This week is a little different. We were originally planning to release our episode on Alone in the Dark (2005), but after technical gremlins made the recording unsalvageable (and after spending entirely too much time in the cinematic orbit of Uwe Boll), we decided to crack open the MacGuffin Studios Patreon vault instead. What you're hearing is the very first test run of The B-Movie Boys: the prototype episode where we figured out what this show could become, complete with an early version of the Schlockometer, a slightly different format, and all the enthusiasm of two film nerds who finally got permission to obsess over B-movies.

The guinea pig for that experiment? The Toxic Avenger (1984), Troma's gloriously goo-covered cult classic. We revisit Melvin's transformation into Tromaville's mop-wielding mutant hero while diving into practical effects, guerrilla filmmaking, Lloyd Kaufman's anything-goes approach to cinema, and why this bizarre little movie has earned its legendary reputation. Along the way, there are discussions about exploding watermelons, spaghetti dog guts, workout culture satire, and the strange magic that happens when filmmakers have far more passion than money.

Think of this as a throwback episode. A Patreon preview. A time capsule from the conceptual birth of The B-Movie Boys. It's rougher around the edges than our current episodes, but the DNA of the show is all here. And for anyone wondering... no, this is definitely not Alone in the Dark. That one will have to wait.

Mentioned in this episode:

• The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)
• The Toxic Avenger Part III (1989)
• Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000)
• Troma
• Lloyd Kaufman
• Jennifer Aspinall
• "Body Talk" by Sandy Farina
• The Toxic Avenger (2023)
• Peter Dinklage
• Bee Movie (2007)
• Jerry Seinfeld
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Marley & Me (2008)
• Battleship Potemkin (1925)
• Sergei Eisenstein
• Men in Black (1997)
• Vincent D'Onofrio
• The Cell (2000)
• Rocky (1976)
• Tesla

Our Links:

• BMovieBoys.com
• Official Discord
• Patreon
• Facebook
• Instagram

Incoming transmission. Incoming transmission. Let's boogie.

Welcome to The B-Movie Boys, where bad movies get the love they deserve and the respect that they don't.

I'm Dave Michaels.

And I'm Bryan Betz. Hey. Hi.

Hey.

Buzz. Buzz, motherfuckers.

I am so excited to do this because this has been an idea we've kind of thrown around just a little bit in the background of Be Fun Abby Fun. But no, really, it'd be fun months now. It has been months now.

And it makes me happy that we agreed to try this here, at least on Patreon with a movie that we've already talked about before. So we're not like burning anything.

Yeah, we'll get a good feel for. For how it should go with something that's familiar.

The idea for B Movie Boys is. Is an exploration of cinema, but like, really, really low budget.

Dave, what is a B movie?

Well, Webster's dictionary defines it as a cheaply produced movie. And that's it. Nothing else.

A very simplified version.

It really is. A B movie is typically really low budget compared to like a mainstream type movie.

You have lesser known actors, sometimes you have lesser known directors, sometimes. They're typically on the shorter side for running times. Usually. You get a lot of horror, sci fi, action. Comedy is a big thing in all of these things.

Oh, yeah, sometimes. Mostly unintentionally, possibly, but it's a lot more experimental than anything else.

It's people who have this vision that they want to put on the screen, but they don't have the wallet to do it.

Yeah. Get people with a dream and just the grit to make it happen.

This is the celebrate the bad part of our motto. We're usually tear down the good, celebrate that it's time to celebrate the bad guys.

A lot of bad celebrations, but not.

Fucking Kaufman, friend of the show.

We've talked about this in the past.

We have. Very early on.

It was very early on. And we talked about it with a caped mindset.

Exactly. We wanted to know how super this movie was.

How super was it?

It got a four and a half out of 10.

That's either higher or lower than it deserves. I'm not sure. But we're not looking at it as a caped movie. We're looking at it as a B movie. We want to know what makes a great B movie.

What is that quality that makes it the B est of B movies?

Is it A good movie? No. Is it a great movie? Abso fucking lutely.

Abso fucking lutely. Does Jerry Seinfeld ask, do you like jazz? Sorry, different B movie. My bad.

Different B movie. I can't believe that you had to do that this early on.

I had to get it out of the way. I've been dying to make the joke for the last seven minutes already.

Do you want to dive into this new scoring system that we have very scientifically put together?

Let's get into it. First thing we should do is retell the story of the Toxic Avenger.

I think I like how we're treating this like Passover.

Yeah. I mean, there comes a time.

There does come a time. It's a little bit different because story and motivation kind of runs throughout. It's not going to be its own category anymore.

Right.

This is so exciting. Like, if you could feel my nipples right now. Oh my God. Diamond cutters.

