There are so many remakes these days that it’s hard to keep track. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad thing either. Yeah sure, I see the argument about “Hollywood running out of ideas”, and to some extent I agree, but history has shown us time and time again that sometimes these remakes are bloody awesome. Just look at Scarface if you don’t believe me. Or The Thing. Or The Fly.
The point is, whether the remake is good or bad, it’s easy to simply dismiss any potential reboot at face value, without even thinking about it. But occasionally there’s remake news that makes you stop in your tracks and think “… Oh, wow. Really?”.
This brings me to the reason I wrote this piece in the first place. Once upon a time, not that long ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was on board with a large budget remake of Troma’s signature franchise, The Toxic Avenger.
Take a moment to breath that in. It kinda leaves a funny taste in your mouth, right? The Austrian Oak, the Governator working hand in hand with Lloyd Kaufman? Troma meets the Terminator?
It’s not like it was even one of those hooey fake news pieces either. Schwarzenegger himself went on record several times to talk about his involvement. Exactly who he was supposed to play though will probably remain one of Hollyweird’s great mysteries. Sure, we’d all like to see the former Mr Universe prancing around in a tutu waving a mop in the air, but the sad reality is he was probably only ever going to play an OTT version of himself, probably the film’s big bad guy. But still, it would have been pretty bloody cool.
So how come the film never happened? How come we never saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Toxic Avenger remake? Well, according to Troma’s head honcho Lloyd Kaufman, big Arnold quit the project after sitting through the 1984 original. That’s right folks, he’d signed up sight unseen and then balked when he realised what kind of movie it was.
If only they could have kept that DVD away from him until the filming was over. Sigh. Who knows how the project would have turned out, or what it could have done for Arnold’s career? I mean, after all, with performances like Mr Freeze in Batman & Robin under his belt, he’d be a perfect match for a Troma movie!
According to the Horror Hound issue published for the original Toxic Avenger’s 30th anniversary, Arnold was to play a character named The Exterminator, who would have been the one to train Melvin once he gets his powers. I guess he could have turned out to be the bad guy…twist ending in a movie that will probably never exist.
Oh, and also The Exterminator’s real name was going to be Floyd Kaufman.