When Marisa Tomei picked up the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
in 1993, for her role as loudmouthed Brooklyn tart Mona Lisa Vito in
My Cousin Vinny, an urban legend immediately sprang up to the effect
that her name had been read out by mistake by a clearly confused Jack
Palance.
Although he did mispronounce several nominees, Palance did - of course
- read out the correct name. Tomei won fair and square. It’s not
hard to see why people struggled to believe it though. For one thing,
the Academy rarely honours comedy performances – even in such traditionally
sparse categories as Best Supporting Actress. On top of that, Tomei beat
such award-friendly talents as Vanessa Redgrave, Miranda Richardson and
Joan Plowright to the prize. Add to that the fact that in 1993 Tomei
was, at best a TV actress, with tiny roles in the Stallone mob comedy
flop, Oscar, and the Nicolas Cage erotic thriller, Zandalee, as her only
movie credits. Well, OK, that’s not strictly true. There was one
other movie on her CV – but it’s certainly not the sort of
thing that’s likely to sway Oscar voters.
The Toxic Avenger was the first production to squirt out of Troma, Lloyd
Kaufman’s ultra-cheap exploitation outfit. The story of Melvin,
a hapless nerd transformed into a radioactive superhero after taking
a nosedive into a vat of toxic waste, it’s a shamelessly gory,
stupid, offensive and shallow romp custom made for an era of VHS sleaze
and grotty Times Square cinemas.
Set in the town of Tromaville, a large portion of the film’s action
takes place in a sleazy health club where the staff and customers are
more interested in preening and posing in tiny lycra costumes than in
actually keeping fit. Melvin is the janitor, and his snivelling awkwardness
is a thorn in the side of Bozo, a musclebound thug who divides his time
between mauling girlfriend Julie, pumping up his biceps and killing children
in drunken hit and run “accidents”. It’s Bozo and Julie
who plot Melvin’s tumble into toxic sludge, and it’s them
he comes after once the goop has changed him into a super-powered mutant.
It’s while Toxie menaces Julie that we get our fantastically brief
glimpse of the young Marisa Tomei. She’s innocently strolling through
the locker room, wrapped in a towel and spraying her pits with deodorant,
when she sees the mis-shapen monster attacking Julie. Tomei – credited
only as Health Club Girl – screams, Julie runs off, Toxie chases
after her and that’s the last we see of our future Oscar recipient.
For those who don’t want to suffer the whole movie, you can just
skip ahead to 51m 33s to see this riveting example of her promising early
work.
Need to know: The Toxic Avenger was followed by three sequels with the
most recent, Citizen Toxie (see: Corey Feldman), hitting video shelves
in 2000. Despite featuring ludicrous amounts of nudity and violence,
The Toxic Avenger even managed to spawn a kid’s cartoon show, The
Toxic Crusaders, in 1991. Lloyd Kaufman helped to finance The Toxic Avenger
by working behind the scenes on various studio movies, including Rocky
and Saturday Night Fever. He also produced The Final Countdown (see:
Kirk Douglas) and can be briefly seen in that film as a radar operator.
Availability: The Toxic Avenger can be found on DVD.
