I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the remake of the 1984 b-movie classic “The Toxic Avenger,” and let you know what cocktails were selling like hotcakes the year the original movie was released.
Click HERE to listen to Shane and me talk about allergies and the movies, Charlie Sheen’s apology and more Canadian comedy on “SNL.”
For the Booze & Reviews look at the bad taste of “The Toxic Avenger” and some cocktails with good tastes to enjoy with the movie click HERE!
I join CTV Atlantic anchor Todd Battis to talk about the dark comedy “The Roses,” the relationship farce “Splitsville,” the gritty crime drama “Caught Stealing” and the rebirth of “The Toxic Avenger.”
SYNOPSIS: In “The Toxic Avenger,” a remake of the 1984 Troma Films gross-out classic, Peter Dinklage plays a down-on-his-luck janitor transformed by radioactive gunk into the mutated superhero, The Toxic Avenger.
CAST: Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Julia Davis, Jonny Coyne, Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon. Directed by Macon Blair.
REVIEW: A modern-day adaptation of the goofy and gory 1984 film of the same name, “The Toxic Avenger” updates the story, but maintains the original’s glorious bad taste.
At the heart of both films is an underdog janitor who uses his newfound powers to fight corruption and abuse of power, but the circumstances are different.
Originally, the main character Melvin (Mark Torgl) was a bullied outcast who, once transformed by a dip in a vat of toxic waste, meted out vigilante justice to get revenge on the baddies who terrorized him and his hometown of Tromaville.
In the new movie Peter Dinklage is Winston Gooze, janitor for corporate behemoth BTH by night, single father to a teenage son Wade (Jacob Tremblay) by day. Diagnosed with a terminal illness, he’s terrified of leaving his son without a father. In desperation he approaches BTH head honcho Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon) to beg for help. In short order he finds himself left for dead in a pool of BTH toxic goo which transforms him into The Toxic Avenger. With his trusty mop, Winston fights to create a future for Wade.
There may be a deeper emotional core to the contemporary Toxie tale, but along with the family drama comes wonderfully over-the-top juvenile humor, exploding heads and bloody mop wounds that need to be seen to be believed.
Director Macon Blair is reverential in his handling of the material. He embraces the shocking schlock of the original, with a cavalcade of practical effects and ridiculous jokes that ensure the spirit of Troma Films lives on. It’s a gory good time with a better-than-expected cast (Dinklage, Bacon and Elijah Wood are having fun here) that doesn’t cater to a mainstream audience.
Fans of midnight movies will be in on the joke, all others, approach with caution.
On the Saturday July 12, 2025 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet Paul Sun-Hyung Lee. You know the Canadian Screen Award winner as family patriarch Appa on “Kim’s Convenience,” and as Inspector Albert Choi, the new head of Station House No 4, on “Murdoch Mysteries” and as Captain Carson Teva on the Star War series “The Mandalorian,” “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka.”
We’ll also meet a guest who began his career as a child actor, appearing in everything from “Back tio the Future II” to Internal Affairs opposite Richard Gere. He became an international star after playing Frodo Baggins in the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He’s Elijah Wood, and his extensive filmography now includes “Bookworm,” an intriguing film about a 12-year-old named Mildred whose life is turned upside down when her mother lands in hospital and estranged, American magician father, Strawn Wise, played by Elijah Wood, comes to look after her. Hoping to entertain the bookish tween, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the notoriously rugged New Zealand wilderness, and the pair embark on the ultimate test of family bonding — a quest to find the mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther.
Then, we spend time with Gabrielle Drolet, a journalist, essayist, and cartoonist based in Montreal. She regularly contributes cartoons to The New Yorker and the Globe and Mail and is the first woman to receive a National Newspaper Award nomination for Editorial Cartooning. In 2020, she developed a condition that made her unable to use her hands. It only worsened over time, and as a writer and artist, she had to learn new ways of creating and expressing herself. She placed her first cartoon in The New Yorker—and then was unable to draw for a full year. She has since found ways around this using graphic design software, exercises, and many, many breaks, but the experience has completely changed her life.
She writes about her experiences in her new book, “Look Ma, No Hands: A Chronic Pain Memoir,” an often funny but profound book on chronic pain, accessibility, and young adulthood.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to do a high five! Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about “The Monkey’s” damn dirty ape, the family story “The Unbreakable Boy” and the Canadian drama “Morningside.”
