Continuing my descent into Troma's Toxic Avenger saga, I've arrived at the third film: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF TOXIE. In reality this movie is less a "Part III" and more a "Part II, Part II" because, as I've learned, writer/director Lloyd Kaufman originally intended for the second and third parts (as we know them) to be one big sequel instead of two small ones. He ended production with too much material and made the decision to split it into two movies. TOXIC AVENGER II makes slightly more sense now in retrospect. In that movie, the evil Apocalypse Inc. establishes itself as the big bad corporate villain with its eyes set on ruining Tromaville and the environment before disappearing while the Toxic Avenger toyed around in Tokyo for the bulk of the run time. In TOXIC AVENGER III, we return to that plot thread except now the timeline is all screwy. Let me see if I've got this straight
in PART II, Apocalypse Inc. goes full evil right from the start with an attack on the Toxic Avenger and all his blind friends. Before Toxie can retaliate, Apocalypse Inc. creates a diversion with rumors of Toxie's father living in Tokyo. After all that Japan business is concluded, Toxie returns home in time to stop a bomber/assassin that Apocalypse Inc. hired to blow up
something. At the start of PART III, we jump into Toxie cleaning up the damage Apocalypse has done to the town starting with a local video rental store that's being shaken down by Apocalypse goons.
Then we flashback (for some reason) to a week prior when the whole plot of PART III kicks off: Toxie feels guilty that he's not contributing financially to the toxic household (he and blind girlfriend Claire are living off her government assistance). Claire receives a letter in the mail promoting an experimental surgery that can restore her eyesight and Toxie get s a job at Apocalypse Inc. to foot the cost of the procedure. Let me repeat that: he gets a job with Apocalypse Inc. The evil conglomerate that murdered all his blind friends in the opening of PART II and tried to murder a bunch more people with a bomb on a motorcycle. He completely disregards their evil nature and gets a job with them as their spokesperson, and then he wonders why everyone in town has turned on him. The third film's subtitle, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF TOXIE, refers to Toxie's employment with Apocalypse and his eventual redemption when he realizes what everyone else already knew: Apocalypse is evil and he's a sell-out. The plot, while slightly more complex than that of PART II, is still incredibly simplistic and stupid. We know from the very beginning what's going to happen: it's all going to culminate in a final battle of the Toxic Avenger versus Satan. If the title wasn't obvious enough, the poster art featuring the Toxic Avenger duking it out with the Dark One should be a solid giveaway. Writing is not Troma's strength. Trust me, I get that at this point.
My point is that Troma works best when it goes full force into the crazier material: brutal graphic violence against criminals and scantily clad women. Seeing as how this and PART II were originally meant to be one complete film, it really feels like it wasn't split evenly in terms of content. PART II is almost entirely insane, creative (and often stupid) action sequences linked together with the most meager of story threads, and PART III is mostly poorly written story bookended with an action scene at the beginning (in the video rental store) and the final battle with the devil (which accounts for almost a third of the movie by itself). The entire middle section of the film relies on the subpar plot of Toxie working for Apocalypse and becoming a yuppie. This means that entire segment is dependent on Troma's brand of
ugh
"comedy." This fails because Troma's (or at least writers Kaufman and Gay Partington Terry) brand of humor is lame jokes you'd expect from an out-of-touch uncle. For example, one such "rip-roarer" comes with one of Toxie's earliest attempts at employment as an agent of the Internal Revenue Service. Toxie, with a suit and briefcase, approaches a home and he's run off when the family starts throwing anything they can find at the taxman (mostly clothes hangers and Easter baskets for some reason). Isn't it hilarious! People hate taxes! What about the part when Toxie awkwardly uses "Wall Street" lingo on the phone! Isn't that just so wacky! I didn't think so either.
If you can suffer through almost an hour of that, you arrive at the final battle against Satan who, no surprise, was head of Apocalypse the whole time. There's a glimmer of hope as he reveals his true form through some good ol' Troma effects. Once he arrives, Satan decides he wants to torment Toxie in the style of a video game as weakly foreshadowed in an early scene where Toxie is playing some arcade game with a generic title like "Five Levels of Doom." As cool as that sounds, any enthusiasm I managed to muster was quelled when I realized it wouldn't be anywhere near as cool as promised. Regardless, that final battle and opening video store fight are enough to find something worthy of recommendation here. This is definitely the worst Toxic Avenger film I've seen. There's no denying that. It has its moments: the Devil transformation, some of the gore effects, and surprisingly Phoebe Legere. She didn't contribute much to PART II but I enjoyed her a lot more this time around. It's probably because they actually gave her something relevant to do. She even gets a crack at an inspiring speech when she's not bumbling around wildly. But the bottom line is that THE LAST TEMPTATION OF TOXIE is a major fumble and fails to meet even Troma's already lower standards.