I was only going to say glass cutters, but diamond damn.

Oh, we're about to get to nipples in this movie. There's prominent nipples in this movie, and they're not so much diamond cutters as much as they are like dinner plates.

Melvin fur Junco the third, a scrawny 98 pound janitor at Tromaville Health Club, is mercilessly bullied by four members, Bozo, Slug, Wanda and Julie, who trick him into wearing a pink tutu and hugging a sheep, ultimately chasing him out of the second story window straight into a vat of toxic waste. Only in Jersey.

Everything you just said, you put the right words together to form gold. We are on the right path right now.

It's a good start.

I have not watched this movie since we originally talked about it.

Same.

And going back to it, I like put it on the background while I was working and I realized that I was just watching the movie at a point because I was so sucked in all over again.

It's funny because after seeing like 2, 3 and 4, it was nice to get back to the charm of the original.

This is so much more charming than 2, 3 and 4.

2, 3 And 4 are out there and wacky in their own way. But this, this has. There's something a little more serious about it, which is weird to say.

It's insane to say because of all the words you just said there. Yeah, but the chemicals are gonna mutate him into a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength.

The Toxic Avenger, though, he's gonna maintain his moral compass, desire to fight evil, and passion for Mops as you do. Did he have any of those things originally?

I don't know. We don't really know much about Melvin Ferd other than he mops kind of. He's actually not even that good at it.

No. And he wants to do a makeout with Julie.

He does want to do a make out with Julie. And he gets a really goofy look on his face whenever he sees boobs.

I get it.

Which happens a lot for this guy.

He does pretty well in the boob seeing area of life.

Like, it's just been. We only see him a couple days of his journey as a. As a 98 pound, scrawny nerd janitor. And he sees plenty of boobs in that time.

Yeah, he's not doing bad.

I don't know that he has a desire to fight evil, though.

I'm happy. He gains that desire to fight evil and he like sniffs evil out, which is even more insane. But we'll get there.

Cigar Face and his goons, Knuckles and Nipples, try to bribe Officer O. Clancy. When he refuses, Melvin has to intervene on their attempt to castrate the officer, killing Knuckles and Nipples and leaving a mop as his signature.

Though Cigar Face escapes and vows revenge.

It's the first fights in this movie. We get gratuitous violence. Stage is set.

Oh, yeah, we're ripping off noses. We're popping out eyeballs.

I shouldn't even say the stage is set because we already had the bullies who like to do hit run things.

Yeah. I don't know how this did for, like, functioned.

No, it's insane. This is what happens when you let AI do your synopsis for you. The bullies like to do hit and runs and they have a scoring system.

An elaborate scoring system which doesn't sound that crazy.

No, it's. I mean, ours is arbitrary. Everything we've ever put together is arbitrary. Theirs is somehow more arbitrary.

Yeah. I don't understand. How many points for a kid and a bike?

25.

It was 28. If you get the kid and the.

Bike and the bike. Which means that I don't know if the bike's worth three and the kids worth 25.

Maybe.

Goodness gracious. They wreck that kid.

Kids under 12 are worth double.

I mean, as they should be. I get it. They're harder to hit. Smaller target. It's like the Patriot. Aim small, miss small.

Right? Yeah. Okay.

But I really like how they hit this kid. This kid starts army crawling his way off the street. They reverse the car, run over his head and pop it. They pop the kid's head.

There's no points for just grazing toads.

Established.

And if you're wondering, do they show this kid's head getting popped by a car tire? Yeah, of course they do.

And why don't they don't show? Which they would have in 2, 3, and 4 is a scoreboard.

That's true.

No, they would have.

They absolutely would have. But Toxi has rescued his first person in Officer O. Clancy.

He gets rejected by his mother when he goes home. So he sets up a makeshift home in a local junkyard, which is also like a toxic waste dump. And he begins a vigilante spree against Tromaville's scum.

Just taking out the bad guys. Like at a Mexican joint where three criminals shoot a customer, threaten a baby, kill a blind woman's guy guide dog, and then attempt to rape her.

Luckily, Melvin massacres them with culinary justice.

Does he, though?

Because I remember watching this back, and I remembered some of the fun kills that were going on in this scene, especially because I had a very badly pee. But then we got into the taco joint. I was like, I'll hold it. I don't want to ruin the flow that's happening right here.

I'll create my own flow in a minute. But watching it, he ends up making a sundae out of someone's face.

Yeah.

Like, he puts ice cream in the guy's mouth, puts whipped cream. Then he puts him under the ice cream mixer. But does he kind of. It's the weirdest one in the entire movie.

It is weird because, yeah, he's basically Sunday boarding this criminal and then puts his face under the milkshake mixer.

