Interviews
From Conception to Creation: Reimagining ‘The Toxic Avenger’ Through Practical Effects
Toxie returns to the big screen in Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger, but in a very different form. The new radioactive mop-wielder, Winston Gooze, pays tribute to the original character but comes (fore)armed with his own defining features and atomic mop.
Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones”) plays Winston Gooze, the struggling janitor who transforms into a crime-fighting mutant due to a freak accident in Blair’s reimagining.
The new Toxie’s look blends reinvention with homage to the 1984 Troma cult classic, reinterpreting the atypical superhero’s asymmetrical facial features, costume, and green hue for a new era.
It was important to writer/director Macon Blair not to veer too far off course from the original design, but he didn’t just revisit the original for inspiration behind the new Toxie.
“Some of our early designs went too far from the original design, and I felt like we might have lost some of that connection, some of that fun. So, we mainly looked at Jennifer Aspinall’s design from the original as well as the ‘gentler’ look from the Toxic Crusaders cartoon and kind of landed somewhere in the middle of that,” Blair told BD of his approach to the character.
From the earliest stages of The Toxic Avenger’s inception, Blair turned to concept artists Jonas Goonface and Vanessa McKee to design the new Toxie and the vibrant foes he encounters.
Concept Art by Jonas Goonface
“I was given a list of kooky characters, weird settings, some aesthetic, some ideas to try and see what I would come up with,” Jonas says. “I’m an illustrator, I do comic art, and that’s how we connected. So I came up with some concepts. My impression is [Macon Blair] was able to work those into a pitch to get the movie made.”
Considering the film was shelved for two years before it was acquired for release, it’s been a while since both artists had worked on the project pre-production. Jonas recalls finding Toxie less intimidating than the villains. “I think I was a bit timid, getting into some of those villains, and Macon Blair was very helpful in pushing me to make them more hateful, make them worse!”
While his vision of Toxie didn’t translate to the screen, the artist was surprised to find that one character matched his design perfectly. “There were some concepts that translated almost one-to-one, and then a lot of them were completely unrecognizable. It’s really funny to see whenever I do get a chance to make concept art. Elijah Wood‘s character [Fritz Garbinger] translated perfectly from what I drew.”
Fritz Garbinger Concept Art by Jonas Goonface
Much of Toxie’s new look stems from Vanessa McKee’s designs, and the process couldn’t have been easier for the artist. She explains that she was also brought into the project well ahead of production, and how simple it was to collaborate with Blair. “He’s like, ‘I’m writing this thing,’ and he sent me the script. We started working together, but it didn’t go into production for a while; he really was excited to just get us started on it. He just sent me the script, and we went back and forth a couple of months and came out with the designs. But he’s just so easy to work with. The back and forth is really collaborative. He knew that he wanted Peter Dinklage, you know? And he wanted something that was similar to the original Toxic Avenger, but he wanted me to run with it.”
She continues, “I was just like, ‘Well, what if we do some glowy stuff, and it’s purple, and this and that? What about an eye that’s big and black?’ I remember that was just a random sketch that I sent him, and he was like, ‘I love the black eye with the little red pupil.’ Okay, let’s keep it.”
The character designs may have locked into place early on in the project, but the artists’ involvement with The Toxic Avenger doesn’t stop there. Both Jonas Goonface and Vanessa McKee contribute to the movie’s graphic novel tie-in.
Even the mop gets a makeover for The Toxic Avenger 2025. Blair tells BD, “The main idea was that we wanted the mop to feel a bit like a character itself, so having it glow from inside its own center, giving it a kind of internal energy was part of it, and also giving it a hint of a voice, that you can kind of hear in the background of some shots. The whole thing is fairly ridiculous, I mean it’s a fuckin mop, but we thought it would be fun to treat it with the solemnity of something like Superman’s Kryptonian crystal or the One Ring.”
Bringing all the designs to life on screen fell to Millennium FX, who understood the film’s Troma roots. It also helped that Blair had a clear vision of what he wanted. Creature FX Supervisor Kate Walshe breaks down their pitch and the initial hurdle of creating creature effects for a character’s unique casting situation.”
“We did a pitch based on a diagram of Toxie, of just how we would approach it, because they were keen to make it as economical as possible. We wanted to do as many reusable bits as possible. They were keen just to keep the budget true to the Troma aesthetic. We tried to keep it as close to Macon’s vision as we could. I think the first of the many obstacles that every project has is the cast. Obviously, we were never going to put Peter into the makeup. It was always going to be somebody else. From the very outset, from the first conversation, it was going to be a stunt double.”
Taylour Paige and Luisa Guerreiro as Toxie in ‘The Toxic Avenger’
“And that person proved to be unavailable, and we found this woman, the incredible Luisa Guerreiro, who had really good combat training, a really good actress,” Walshe continues. “She’s also got a photographic memory. She could just look at the page of the script, and she just knew the script off by heart straight away. It was incredible. Anyway, I think the challenge then was trying to tie her anatomy, her facial anatomy, and Peter’s together.”
