Class Trailer review- Toxic Avenger

Toxic Avenger (1986)

Comedy horror

What happened in the trailer? In the trailer we first see a young boy being bullied and then the accident that leads him to be the ‘toxic avenger’. After the accident, loads of action and scenes of the ‘toxic avenger’ beating up bad guys are shown and a really cheesy voice over throughout the whole trailer explaining everything that is going on. We never actually see the ‘toxic avenger’ from the front.

Which positive, clever or interesting aspects do you think you could include in your own trailer? What generic features were fulfilled well? In the trailer we see a lot of action and body horror effects, this is a good thing to include as it keeps the audience interested and excited. No action or gore tends to bore the audience. The best feature of this trailer is the over the top cheesy voice over. Although more comic than horror, it is really entertaining and seems intentional and the repetition of ‘The toxic avenger’ although annoying, is very comedic. There are also a lot of funny scenes, like a bad guy pisses his pants when he sees the ‘toxic avenger’ and another bad guy gets fed a dessert with the voice over saying ‘get your just desserts’.

The body horror works well, scenes of weights getting dropped on heads, a guy’s arm gets pulled off and another bad guy gets set on fire. The main generic horror feature in this trailer is definitely body horror. The most clever aspect of the trailer, I think, is that you never see the face of the ‘Toxic avenger’ and the voice over towards the end mentions that it’s too scary to show it on the trailer and that you have to go to the cinema to see it, which hooks the audience and makes them want to go see the film, even if it just to see the face of the ‘toxic avenger’.

Which aspects of the trailer did you think were unsuccessful and would put of its target audience? How is it disappointing? The main disappointment of the trailer was the sheer lack of horror. The whole trailer is very entertaining and funny but not scary in the slightest. The film is too funny and cheesy to seem scary, and being a horror film the target audience and going to expect a fright. The trailer also shows the whole story. Including most of the encounters with bad guys and shows too many spoilers. The only reason I would pay to go and see this film is that it looks funny and I would like to see the ‘toxic avenger’s ‘face.

What was the trailers average score in class? Why did it receive this mark? The average score was 6. This is because, being a comedy horror, we marked it out of 5 for horror and 5 for comedy. The film seems very funny to a cheesy level which works very well, but the horror aspect just doesn’t seem to be present, which means it fails to reach out to its target audience as it is a horror film.