But then you also get the one guy who got his hands deep fried.

Right. I imagine in shock at that point.

Yeah, I'd imagine. Then you got the one guy who got put in a pizza oven after.

He had his arm ripped off.

After he had his arm ripped off clean. Also, I forgot the dog got shot. That was insane.

I did, too. And I was like, oh, no, they're gonna do it. I forgot they're gonna do it.

You see this dog laying on its side, still breathing.

Still breathing, but very dead.

Moving, but his guts are, like, leaking out. And then you realize, like, somehow not worse than Marley and me. This is fine.

Like, I know that dog's actually alive, so we're okay. Toxie takes the blind woman, Sarah home, where they develop a romantic relationship despite his monstrous appearance.

Because she can see past his toxic exterior. Well, she can't really see anything, so it's Not a problem.

It is the perfect love interest.

It is.

You can't deny that there's surprisingly few.

Blind jokes in comparison to the other movies.

It was mind blowing watching it. It's a different actress in this first one.

Right.

But in 2, 3, and 4, I mean, they lean on the blind.

It is nonstop blind jokes in 2, 3, and 4.

They treat it like the Helen Keller card in Apples to Apples. It's a trump card every time. Absolutely. But it's not.

And it's funny because you actually texted me and said, I can't believe how few blind jokes there were compared to the other ones. And I told that to Stephanie, who watched the movie with me, and she was like, that was because she was surprised at how many there were already.

Oh, that was nothing.

That's nothing compared to the sequels.

Nothing. Like this girl could properly act kind of.

Kind of. She wasn't quite sure where to look.

No. But it's so much better. It is than what it becomes. As the Toxic Avenger, Melvin has this ability to sniff out crime. He's able to find crime.

And there's a weird doctor man who tells us this as he's, like, talking to a class. I don't know how he does it, but he can smell crime. He finds evil, but he targets, like, drug dealers and pimps and prostitutes.

And he's becoming this local hero. You see the newspapers that occasionally fly up. I stopped and I paused every single time, as you should do whenever you see a newspaper.

Nothing interesting. It was very boring.

Yeah, it's all in the headlines there.

Very big missed opportunity movie.

But Tromaville loves its monster hero. It's unnamed monster hero.

They don't name him until the very end. And it's just in a voiceover.

Yeah, yeah. I'm pretty convinced that they didn't have a name for this movie until way after they finished it.

I'm not convinced they had a script for this movie until they were, well, in the production. I know it was supposed to be this kind of satire on 80s workout.

Right.

That's why, like, they had the gym and the body talk. Body talk. Such a good song.

So good.

And then it became the Toxic Avenger.

Right.

That might not have a name. That's not important.

It's.

I don't give a shit.

Mayor Belle Goody, secretly the mastermind behind Tromaville's extensive criminal operations, grows increasingly concerned as Melvin's vigilante activities threaten to expose his corruption.

Worst actor in the movie.

He's pretty bad.

He's gotta be up there.

But I don't know. We do still have Julie.

You're stressing me out, Julie. You're stressing me out.

Julie was stressing me out this whole movie. She is not a good actress.

She's not a good actress and I don't know why. Like, Julie gets gotten one scene, but it's, like, weird that she's the one running away from Toxie. Yeah.

And you're just like, this feels weird that Toxi's chasing her. Am I supposed to feel for Julie even though I know she's a piece of shit?

Right.

I don't know how that works.

This girl really likes killing people. Am I supposed to feel bad for her right now? This elaborate chasing.

Some people aren't happy with Toxie, who they're not calling Toxie yet, but I'm calling Toxi because, yeah, I adore him,.

But the people that aren't happy with them, they're bad people, so it's okay.

Melvin survives an assassination attempt that's orchestrated by Cigar Face. He's going to leap to safety while they're doing this whole surrounding with guns thing. And they all fire. They all get each other.

All six gunmen.

Of course they do.

Amazing.

If you thought Indiana Jones versus Lost Ark was great with the guy wielding the sword. And Indy just shoots him because he had the flu. Thanks, IMDb. This is that, but better.

I especially like that before he starts jumping, you hear oop.

It's so good.

Seeking revenge against his former tormentors, Melvin attacks Wanda in the sauna, confronts Julie with scissors like we talked about when he's chasing her, and causes Bozo and Slug to die in a fiery car crash after they attempt to run him down.

These are vicious kills.

Oh, yeah.

Like, this doesn't feel like vigilante. This feels like this is the horror villain going after the teens.

Yeah. If they hadn't already established how terrible these teens are, you might feel bad for them.

You might, but you don't.