Creature Effects Lead Sculptor Chris Goodman expands on the process of sculpting a mutant creature meant to resemble Peter Dinklage but played by another performer. “We had these sketches, they were like cartoony sketches to start with, but they were very evocative of where Macon might want to go and the tone of it. But we still had to translate that into a design that was going to give you a closer idea of what you’re actually going to be looking like. That was based on two things at the same time. One thing over Luisa’s proportions, but then in the design of the face, taking that essence of Peter Dinklage and having that there. So that you felt like you saw that transformation. And you felt like it was all of one, complemented by how great Luisa was doing the lines in Peter’s style.”
Goodman notes that it was a highly collaborative process. “In terms of what we were doing, our job was really to bring the essence of Peter into the design. That’s really why I know the first sculpts that I worked on, digital sculpts, were closer in a way to what I felt like I was thinking in the design. But then my CEO, Neill Gorton, has an amazing eye for the overall feel of a face. And he was like, ‘We just need to get some of the face shape, the essential face shape of Peter into it.’ So, he did a pass in between my beginning sculpts and where I ended up taking them, of all the beautiful detailing, all the pustules. He just added that 10% extra Peter into the sculpt.“
Creating a suit that resembles Dinklage but fits Guerreiro is even trickier when you realize that Toxie is an expressive, talkative character that needs some mobility, especially around the mouth. Visibility was also tricky, thanks to Toxie’s big black eye – an animatronic component built into the suit’s cowl. “We call those touchdowns where the prosthetic goes onto visible parts of the face,” Goodman explains. “One eye obviously was Luisa, and that’s important, and the other eye was an animatronic that was very, very beautifully animated to go with the performance. So you’ve got a puppeteer basically moving with whatever Luisa was doing on the day. The mouth and the eye are the bits that you can see.
Luisa Guerrero getting Toxie ready behind the scenes
“But basically, when you’ve got a big creature prosthetic like that, you do try and make sure that you go closer to the performer’s face, their own face as possible, so their performance translates. They often have to maybe exaggerate their facial movements a little bit to go through that layer of silicon. It’s a beautiful material, silicon, and it really translates performance through it if you’re careful. Some bits are chunkier than others, depending on what parts. You want to add those bits of chunkiness to bits of the face that don’t really move that much anyway, like around the head, so you’ve got a bit more to play with that’s not going to inhibit a performer’s, well, performance.”
Walshe gives as much credit to the Toxie performer as her team, including on-set creature FX supervisor Charlie Bluett. “I think having Luisa, who worked with us and the material so well, was such an incredible boon,” Walshe states. “Because you sometimes put prosthetics onto people’s faces, and they don’t push through it. As Chris says, you sometimes have to over exaggerate. For her, she’s puppeteering her own face effectively while also doing the lines. She had these gnarly teeth in. These crazy big teeth, which really distorted her face shape a bit more as well, were done by a company called Fangs FX. And then the crazy contact lens, which impacted vision a little bit. What really impacted her vision is that she couldn’t see out of one eye because of the animatronic. But she just went full balls to the wall, and pushed at everything.”
As for making the suit, Goodman notes that audiences require a level of sophistication these days when it comes to practical effects. “Instead of live casting, we were 3D scanning performers,” he details of making the creature prosthetics. “We used 3D sculpting to sculpt some of the appliances, not all of them. Some of it was traditionally clay-sculpted. Then we really thought at the beginning of doing 3D printing and 3D mold making as well, in the early days of that. We have progressed a lot more since we did Toxie. And then 3D printing, and then we cast out the pieces traditionally to make the pieces. So it was that of the lo-fi and the hi-fi together basically.”
Walshe adds, “The body was gloves, arms, chest, and separate legs that all clicked into a harness together. I think it was Vanessa Porter, the costume designer, and Macon’s original concept as well, who added all these great bracelets and stuff to hide joints so the hands could come off. All of the body from here down was removable at any point, really. The face was one. It was the cowl with the animatronic.”
Toxie taking down a goon in ‘The Toxic Avenger’
Because Toxie is also a stunt-heavy character, Millennium FX had to build enough to withstand the wear and tear of production. That means many sets of prosthetics. Walshe explains, “We had to make, I think, 30 sets of those for the shooting period, possibly a bit more. Then for the creature costume elements, the arms, the legs, the hands, and everything. I think ultimately we made six sets, but we also made a couple of sets for a stunt double.
“Luisa did have a stunt double because, although she would’ve done anything, she’s so gung-ho, amazing, and actually really well-trained in this stuff. There were a couple of times that they had to throw Toxie from a building, and they just didn’t want to hurt her because she was so important. So yeah, there are a couple of stunts she didn’t do. Then we also made a dummy version of her. We had her body scan, so we just made a foam version of her that they could dress in the costume. A lot of stuff was little bits of gore and things where we sculpted injuries and wounds for a Toxie here that we sent out. But also, the team out there was fabricating stuff on the fly.”
Walshe continues, “I think the Troma aesthetic of it being a combination between a high-end Legendary production and the Troma production work was satisfied, I think.”
It’s also worth noting that Millennium FX was also behind another creature featured in The Toxic Avenger, but you’ll have to tune in to find out.
The Toxic Avenger mops into theaters on August 29. Check local listings and grab your tickets now!
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
Roland notes of his Indiana Jones-like journey, “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. Anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.”
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Suzanne Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Suzanne Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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