bonus features, including deleted scenes and three commentaries. But certainly Apocalypse Soon stands alone, in a realm filled with polished, cheery five-minute featurettes, as representative of how grueling it can be on a set. While its title seems designed to prompt comparison to Hearts of Darkness, the documentary which covered Coppola going crazy in the Phillipines, Apocalypse is more reminiscent of the recent documentary about an aborted Terry Gilliam film Lost in La Mancha -- so reminiscent it becomes surprising Citizen Toxie actually got finished.

For Troma fans, this disc is required watching; for the uninitiated, I hope I have piqued your interest, because your curiosity will be rewarded. You don't even have to see the first three movies, I swear.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002