Apparently there's a deleted scene where Toxie. It turns out Toxie didn't kill Wanda or Julie. It just really injured Wanda's butt and cut off all of Julie's hair.

Julie got off easy then. Yeah, if that's the case.

But apparently they run into each other while they're filing a police report about the monster, and they both laugh at the other one's inconvenience.

Hysterical.

Yeah.

So happy that got cut. We just assume they're dead. So much better.

It's apparently still in the director's cut.

And a Japanese version Cannot believe there's a director's cut.

Believe it.

Toxi's going to kill this seemingly innocent elderly woman who's getting her son's come stained jeans dry cleaned.

Yeah.

I'm not saying that to be funny. That is exactly what's happening.

That is exactly what's happening. To even mention she's a little person.

She is a little person. And we later discover that she was actually running a human trafficking organization. And the mayor's like, no, we got to cover that up.

We can't do that because this is simulated. But Melvin becomes horrified by like these violent tendencies that he has and he flees into the woods with Sarah.

They live in a tent, and the mayor's going to call the National Guard to hunt. Taxied out.

Apparently he doesn't have a lot of faith in his police force led by his Nazi chief of police.

You're not just saying that he talks in German, says achtung and salutes.

Yeah, no, he's not a Nazi. Like how we use it regularly throughout our lives these days. But like, he's actually a Nazi.

Right. Like when they remade this movie, hopefully not out yet. The remake of it with Peter Dinklage.

Right.

I would imagine that if they still have the Nazi police chief, he's going to be driving a swastikar,.

A Tesla, of course.

And he's probably going to repeat, I'm bringing comedy back.

Can't even be funny anymore. When authorities locate Melvin and Sarah, the townspeople intervene to protect their mop wielding hero.

And Melvin's mother publicly identifies and accepts her mutated son.

Kind of. She just yells at a police officer, that's my son. That's my son.

That's my boy. That's my good boy.

I was actually surprised because they made a human shield around Toxi. And I'm genuinely surprised that the mayor didn't just light everybody up, because that's.

I was too.

This type of movie.

I got the vibes from the mayor that he was the kind of guy who would be like, ah, fuck it, and start shooting people just to get to Toxi.

But instead, Melvin's going to expose the mayor and his corruption, and he's gonna kill him by literally going up to him and saying, just gonna check to see if you have any guts. To which he punches him in the stomach and pulls out his guts.

You gotta.

After he does that, Toxic Avengers, celebrated as Tromaville's hero and continues his mission to mop up crime in the city. He runs into the sunset. Literally.

Yeah, that's it. That's Toxic Avenger.

Bryan. I absolutely adore this movie.

God, this movie's so fun.

I forgot how much fun this movie is. It's on YouTube if you guys want to watch it.

Yeah.

Oh, it's worth the revisit. It is so worth it.

It's also only $5 right now on Fandango at home if you use that app.

There you go. Go get it. Go. Stop listening to this bullshit. Go watch that. So much better.

Just non stop. What the hell are we watching from Stephanie the whole time is great.

I love it. She got the right reaction. Perfect. You ready to put the Schlockometer into effect and see what it does?

Let's. Let's check out how B this B movie is.

I have no idea, no clue how this is going to go.

So this is exciting. Our first category is entertainment value.

It's a full blown tent.

Absolutely. So entertaining. Is it intentionally entertaining? I actually think it is.

I actually do think it is.

I think this is completely intentional.

Yep. That was an easy one to start with.

That was easy. Our next category is memorable characters.

I love Toxie. I love Melvin. I love Bozo. Yelling, stressing me out.

Julie. Stressing me out.

Julie.

Yeah, I Also Sarah.

Also Sarah. But I remembered damn near everyone from the first watch. It's been years.

And every single person I was like, oh, yeah, I didn't forget about him. Except for. Except for the health club drug dealer who gets crushed with the.

I did forget about that one. You're right.

The weight through his face.

That is kind of out of nowhere.

And I kind of forgot about Mrs. Haskell, the human trafficker.

I'm going to go eight.

Eight.

That's enough people to forget because you're absolutely right.

Yeah. I mean, as long as you remember Melvin, Toxie, Sarah.

How about the mayor? Tell you the truth.

Me too. That's. That's actually kind of bad because he is the main villain. But like, Bozo is so good.

He's so good.

Yeah.

And it's insane because when they were filming this shot all around Jersey, like Hackensack, boot and Jersey. So much booting. The actors didn't really know what this movie was while they're doing it. They just got told, just go over the top.

It's going to fit the tone for what we're doing. Just go over the top.

Just get crazy with it.

They didn't understand what this movie was Till it was all thrown together like, okay, now I get it.

Oh, that explains so much.

You put a lot of insane pieces of a puzzle together and hoping for the best.

