A few months ago, The Toxic Avenger sound editor Casey Genton mentioned something that happens in the upcoming remake, referring to the scene in question as "Butt Guts."
Fans of the Troma cult classic were understandably intrigued, and director Macon Blair has now elaborated with a hilariously gruesome explanation.
If you'd rather not know what happens in what sounds like one of the movie's goriest sequences, here's your spoiler warning.
While chatting to /Film, Blair was asked about the "Butt Guts" reference, and shared the following description.
"We shot a scene where Toxie, he's fighting the bad guys in the restaurant. And it was actually done entirely from — as soon as the fight starts, once the first guy gets chopped in the face, you don't really see what's happening. You see, from the outside perspective, blood splashing on the window and that sort of thing. But then as we got into post-production, I think because Legendary was pleased with what they were seeing or they were excited about it or whatever, they came back and they said, ‘Would you want to add some additional shots?’ Not like a whole new sequence or not a whole new character, but just literally one day's worth of shooting just for some fun stuff. We can sort of adjust the budget to do that."
We actually see the beginning of this scene in the recently released trailer, with Toxie (Peter Dinklage) removing a guy's jaw with his mop, and some blood splashing on the widow. We most definitely do not see what happens next, however!
“And so some of those shots that we did were just some little digital effects that Phil Tippet studio did. But one of them was what became known as the Butt Guts Unit, which came about like this. And I'm so glad you started the interview with, ‘Did it make you laugh and was that the justification for it?’ Never a better example than the Butt Guts, which I was like, ‘Yeah, dude, we could just get these little out-of-context flashes of what Toxie is doing in that restaurant.’ We were sound mixing the movie at night because I was actually working on another movie during the day, so everybody was kind of tired and punchy. And I was like, ‘I think what we should do is Toxie will take his mop and he's going to rip this guy's pants down.’ And one of the assistant editors on the movie, named Delaney, she just goes like, ‘He's going to rip his guts out of his butt?’ And I was like, ‘Nope ... yes.’
“And then it became writing the executive of Legendary, these very responsible, powerful people, ‘He's going to put his fist in his butt and pull his guts out of his butt.’ Send! And then I woke up the next morning and was like, ‘Oh, I should have kind of added some context or explained myself a little bit better.’ For some reason, he wrote back, he was like, ‘Yeah, dude, we can do that.’ And so then we ended up in Los Angeles, we had one day of shooting in a special effects shop where they created a fake butt that had a cavity in the middle that you could pull intestines out. And so we had a dedicated unit whose sole purpose was to shoot that. It was just two shots in the movie, but it was one of those ones where it was like, ‘Yes, that makes me laugh. And hopefully enough people will have a similar reaction to that.’”
Well... okay!
The original movie revelled in its sometimes shocking imagery (the kid getting his head run over at the start, for example), and it certainly sounds like this reimagining has retained at least some of that same nihilistic energy.
Check out the recent red band teaser below.
“While the original film (which premiered in 1984 – almost 40 years ago!) followed the fate of Melvin Ferd Junko III (Mitch Cohen), who goes from zero to toxic hero in a case of bullying gone awry, Macon Blair’s contemporary take follows a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength all his own.
Peter Dinklage stars as downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze who, after falling into a vat of toxic waste, becomes none other than The Toxic Avenger. This timely reimagining is up to its eyeballs in environmental themes as Winston goes up against the evil forces of greed and corruption to save his son, his friends, and his community. Even as this story exists on its own terms, the spirit undoubtedly remains connected to the original. Troma fans old and new will be pleased to know that the film has been rated “R” for violence and gore – as per Troma tradition.”
The Toxic Avenger was first introduced in the 1984 movie of the same name from indie studio Troma Entertainment, and has since gone on to achieve cult status with several sequels, a comic book series and even a short-lived 1991 children's animated show called The Toxic Crusaders.
The Toxic Avenger also stars Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Julia Davis, Jonny Coyne, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.
No theatrical release date has been announced.