It’s still an exaggeration to say that every movie ever made is being adapted into a stage musical, but sometimes it doesn’t seem like much of one. Even the cult 1984 horror superhero comedy “The Toxic Avenger” has been turned into a musical, and right now San Jose Stage Company is giving it its regional premiere.

In fact, this isn’t even the first “Toxic Avenger” musical; there were two earlier small indie musicals by completely different creative teams.

The 2008 musical that San Jose Stage is doing has a pretty impressive pedigree, in fact, with book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro and music and lyrics by David Bryan. That’s the same team that created the musical “Memphis,” which started at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley and went on to Broadway and won a Tony Award for best musical. DiPietro is also known for his hit musical revue “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” and the popular comedy “Over the River and Through the Woods.” Bryan is best known as the keyboard player for the band Bon Jovi.

The stage version takes substantial liberties with the story of the movie, using barely a handful of its plot points, but the basic idea is the same. In Tromaville, a New Jersey town so polluted that the skies swirl bright green, persecuted nerd Melvin Ferd III is tossed by bullies into a vat of toxic waste. He emerges horribly deformed and super strong, and fights crime in a remarkably gory fashion as the Toxic Avenger — but you can call him Toxie.

In a madcap production directed by Jonathan Rhys Williams, this musical “Avenger” is also awfully funny. Michael Palumbo’s set is a wasteland of scattered drums of toxic waste, and Vijay M. Rajan’s video design adds some entertainingly campy comic-book touches, although the timing was a little off between the live action and the projections on opening night.

The small cast is fantastic. Will Springhorn Jr. is endearingly awkward as Melvin and as the hideous he-man he becomes, in a charmingly hideous green monster outfit by costume designer Ashley Garlick that’s somewhat reminiscent of Swamp Thing. Courtney Hatcher is naively sweet and riotously randy as Sarah, the beautiful blind librarian with whom Melvin’s hopelessly in love. (There are, as one might imagine, a whole lot of slapstick blind jokes involved.)

After a comical turn as a narrating nun in the intro sequence, Allison F. Rich is deliciously villainous as the power-mad and seductive mayor who’s flooding the town with toxic sludge for profit. She also plays Melvin’s nagging mother, who’s not the least bit shocked by her son’s monstrous transformation, just disappointed. When those two face off at the end of Act 2, it’s a tour de force of quick-change hilarity.

Branden Noel Thomas and Joshua Marx play a zillion parts, usually as a duo, from heavy metal dudes to cruel jocks to Sarah’s gossipy girlfriends. Marx is particularly humorous as a wandering balladeer singing the praises of the Toxic Avenger.

Often with a comically overblown ’80s rock style, the songs are marvelously clever, deftly played by an onstage rock band directed by Brian Allan Hobbs, and the bump-and-grind choreography by Brett and Carmichael “C.J.” Blankenship is priceless.

It’s gruesome and bawdy and more than a little naughty, but this “Toxic Avenger” may just be the hero we need right now.

Contact Sam Hurwitt at shurwitt@gmail.com, and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.

‘THE TOXIC AVENGER’

By Joe DiPietro and David Bryan, based on the film by Lloyd Kaufman, presented by San Jose Stage Company

Through: July 16

Where: San Jose Stage, 490 S. 1st St., San Jose

Running time: Two hours, one intermission

Tickets: $30-$65; 408-283-7142, www.thestage.org