Yeah. Apparently during pre production, Vincent d' Onofrio was set to play the role of Bozo.

Oh my God.

Yeah. But he asked for a slight raise and was got as.

Yeah, that's going to happen.

Vincent d' Onofrio asked for more money because he's Vincent d'. Onofrio. And they're like, get out of here. We don't have it. Let's get Gary Schneider instead.

They always called him the Discount Vincent d'. Onofrio.

He was actually my pick to play Kingpin.

That's right.

You're stressing me out.

Daredevil.

We've been doing this too long. Uh huh. Next category is genre exploitation.

So the genre for this, there's a few of them, obviously. Comedy.

Definitely comedy.

Definitely horror.

Yes.

Definitely superhero.

Definitely superhero. Which I think was the unintentional one on this one.

Looking on IMDb, it's listed as B action, B horror, body horror, dark comedy, monster horror, satire, splatter horror, superhero action comedy. There's a lot of things there that is a lot.

I'm wondering, what was it trying to be? Not so much. What did it end up being?

I would say body horror.

Yep.

Satire, comedy.

Yeah, I think that's right.

Because they're so over the top that I mean, nothing about this movie is being taken seriously, right?

No, no. I mean, Lloyd Kaufman in 75 was on the set of Rocky and that's where he got the idea to do a movie set in a health club.

And it was at Cannes Film Festival a few years later where they said that horror films weren't popular anymore. They decided it was going to be a health club horror film. And it was originally titled Health Club Horror.

Yeah. Checks out with the comedy. Toxie gets nutshot so many times.

So many times.

So many times.

Mostly by Sarah.

Yeah, Unintentionally, you know, that's like the blind joke. Is that everything she does nutshots him.

Yeah. She opens the champagne.

And it works too, because it's all this quick cutting. It exploits the shit out of everything, doesn't it?

It does.

It has to. It's. It's only crutch when you go into.

A movie going, let's make it a horror movie. Because people aren't making horror movies anymore. You're already exploiting the genre.

Yeah, you are. Before you even start, I'll go nine.

Yeah, I think nine's right.

Remember, we're trying to find the best B movie. We're trying to scale it as a B movie so far. Crushing it.

Absolutely crushing it. The next category is low budget ingenuity.

There's a lot here.

There's a ton.

The hardest thing that they had to deal with was the toxi makeup.

Yeah.

It apparently took three to four hours to apply every single day. And they were running around New Jersey in the summer where it's nice and humid and they had to keep touching it up constantly.

Jennifer Aspinall had to do it, and this is where she earned her stripes. She went on to do the cell she wanted to do Men in Black, I think definitely paid her dues for that.

Speaking of Vincent d', Onofrio, outside of.

The makeup, they also had to do a lot of guerrilla shooting and a lot of cutting deals with people on location in order to get them to shoot. And sometimes they didn't all work out.

They were so budget conscious on this, to the point that Pat Ryan, who plays the mayor in one scene, is laying almost completely naked next to this giant submarine sandwich. Well, they ate that sub.

They had to.

The crew ate that sub.

Oh, God.

The guide dog that was shot had to be trained to glide across the floor on command. And its guts were just spaghetti covered in gray paint.

Well, it's kind of like when the kid's head got crushed. It was just a watermelon stuff with whatever organs they got from the butcher that morning.

Yeah, it was corn syrup, red food.

Dye, and good old chocolate syrup.

Butcher meat.

So good.

Melon and with a wig on it. That was it.

It all works, too, because I can't believe I'm going to say this. And Lloyd Kaufman's talked about this in his books.

He followed the Sergei Eisenstein way of cutting where you wanted to make it quick, like Battleship Potemkin, to really use juxtaposition in a really good way to hide things. Lloyd Kaufman, you should not be talking about Sergei Eisenstein and Toxic Avengers in the same anything. But here we are.

Here we are. One of my favorite things they did to save money was Frank the Knife guy in the taco joint. The actor only has one arm, which helps.

It helps if you're trying to believably rip an arm off a guy. Getting a one armed guy is a good move. You save a lot of money that way.

It's kind of like with Sandman in Spider Man 3. Didn't they use a guy who had an arm cut off for some of those things? Like when he punches through Spidey with the sand arm.

Oh, I think. Yeah, you're right.

Sam Raimi taking tricks out of the Toxic Avenger playbook there.

It's got to be done.

This movie is absolutely brilliant for what it does. I have to go full blown. 10 For it.

10? Yeah.

Have to. And still looked at today as a staple of low budget ingenuity.

Yeah. It's worth mentioning that this film was a $500,000 budget, which is still crazy to me. Yeah.

That it's even that much.

