Garbage you dump, trash you kill
"Nothing can get your mind prepared for Traxx — unnamed characters are beaten to death during musical montages of cookie burning and line dancing. It's a clinically psychopathic film with fart jokes. I guess the rushed screenwriter didn't have time to create burned-cookie jokes and a context for all these slayings before the window on Shadoe Stevens' celebrity closed."
Traxx is a 1988 American comedy film starring Shadoe Stevens and Robert Davi that's a parody of the Action Genre.
Traxx is an international mercenary who has grown tired of his job. Desiring something else, he takes up the life of a baker. Running out of money, he decides to put his skills to use once more after being offered lots of cash by a city to clean up its streets. However, the local lowlifes aren't so compliant...
This film contains examples of:
- Action Prologue: Traxx dealing with a Hostage Situation involving a monkey.
- Big Bad: Aldo Palucci, The Don of Hadleyville.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: Traxx has a leisurely stroll and chats with his friend about his baking aspirations as bombs are dropping around him.
- Catchphrase: Traxx has "Be good, be gone or be dead," his options for any criminals in the town he's trying to tame.
- Cowboy Cop: In his cop days, Traxx would toss his gun into bad guys' hands after they've given up, just to make it look justified when he gunned them down. He ends up getting fired for this.
- Crapsack World: Hadleyville, Texas is an over-the-top parody of the urban hellhole that was so common in '80's action movies. The streets are literally always full of crime, the cops brazenly refuse to do anything, the ones that do condone vigilante action and the apartments just randomly explode.
- Disney Villain Death: Traxx blasts a pimp out a several-story window.
- Dragon Their Feet: Traxx goes after the Guziks right after their boss Palucci is dispatched.
- Farts on Fire: Palucci, the Big Bad, dies when he lights his cigar after letting out a giant fart, causing his car to explode.
- Hostage Situation: The first scene of the film is Traxx stopping a hostage situation where a monkey is the hostage.
- Lethal Chef: Despite his ambitions of cookie stardom, Traxx is an absolutely dreadful chef. He's particularly fond of disgusting combinations, such as tuna, crab and laxatives.
- Mood Whiplash: The movie's tone is quite lopsided and swings between straight action and cartoonish humor with no segue whatsoever. It doesn't help (or does it?) that the intended humorous moments are often awkward and weird, while the action elements are mostly funny by dint of their sheer ridiculousness.
- Protagonist Title
- Psycho for Hire: Palucci hires the three Guzik brothers to kill Traxx, and they go on a killing and torturing spree to do so.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Wendell calls Palucci to make clear he has no intention of opposing Traxx:"A man possessed of extraordinary combative skills arrived in our tranquil hamlet this past evening and proceeded to decimate a substantial portion of the working criminal population. Myself? I am buying a ticket out of town. This is a courtesy call to provide information and say, "Adios, motherfuckers!" (slams phone receiver)
- Shoot the Television: A shootout between Traxx and some bad guys is halted by a television news report on recent studies finding that "most overly aggressive, sociopathic males have tiny, little wazoos." The bad guys respond to this by shooting out the TV screen before returning to the gunfight.
- Teeny Weenie: In the climax, Traxx distracts the Guziks by playing a news clip of a psychologist claiming that most killers and sociopaths have puny penises.
- Vigilante Man: Traxx becomes a vigilante for hire, or "town tamer," in order to get money for his cookie business.
- Would Hurt a Child: To show how Ax-Crazy the Guziks are, the film mentions that they once slaughtered an entire Little League team. They kidnap another Little League team to lure Traxx out.
