SNMD!
Posted on October 21, 2005
Troma (do not click this link if you are at work unless you want to join me in looking for a job) is an interesting company. They make movies that are essentially bad. Apparently 30 years ago LLoyd Kaufman and his friends saw a serious lack in the “horrible” genre of American cinema and decided to rectify that. 1987 rolls around and the world sees the release of Surf Nazis Must Die!. In a post apocalyptic world, the beaches have become battlefields. Or so says the tag-line. Actually the beaches are populated with theme gangs, like in The Warriors. Only this is Troma so we get the Samurai Surfers and the Surf Nazis, among other very nondescript groups (trendy guys! Guys in black shirts! The fat biker!). And the apocalypse was some kind of earthquake which seems to have reduced the entire world to beaches and their surrounding suburbs. The most dangerous thing about this movie must have been driving the character’s van around, which was camo colored with shark teeth and swastikas scrawled all over it. I can’t imagine driving that thing down to the set on the first day, or how they managed to keep it from becoming a burned out shell as soon as the sun went down. The local residents (director’s mom) were probably pretty psyched to see that rolling down the street past the day care center, but hey, these are the sacrifices that must be made in the name of the cinema.
Before we go any farther, let’s meet our Surf Nazis…
First there’s Adolf, leader of the group. He’s a spindly Freddy Mercury look-alike who enjoys motivating 5th graders with badly drawn swastikas drawn on their faces in mascara. Then there’s Mengler (a clever misspelling of Mangler? Am I missing something?) his moody second in command who invents things like the switchboard (a surfboard with a switchblade knife in the top, more on that later). They battle for power in what can only be called some of the most awkward “acting” I have ever seen shot from the widest angle possible. Presumably the camera was positioned so far away so that we couldn’t see the cheat sheets for remembering the script littering the set. Then to round out the gang there’s Adolf’s whore, a guy named Hook who failed to bring me Peter Pan, a man I can only assume was named Beefcake, and a blond fresh faced recruit who seems to have an agitated Heather Locklear for a mother. All of the Surf Nazis (SN’s from now on) weigh about 75 pounds and can surf the waves like no one else. Or at least they can paddle out to the surf and then be inter-cut with footage of real surfers. They surf. And surf. And surf. Until one fateful day when the fell ass-backwards into the plot of the film. The SN’s apparently want to unify the beaches for some sinister end that is never fully articulated, but the equally sinister and emaciated black shirt gang assures Adolf that he couldn’t “handle the POWERRRRRR.” It would seem running four three member gangs on a post-earthqake dystopian beach is hard work. The awkwardly (sensing a theme here?) struggle for power, while scaring the locals. And speaking of locals, let’s address the nursing home now.
Since the opening credits the scenes have been switching randomly back to Big Momma Washington moving into a nursing home. She’s a big black woman who apparently packed her bags full of SASS for her very square white nursing staff. She breaks every rule in the book simultaneously in one scene, by cursing at and gambling on cards with the other white old women while smoking and drinking. I’m pretty sure she was stepping on a picture of Jesus too, but I guess the table cloth covered that up. So we get it, she’s a bad mama jamma. Her son comes to visit, then mentions he’s going off to the beach to hang out. Doesn’t he know the beach is fraught with Nazis?? Clearly not. He tries to prevent one of the human twigs from taking an old woman’s purse (one of the old women from the home? The same actress pulling double duty? It’s never explained) and gets killed. This prompts Mama to get a gun that can “blow the head off a honky” and pick up a few grenades while she’s at it. Then she rides off on her hog to the beach to exact her revenge.
And oh does she get her some vengeance! Why she’s blowing honkeys away left and right and spouting one liners like the best of them. “Remember that man you killed? Remember ME??!” Remember me? No, I’ve never seen you before lady, sorry. The SN’s drop like flies leaving only Adolf and his lady-friend to take it to the waves and escape. Mama holds up some fishermen “Were gonna catch us some NAZIS!” and gives chase in perhaps the most hilariously convincing holdup scene ever committed to film. Our feminazi is cut in half by the boat’s prop giving us probably the most realistic looking scene in the entire film. At least much believable than any of the dialogue to this point. Adolf gets shot and sinks, only to do the classic monster “hide under the water, then come screeching (and I do mean screeching, like some sort of prehistoric beast) out of the depths as soon as the hero turns towards the camera, then get shot again point blank in the face over the hero’s shoulder and fall backwards into the water” move. Mama lights up a cig and rides off into the sunset. THE END.
This movie is not very long, and has about 15 or 20 minutes of just surfing footage distributed within it, so not a whole hell of a lot happens. It’s hard for me to figure what to think about it though. Troma has always made bad movies, so can this even be reviewed effectively? I think it can, because I’m sure the staff knew the idea was ridiculous, but they were still trying to make an enjoyable film and the actors were trying to bolster their resumes. “I was Adolf! You know, in Surf Nazis Must Die! Hello? I think we might have been cut off…” There are scenes that are just too ridiculous to believe though, including the switchboard fight where a skinny boy ineffectually jabs a surfboard with a plastic knife on the end at a Samurai Surfer. What are we to make of this? Who could look through the viewfinder of a camera and say “Yes! It’s just as I pictured it! Making those storyboards really payed off!” The staff of Troma apparently. For every intentionally funny scene there are 3 accidental gems, but that still isn’t enough to save this from being soul crushingly boring until the revenge portion at the end. If you love surfing you will hate this movie. If you love constructs of film making like dialogue or scenery you will hate this movie. If you love Troma you’ll love this because its one of their “classics” and, while it lacks the trademark gore for the most part, packs the same utter crap quality film making and music (oh the banging of pots and pans set to rocking late 80s techno beats) you’ve come to expect. Shoot the curl dude, hang ten!