Yeah, that felt high to me. 10 For low budget ingenuity. Next category is technical incompetence.

I don't know how much there is.

I don't either. I think this is pretty well shot.

It is pretty well shot. Even to the point that they shot on 16 millimeter and blew it up to 35 to get the grains.

Yeah, because it was cheaper to do that and it got the look they wanted.

Yeah, I. I do have some problems with the first fight scene. It's a little dark. It's hard to see what's going on.

Well, they had to use practical lighting and then just kind of light key lighting wherever they could.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a stolen shot. So it's not like they have time to set up all the lights.

Oh, Uncle Lloyd, why'd you have to be so good at filming things?

We want to give you the best score possible, but damn it, you're so competent in the technical class.

Pretty damn competent. I think I'm going zero.

I think it's a zero.

He knew what he was doing.

He knew damn well what he was doing. I mean, it's not his first rodeo.

It's not. That's so unfortunate or fortunate. I don't know which way to look at it.

Well, we'll make up for it in the next category.

Quotes 10 easy 10. Easiest 10 in the world.

This movie. Start. The first line of this movie is, would you take a look at that fucking guy?

I still say you're stressing me out, Julie. Just for kicks all the time. It's been years. Years.

It's my first day on the force and I'm chasing monsters, checking to see.

If this guy has any guts.

Hey, look, Frank. Teeny boppers.

10 Has to be a 10.

Next category is WTF Moments.

There are so many in this movie,.

They really don't stop.

They can't stop.

I have two that I wrote down and we've already touched on one of them quite a bit.

Which one?

When they shot the guide dog.

Yep. Yep.

Apparently, that's the scene that has gotten the most complaints.

As it should.

But the one that really bothered me, the one that was like, I can't believe they're doing this. And it's actually the reason that Patrick Kilpatrick. Yes, that's his real name, who plays Leroy, quit the movie.

And it's because he had to point a shotgun at a baby.

It's insanity that he had to do that. I. Yeah, that actually bugged me a little bit.

I was uncomfortable, but it's definitely a WTF moment.

I think my biggest WTF moment was in the alley fight scene where he just plucks out the one bad guy's eyes.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Just. I don't know why I don't like eye stuff.

Yeah, who does? Really?

Like when you go on you porn and type in I stuff you want?

Why are you typing it in, Dave? I think it might be secretly what you want.

Oh, step eye stuff. What. What is that? That's a weird sub.

I. Obviously, there's the kid getting his head crushed by the car too.

That's an easy one. No, you see that coming a mile away.

Yeah, but you don't expect them to show it as much as they do.

That's a good point. And you know what?

In all fairness, when the kid's army crawling after it gets hit the first time, it made me think of the kid and Freddie got fingered in the restaurant when he's already kind of beat up. Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know. I didn't like the. The blind girl almost getting raped. That bugged me.

No, that's never a fun depiction.

No. And especially because she wasn't using any products from Goop Wellness.

Oh, no.

I don't know. It's the best segue I got.

Yeah.

Because we got a few. We got a few new things on Goop, my friend.

What's new on Goop?

The first thing that's new is they added an adventure challenge called Quickies.

Oh.

It's a fun way to mix things up on a date night.

This set of 30 scratch off cards offers different prompts for you and your partner to complete, all in the spirit of connecting, exploring, and boosting intimacy. Each card has icons to let you know what that challenge will look like in terms of budget, weather, and location.

And each challenge is different, with options ranging from testing out new positions, coming up with code words. And the best part, each challenge is 30 minutes or less. You're treating sex like a Scratch off.

Like you gotta go find an old penny and scratch it off and you gotta finger blast with your penny fingers. I don't care for that at all.

Ah, horny lottery.

Yeah. Let me touch you with these penny fingers.

Just letting you know it costs $30. Can't believe it either. It's $1 scratch card. Not even scratch and sniff. But what would you make it smell like? Don't answer that. Do not answer that.

Like a candle from Goop.

It's very yeasty. The next one is the Madeyou Blush kit. It's a limited edition set. Comes with everything you need for your ultimate Goop glow.

Oh, no.

It's got your color blur, lip and cheek, color of Venus, a soft fuchsia, and our famous tinted lip balm set. Also just a vibrator.

We'll just throw that in there.

That's all they threw in there. They had just lip balms and blush and they're like it. Vibrator, 152 bucks. Thanks.

They came for the makeup. They left satisfied.

They did. And the last one I have, it's just restraint tape. It's 100% PVC, nonstick design, vegan and cruelty free. And there's 50ft of it.

There's only one review on it and it's a one star review that does not say what they didn't like about it. But I have to imagine that it's just fucking tape and it costs $55.

Oh, stop it.

