Back in 1974, filmmakers Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz became fed up with their low-budget exploitation films being screwed over by, in Kaufman’s words, the corrupt American distribution industry. So, they decided to set up their own production and distribution company – Troma Entertainment. In the fifty years since its founding, Troma has become one of the most important and influential production companies in American cinema, with the word “Troma” becoming a byword for super-schlocky, often ridiculous, but deeply satirical films that keep the spirit of true independent cinema alive.

Troma’s greatest success has been The Toxic Avenger, the 1984 film about a dweeby janitor who falls into a barrel of toxic waste and emerges as the Toxic Avenger (affectionately known to fans as Toxie). Wielding his trusty mop, Toxie fights corruption and criminality wherever he goes, making the streets of New Jersey safe once again.

Now, Toxie returns in a huge, big-budget reimagining. The new Toxic Avenger is the brainchild of actor and director Macon Blair and stars Peter Dinklage as Winston Gooze, the janitor who suffers a freak accident and reemerges as the Toxic Avenger. Alongside a cast that includes Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Taylour Paige, and Jacob Tremblay, the new Toxic Avenger is both a totally fresh vision and a loving tribute to New Jersey’s only superhero.

To celebrate Toxie, who better to speak to than his creator and the founder of Troma Entertainment, Lloyd Kaufman? Kaufman directed all four previous Toxic Avenger movies, alongside other Troma classics such as Class of Nuke ’Em High, Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D., Tromeo and Juliet, and Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. He is also directly responsible for helping launch the careers of South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Kevin Costner, Samuel L. Jackson, James Gunn, Eli Roth, and Oliver Stone — all of whom had their first introductions to the industry through films that Kaufman either directed or produced.

Barry Pierce: Lloyd, it’s a real honour to be talking to you. I love the new Toxie. I love how it stands alone as its own thing but is also just full of easter eggs for the fans who’ve been around for over 40 years now. I’d love to hear about your first meeting with Macon Blair. How did that go?
Lloyd Kaufman: Before I met Macon Blair, I had seen his work, both the movies he had made and the ones he’d acted in, like Green Room and I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore. To me, he was clearly the right guy based on his work. He’s young compared to me, who’s almost 80, and when I met him he was effusive about Troma. He couldn’t talk about anything else! I know talent when I see it. Michael Herz and I discovered Trey Parker, Matt Stone, James Gunn, Samuel L. Jackson… I could go on.

I may not have any talent as a filmmaker, and my movies get chopped up by the MPAA, but now Macon Blair has made an unrated film. It’s got a lot of callbacks to Troma, but he gets it. We had a couple of meetings. I gave him a couple of ideas and he, very correctly, ignored every single one of them and made a masterpiece. Where are you calling from, by the way?

BP: I’m calling from London.
LK: Oh, great! Well, Toxie and I have been to the Groucho Club on Dean Street. We’re members there. I’m going to come over in November to help promote the new Toxic Avenger. We follow the football teams in England, and occasionally we like to have a riot in one of the stadiums. It’s always good to have Toxie there to mop up after the riots.
All the cast, by the way, love not only the film but they’re serious Troma fans. Peter Dinklage, all of them! They took this job not because of money. They took it because they want to be involved in something that is truly from the heart, brain, and mind of a filmmaker, and that doesn’t come along too often.

“We had a couple of meetings. I gave [Macon Blair] a couple of ideas and he, very correctly, ignored every single one of them and made a masterpiece.”

BP: It’s hard to describe exactly what this movie is. Is it a remake, a reboot, a sequel…?
LK: No, no. It’s a reimagining! The original Toxic Avenger was kind of like a cartoon. And it’s great! It was way ahead of its time. The special effects in the original Toxie, when Toxie transforms, were eye-popping. But Macon Blair’s transformation is beautiful, and it’s eye-popping. He has a real epiphany. Our Toxie never had that, “I’m going to make the world a better place.” The new Toxie, he’s got more pathos than the original. If the film is not appreciated by Troma fans and movie-going cinephiles, I will eat my mop. And I have a big collection of mops.

BP: You have directing and writing credits on all of the previous Toxic Avenger films, but this is the first Toxie that you’ve not helmed yourself. What was it like to let go of Toxie, for someone else to do their own thing with him?
LK: Well, I’m an auteur theorist. I went to Yale University, where I was roomed with the young man who ran the Yale Film Society, and the little coterie around him were all into Samuel Fuller, Jean Renoir, John Ford, Howard Hawks, and [Kenji] Mizoguchi especially. Being bourgeois, I speak French, naturally. So I could read all the magazines that the Yale Film Society had sitting in the office: issues of Cahiers du Cinéma, which had articles by young journalists who, at that time, were Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol, who then went on to make great movies. So, I bought into the auteur theory.

So whoever is going to direct a Toxic Avenger – I don’t even care if it’s a garbage director – I would leave the director alone, because you don’t interfere with them. Art should come from the brain, heart, and soul of the director. Obviously, a film that cost fifty million dollars like The Toxic Avenger is going to be a team effort, but it’s clearly Macon Blair’s Toxic Avenger, and there’s no way I could be prouder of it, even though I cannot take any credit for it.

“If the film is not appreciated by Troma fans and movie-going cinephiles, I will eat my mop. And I have a big collection of mops.”

BP: Is it in any way funny to you that all these years later we’re getting a widely released, big-budget Toxic Avenger when, presumably, when you were making the first one it was very much on a shoe-string budget? And really, wasn’t the whole idea around Troma that you were purposefully producing these low-budget films?
LK: No, it’s gratifying to see a better Toxic Avenger. In our original Toxie, we were looking at the environment, at bullying, at the evils of the labour, corporate, and bureaucratic elites who were sucking us dry of our economic and spiritual capital. Of course, we still have that going on. But the new Toxie is a perfect hero for our times. And the pathos is the secret – you really care about him.

BP: Does the lasting influence of Troma surprise you?
LK: Look, back in 1974 we were thinking: yes, sweet, it’s easy! Let’s make a film for $100,000. There are two hundred million Americans, and if we get a dollar from each one… How wrong were we!? We made three movies that all got screwed by the distributors. So we decided that with our next one, Squeeze Play, we’d distribute it ourselves. Quickly, we learned that the corrupt American distribution industry is a cartel controlled by a handful of devil-worshipping international media conglomerates.

How nice it is now that we’re living in a period where it isn’t like that anymore. You have Cineverse, you have Neon, you have A24, and you have Troma, down in the sub-basement. There are people now imitating Troma, who are making their own damn movies. I think there’s a lot of hope. Macon has a major career ahead of him. And I know he’s going to give me cameos in every film he makes, because my father told me that if you rub the back of a hunchback, you will have good luck. And I’m that good luck.

BP: So, it took $50 million to make the new Toxic Avenger. If you were offered another $50 million, what film from the Troma back catalogue would you like to see getting the Toxie treatment?
LK: Quite frankly, if Michael Herz and I had $50 million, we would make one movie for a million dollars and then disperse the other $49 million to all these other talented filmmakers. Grant Herson, who just made CaterKiller for, I think, fifty grand – it’s a great film. Imagine what he could do with a million? So I would let loose a torrent of new filmmakers, maybe some old ones too.

The Toxic Avenger is out in UK and Ireland cinemas now