Warning: Major spoilers ahead for The Toxic Avenger
The following content contains descriptions of extreme violence and gore.
Macon Blair’s outrageous update on the 1984 cult classic <em>The Toxic Avenger</em> earns its Unrated designation by leaning into the giddy, gruesome gore that made the original so memorable. Starring Peter Dinklage and Luisa Guerreiro as the voice actor and costumed actor for the mutant hero, The Toxic Avenger busts superhero stereotypes in just about every way imaginable.
While 2023’s The Toxic Avenger (with a 2025 release date) is technically a remake of the 1984 original, it’s really a reboot for the entire Toxic Avenger franchise, which includes four feature films, a comic book series, an animated TV series, and even a stage musical. Blair borrowed the central elements of the original hero and story, but put his own delightfully demented spin on everything.
Perhaps the main common thread between the 1984 and 2023 versions of The Toxic Avenger is the unrelenting onslaught of gore and violence. As proudly-labeled splatter films, both movies ensure that the screen is soaked in blood and viscera throughout most of the narrative, leaving morality in the rearview mirror in favor of stomach-churning gore. We’ve ranked The Toxic Avenger’s goriest moments, from least to most disgusting, specifically so you don’t have to.
10
Mel Ferd Gets Harpooned Out The Window
The movie opens with a reporter named Mel Ferd (an homage, as it’s the original Toxic Avenger’s real name) and his whistleblower colleague seeking to download damning data that will destroy the corporation that’s been poisoning the citizens of St. Roma’s Village. Unfortunately for Ferd, the corporation’s freakish thugs, the Killer Nutz, track them down and confront him in his office.
Ferd is shot multiple times, getting up defiantly each time. The Nutz finally finish the job by blasting him out the window with a massive harpoon, skewering him and sending his body crashing to the pavement below. It’s far from the most disgusting moment in the movie, but it’s a bloody harbinger of the violence to come.
9
Toxie Strong-Arms A Low-Level Enforcer
Toxie’s first kill was featured in The Toxic Avenger‘s red band trailer, and it shows off the mutant hero’s next-level raw strength right away. After a near-run-in with a corporate thug intimidating his elderly neighbor, Toxie runs into him in an alley just after his transformation.
After taking a bullet in the arm and immediately healing, an enraged Toxie rushes the man and rips his arm right off his shoulder, yielding an appropriate geyser of blood for a splatter film. It’s remarkably bloody, but the man survives the encounter, making it decidedly less disgusting than other moments.
8
Bozo Bites The Head That Feeds
Toward the end of The Toxic Avenger, Kevin Bacon’s corrupt businessman Bob Garbinger seeks to power himself up with a serum that mimics Winston Gooze’s unique genetic makeup, which allowed him to survive being thrown into toxic waste. Naturally, it backfires, and transforms the character, who was a stand-in for the original movie’s comically evil villain “Bozo”, into a hairy, misshapen beast.
Bozo encounters his father, who runs the business poisoning the city of St. Roma’s Village, and in his monstrous form attacks his father, biting off his scalp and massacring his associates in the process. It’s a grisly moment shown in all its scalp-peeling glory.
7
Toxie Offers The Killer Nutz Guitarist A Snack
Why not keep the flaying theme going? In the course of the Killer Nutz on-stage massacre, Toxie goes so far as to tackle the guitarist and rip his beard off, skin and all. He then chokes him by stuffing his own beard down his throat, and while that doesn’t kill him on the spot, which is the case for so many other Toxie victims, it’s a disgusting moment because it’s undoubtedly painful.
6
Toxie Mop-Toss Two-Fer