$55?

That's more than a dollar a foot.

That's insanity.

You can't do that.

All sales final, by the way.

Well, yeah. Everything from that website is going to get goopy.

There you go. That's what's new on goop.

What does that mean for our WTF moments?

Oh, there's quite a few other than.

I just had one of my own.

I'm going to go with an 8 strictly because we've seen this before. Yeah, it's no fault of this movie.

Right?

But it's an 8.

It's an 8.

I feel jaded like an egg that I found on Goop.

Would it have been higher if it had been my first time? I don't know.

I don't know either, but it feels like a good baseline.

I agree. It's fair. And also I like it. Damn it. So, yeah, eight.

Yep.

Our next category is the Audacity.

The Audacity. Why don't you explain what the audacity means?

What did the filmmaker have in mind here what was going through their insane mind when they came up with the premise of this film? Where do they get the audacity in.

Uncle Lloyd we trust.

In Uncle Lloyd We Trust.

This is a movie about a nerd who ends up in a vat of toxic waste and becomes a buff superhero who's omnipotently attracted to evil and kills people with a mop.

That's it. And you want to know what delivers all around.

All on the sake of a message about keeping the earth clean, I think.

Oh, boy. Wait till we talk about birdemic. Just give it time, man. You don't even know what you're saying right now.

Okay.

I'm going to go with a 10.

Yeah.

He had a vision. And by golly, he realized he had the audacity. He had the audacity.

That is a 10. You know what else Uncle Lloyd had? Our next category? Heart.

He had so much heart making this movie. The passion that he put into this thing. It's a $500,000 movie. Yeah. There's movies that cost less, but there's movies that cost more.

Way more.

Movies like this don't happen unless you care. Absolutely nobody sets out to make a bad movie on purpose. Nobody.

Right.

Why would you put your time and your effort into making something that's garbage?

There's no reason for it. Especially something that you're self funding and self producing at a low budget. Just because you think it needs to exist in the world.

I feel like this is probably where I should read some letterboxd reviews.

Yeah.

To kind of capture the heart of what this movie is. There's a lot of five stars. But there's a ton of four stars. Like people who didn't want to go the whole way.

They're like, listen, I love it, but it's Toxic Avenger. So four stars.

So the first four star review. One of the most delightfully tasteless and unwholesome movies ever made. And probably the best. Hey, Mom. Watch this prank you can ever pull.

It takes legitimate talent and dedication to be this excessively offensive.

So God bless Troma for giving this world a superhero parody so heinous and obscene that it makes the gratuity of the boys look like the fucking VeggieTales.

Yeah. That's a good point. I feel like it's become more and more popular to be over the top and grotesque Just because.

Just because. But it does take legitimate talent and dedication to be this excessively over the top.

Absolutely.

And pull it off.

Absolutely.

On the flip side of it, a two star review. I can see why this is a cult favorite, but I found the whole thing annoying. I get that it was going for schlocky. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

You don't go for schlock. You earn schlock.

You earned schlock, as we're proving now. But it was too self aware about how crappy it is. So that's an interesting twist.

Is that a bad thing?

That's kind of what we're trying to figure out. It practically screams in your face, look how bad this is. Isn't it funny? I like my stupid movies more earnest.

Oh, that's a fascinating take.

I think that those two reviews right there sum up kind of what we're going for here.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the gamut. Really.

I'll give you a third one just because I have a third one. It's also a four star review. This is the John Waters movie for straight people. I love it.

That's a fun way of putting it wrong. Wow.

I feel like those first two reviews though, absolutely capture the heart of what this is. Yes, it's here to shock you and entertain you, but also disgust you and turn you off.

Right.

It kind of makes it perfect.

Kind of does.

It lives on the edge of what a B movie is going for. The experimentation of it, understanding how self aware it really is, but leaning into it pretty heavily. And you either like it or you don't, right?

Yeah. It's pushing the boundaries that a major studio would never let you.

And it's putting that passion into it and making it, you know, trying to execute it at a level that people want to see.

Bryan, I'm going with a 10 again.

10. It has to be a 10. And our final category, cult ability.

I mean, this is a classic. We picked it for a reason.

There is a reason.

It's kind of cheating.

But we're finally getting it released in August with Peter Dinklage and Kevin Bacon and Elijah Wood. Very excited. But yeah, obviously this is like one of the most cultable movies of all time.

It absolutely is. So it's another 10.

Three sequels too.

I don't know why. Like when you said sequels, my first thought was it's either In Toxic Avengers 3, I think it is just the bus that they keep driving into a ditch.

I cannot get that out of my head.

Yeah.

Just repeatedly driving a bus into a ditch. Why is that, like, ingrained in my head?