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I go ape for “The Monkey” and suggest some drinks that’ll make you go bananas!
Listen as we monkey around on Booze & Reviews HERE!
Find out why “Spider-Man” star Tom Holland wasn’t able to buy his own brand of non-alcoholic beer HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “The Monkey,” a new horror comedy based on Stephen King’s 1980 short story of the same name, a vintage toy monkey brings murder and mayhem into the lives of twin brothers Hal and Bill, both played by Theo James.
CAST: Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O’Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. Directed by Osgood Perkins.
REVIEW: An inanimate object horror film about the randomness of life and death, “The Monkey” feels like an old-fashioned Stephen King movie. It’s a little rough-and-tumble, meanspirited and it delivers a series of practical splatter gags in great big gory blasts.
There’s even a callback to one of King’s favorite psychopaths.
It’s the story of an organ grinder monkey toy—Wait! Don’t call it a toy! It’s evil incarnate! “It’s basically the devil,” says Hal.—who, with grinning rictus of terror, bangs on a drum like he’s Charlie Watts. As he taps away people die in increasingly terrible ways. From fishhook trauma and aneurisms to immolation and canon fire, the monkey is indiscriminate in choosing his victims or how they will perish. Think “Final Destination,” minus the monkey, and you’ll get the idea.
Try as they might, the twins can’t stop the monkey from dancing to his own drum. “We know it couldn’t be destroyed,” says Hal, “but we hoped it could be controlled.”
As the body count rises, they soon realize that won’t be possible.
Director Osgood Perkins channels his inner Sam “Evil Dead” Raimi, combining old school splatter with very dark humor. It makes for a giddy goodtime, especially as the kills get more and more slapsticky and outlandish.
“The Monkey” does feel stretched from its short story origins to feature film, but Perkins keeps the energy up and the storytelling efficient enough to warrant its 97-minute runtime.
On the Saturday November 30, 2024 edition of The Richard Crouse Show we’ll meet multi-award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster Carol Off. For almost 16 years, she co-hosted CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs program, As It Happens. As a television journalist, writer and radio host it’s estimated she did 25,000 interviews with newsmakers and noticed that as politics became more polarized than ever before, words that used to define civil society were being put to work for completely different political agendas.
In her new book, “At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage,” she analyzes six terms—freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes—and how their meanings have been twisted.
Then, we meet a guest who began his career as a child actor, appearing in everything from “Back tio the Future II” to Internal Affairs opposite Richard Gere. He became an international star after playing Frodo Baggins in the acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He’s Elijah Wood, and his extensive filmography now includes “Bookworm,” an intriguing film about a 12-year-old named Mildred whose life is turned upside down when her mother lands in hospital and estranged, American magician father, Strawn Wise, played by Elijah Wood, comes to look after her. Hoping to entertain the bookish tween, Strawn takes Mildred camping in the notoriously rugged New Zealand wilderness, and the pair embark on the ultimate test of family bonding — a quest to find the mythological beast known as the Canterbury Panther.
Finally, we meet director Tim Fehlbaum. He’s an award-winning Swiss filmmaker whose previous films, like “Tides” and “Hell,” focused on post-apocalyptic and science fiction stories. He returns to the real world with “September 5,” a new thriller starring Peter Sarsgaard and Ben Chaplin, and now playing in select theatres, an American sports broadcasting crew finds itself thrust into covering the hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Each week on the nationally syndicated Richard Crouse Show, Canada’s most recognized movie critic brings together some of the most interesting and opinionated people from the movies, television and music to put a fresh spin on news from the world of lifestyle and pop-culture. Tune into this show to hear in-depth interviews with actors and directors, to find out what’s going on behind the scenes of your favourite shows and movies and get a new take on current trends. Recent guests include Chris Pratt, Elvis Costello, Baz Luhrmann, Martin Freeman, David Cronenberg, Mayim Bialik, The Kids in the Hall and many more!
All iHeartRadio Canada stations are available across Canada via live stream on iHeartRadio.caand the iHeartRadio Canada app. iHeartRadio Canada stations are also connected through Alexa, Siri, and Google Home smart speakers.
I join the Bell Media Radio Network national night time show “Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift” for “Booze & Reviews!” This week I review the remake of the 1984 b-movie classic “The Toxic Avenger,” and let you know what cocktails were selling like hotcakes the year the original movie was released.
