Picking up pretty much where the second Toxic Avenger film left off, Toxic Avenger III: The Last Temptation Of Toxie finds the first superhero from New Jersey bored. It seems that he's basically eliminated all of the crime that previously plagued Tromaville from the city and is starting to feel a little stale. What to do? Well, he sets out to pony up enough scratch to pay for the operation to restore his blind girlfriend's (Phoebe Legere) eyesight. There's only one problem: he's short on dough.

So in order to make this happen, he takes a high paying job with Apocalypse Inc., a massive corporation run by a shifty chairman (Rick Collins). Things get off to a pretty great start but before you know it, things have gone to Toxie's head and he starts to turn into a yuppie! It turns out that Toxie has inadvertently made a deal with the devil, literally, and now it's up to him to set things right once more in Tromaville. After all, if he doesn't… who will?

While none of the Toxic Avenger films are going to win any Academy Awards, they've earned their place in horror/schlock/exploitation history by way of loads of politically incorrect humor, buckets of gore, and gratuitous sex and violence. And while the widely panned sequels in the trilogy aren't as strong as the first movie, they're still pretty funny and entertaining in their own rights. The scenes in which our oversized mutated superhero goes about his domesticated life are pretty funny and the interaction between Toxie and his blind lady pal are unusually cute in that weird way that scenes like that can be.

This one doesn't have as much going for it in the trash/schlock department, however. The concept behind this, that being Toxie taking on a decidedly evil corporation out to enslave the population of his town, is a good one and it's a concept that Troma still milks to this day (the recent Return To Nuke'em High and Poultrygeist features being prime examples of the studio's penchant for railing against the corporate takeover of America) but the sleaze factor is dialed down quite a bit. The opening scene, which is a highlight real showing off some of Toxie's greatest moments, is a series of grandiose gross-out moments but those are all taken from the earlier films… once we get into the third movie proper things feel a little neutered. There are moments here that work to be sure, but fans of the series by this point want to see all manner of bodily dismemberment and gooey, gory, gross out humor. That aspect of this one is dialed down considerably.

The movie has its moments though. The scene where we see Toxie embracing his new lifestyle and acting like a tennis player is amusing in its ridiculousness and once Toxie gets around to throwing down with the Prince Of Darkness himself, Kaufman and Herz show some creativity and deliver a few memorable set pieces. The monster costume is cool, Toxie looks good here and the makeup appliances used to bring Satan to life are amusing to see. There's some fun stunts and a bit of snappy comedy to keep things from completely falling apart. This is, however, Toxie-light and rightfully, almost universally, regarded as the weakest entry in the series thus far. Thankfully Kaufman and company would once again fire on all cylinders with the fourth film, but this one… well, fans will want to see it simply to see it just go in with properly tempered expectations.

Video:

Troma's 1080p AVC encoded 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen high definition transfer of The Toxic Avenger III isn't going to blow you away but it looks okay. For an early nineties low budget production it looks quite good, particularly when compared to the muddy looking fullframe DVD that was released years back. Colors are improved over that prior release but are still a bit faded looking at times. There's a fair bit of grain and some minor print damage is noticeable but it doesn't really take away from the experience much, and let's face it, you wouldn't want to see a movie like this DVNR'd to death anyway. The source material obviously wasn't in perfect condition but there's a noticable increase in clarity, quality and detail from previous versions of the film.