I don't know.

And it's insanity because it's like, God, I remember where I was when I heard about 9 11. I remember where I was when, like, Covid shut the world down. And I remember where I was watching this fucking bus drive repeatedly into this ditch.

He's way ahead of his time.

Do you believe that?

I do.

I kind of do too.

I do. Like, there's a lot of people who. They say that and be like, ah, fuck off. No, you didn't make that kind of money.

But this thing made $140,000 opening in 45 theaters.

It did. And I mean, Lloyd Kaufman is looked at as one of the heroes of independent film. Yeah, like, we don't get James Gunn without Lloyd Kaufman.

You don't get Kevin Smith or James Gunn or. Yeah, I mean, this movie is listed as a influence for a lot of very famous directors and actors and writers, producers, you name it.

11:11 On cultibility, I'm here for it. Yeah, I think it's the right move.

This scale now is truly arbitrary.

Completely arbitrary. There's nothing to compare it to either, because all we know is this movie is this percent schlockometer.

It's this good out of 100 in terms of being a B movie.

Yeah, it's this good at being bad. The final score for The Toxic Avenger is 86. Great. I think it sounds good. Sounds high.

Like it's a good base mark. It's.

It's a very good starting point.

There will be better B movies. There's going to be a lot of worse B movies, I'm sure. I don't know which way is worse. Is it a golf thing?

Worse? Good. I don't even know anymore.

Oh, man.

This is an interesting experiment.

I love this experiment. Thank you for indulging us in this experiment. Let's see if. If we go forward because. Yeah, the list is long. The list is delightful.

Speaking of which, I actually got an email from Mr. Phil Hawkins. I felt wanted to let us know that we convinced him to watch Craven.

Oh, did we?

Apparently. If only to witness another over the top Russell Crowe acting performance. But of course he's acting. Performance.

He is acting. That's being.

He is looking forward to exploring B movies with us. He's never seen Toxic Avenger, but he's gonna cross it off his list.

He had me at free on YouTube.

Also Silent Night, Deadly Night 2.

He's never seen the first one as you do. Yeah, whatever Phil wants, Phil gets. In my mind.

He has some already. I love it.

He's got his finger on the pulse of the people of the U.S. this is fun.

This is a lot of fun. What are we going to do next month?

Your call. Because we can either do another caped while we sort this out. We could do another one of these. I don't really want to burn another one, but.

No, I think we could go back to cape next month.

What are you thinking?

Is it time to change the power dynamic in the DC Universe?

What does that mean?

Well, that's what the Rock was always saying, that the power dynamic of the DC universe.

And you realize, like, I. I keep resisting it for a reason.

The only reason I keep going back to Black Adam is because it's the next movie in the dcu, so we can finally put it in in the ground. They don't get much better from here.

You're not wrong at all. Yeah, fine.

We don't have to.

I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. I'm gonna leave everybody on a bit of a cliffhanger here. We're either gonna talk about Black Adam or.

Oh, that would be a lot of fun. I'm into that.

So you're gonna have to stay tuned next month to see which one it's gonna be.

Only time will tell.

Only time will tell.

Until then, thank you guys for being here. Thank you for your dollars.

Bryan, I'm a little upset you didn't mention my Tromaville Health Club shirt that I've had on this entire time.

You have been wearing a trauma club health club T shirt. My beverage must be kicking in.

It must be unreal.

Yeah. Tromaville Health Club. I knew you were gonna be wearing the shirt before I even logged into our call here.

So superhero from New Jersey. Why wouldn't I buy this shirt?

The first superhero from New Jersey.

Goddamn right. It's the most from New Jersey. Fucking Tromaville didn't even say gabagool once. It's a stereotype, and it's offensive.

Hey, guess what? We just said it. Gabagool.

Apologies to all the Italians out there. Say hi to your mother for me.

If you want to send us an email, like send it to Bear me a Movie [email protected] or katepodcastersmail.com we monitor both. Still.

Still.

So however you're feeling that day, you.

Guys really are the best. Thank you for sticking with us month after month, year after year. I hope you guys like this. This is a lot of fun to do, A lot of fun to talk about.

Ton of fun if it goes forward. Yeah, we'll tighten it up. Obviously. We're fucking doing on this stuff. Yeah.

We're just getting a feel for it.

We're just spitballing, see what's gonna stick.

Exactly.

You should see the list of B movies.

There's some real interesting things on there.

I can't wait.

Very exciting.

Maybe stay tuned. Maybe stay tuned. Bryan, do you have anything else?

No, that is it for me.

I think that's it.

Yeah, the DCEU Black Adam, but until then, keep your blood fake, your boobs real, and your booms out of the shot.