Troma's War

If you begin to watch a Troma offering, you know you're in for basically deliberately inept, silly (lazy? Never!) film making to the extent that it's 'so bad it's good' is expected, since because that is surely the intention of the Troma oeuvre, anyway:

So, if not to be another why waste ya time to watch, then first I would suggest you set it up as a fun billing along with others, not of the classic Arnold/ Sly more serious war is macho genre, but rather those of similar - but unintentionally so, though - dross of the likes of the S. Seagal and/or C. Connors entries into the genre.

Then as settling in for the inevitable ineptness, parts I found fun were the constant jewellery wearing air crash survivors (dangly spangly earrings especially) and the fact that the island army is surely made up of extras who were told to bring their own approximations of military outfit gear: the incongruities displayed are legion.

Of them, you can then also get a fine appreciation of the stunts people in executing their chops, be it jumping (mostly backwards) over objects (sandbags, oil drums, other 'dead' compatriots) or putting themselves in the correct position to plummet, 'shot and dead', from high places, trees especially: and, around the middle an amusing Arnold accent take rant in favour of the corrupt (US!) system… but then soon after a quite rather prescient almost 'conspiracist theory' the terrorist threat is really from inside from the system elite rejoinder from the hero (i.e well written scriptwriters): Then, throughout the interminable battles, there is a great wailing guitar background soundtrack to enjoy, too by which to get you finally to the end, at which point having so sat through such deliberate tosh, I would implore you wait around until the last end credit has rolled: it's a great denouement to the 'seriousness' of all that's gone before, making it, really, inarguably, surely one of Troma's best entries.

Forget Coppola´s "Apocalypse Now" and Spielberg´s "Saving Private Ryan" because this film is the ultimate contribution to the genre of war movies! Typically Troma, you´ll find lots of cheesy F/X and bad acting in it, however this shot is not as awful as many other flicks produced by this company: "Troma´s War" is REALLY entertaining, what´s absolutely no guarantee for the other works of Lloyd Kaufman´s firm. The humor is not too silly this time, although there are many politically not correct jokes about Aids or Siamese twins. The violence in this film is business as usual, so prepare for cut off ears and fountains of blood! With its exaggerated patriotism "Troma´s War" is also a nice parody on all those soldier-movies like "Rambo" or "Delta Force", which were very popular in the Reagan-ruled 1980s. And some nudity of pretty silicon-chicks doesn´t hurt either..! I liked this movie even more than "Combat Shock", that is alleged to be a touching anti war-drama, but after all only a cheap and boring film! This one doesn´t take itself too serious and that´s no mistake!! So if you´re going out tonight to rent a Troma-flick... take this one!!!

Author: plazma_dragon wrote 'The makers of this film tried to combine a comedy movie with an action movie'.

no, that's not what they did. what the wonderful folks at troma did in this film is to take all the conventions of all Hollywood action films set in the contemporary era, and push them to their logical extremes.

the action film is inherently illogical - that's exactly why we watch them. in the action film you identify with the hero and blow away a criminal as soon as you can, and move on to the next criminal to blow away.

in real life, if you shoot someone you think is committing a crime, you may miss and get shot; you may only wound him, in which case you have to listen to his squeals of pain, and later, in most states, he has the right to come back and sue you for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon - no joke. and if you do kill him, then you have to justify it to the police, and sometimes to a judge, and you have to listen to his mom weep in agony, and then she sues you for 'wrongful death' and you have to wonder - was causing so much pain to others and one's self really worth it - a question that may haunt you the rest of your life. finally, there's the possibility that he may shoot you - setting aside your possible demise, there's the problem of getting crippled for the rest of your life. you can sue the criminal, but if he's just the corner thug, you'll never see a penny.

this doesn't mean that you don't shoot the criminal - you may need to - if he's threatening a loved one, and i got a good shot, i certainly would. but what all this does mean is that you're stuck with all kinds of consequences that never happen to Stallone or snipes or Jackie Chan.

troma takes this basic principle - shoot the guy and move on, hero - to the extremes. any of the airliner survivors who show compassion are deemed wimpy and abandoned. the Rambo-wannabe wades into a whole regiment of enemy soldiers and doesn't get shot. the pacifist priest is sadistically tortured and shot in the goriest fashion, condemned to die by a neo-Nazi for being Jewish - even though he's clearly not - simply because the Nazi thinks everyone he kills must be Jewish, since he's a Nazi and Nazis kill Jews.

as for the nudity - it is rumored that steven seagal actually used to have it in his contract that there would be at least one female nude scene in any movie he made. nude scenes are pro-forma to the genre - but since this is troma's war, of course they need to be done as ineptly as possible.

one can say that 'this is not my kind of comedy', and leave it alone. however, don't for a minute think these people don't know what they're doing.

personally i think this movie is a jaw-dropping, over-the-top satire of the best kind. i hold back one star because there's no doubt the editing could have been a little tighter.

One of the BEST exploitation films ever made! This movie has everything a B-movie lover could want: Shootings, explosions, a multifarious cast, action, violence, thrills, mayhem, and romance! One of the finest pieces of opus ever embraced by the human being.

Essentially, TROMA'S WAR is a spoof of the action and war genres. The film's contrived plot concerns a bunch of incompetent plane crash survivors on an island. They've encountered a conspiracy that will not only endanger the United States, but will place the whole world in jeopardy! Eventually, this leads to all sorts of scenes of random silliness...not to mention moments of bloodshed. Will the survivors beat the odds, or will the world spell doom?

TROMA'S WAR is a fine amalgram of the features expected in a comedy, horror, and action mixture. Unlike most Troma films, this satricial flick offers caustic political commentary about biological warfare and fascist terrorism. The black humor in TROMA'S WAR is subtle at times, conspiciously sleazy during most other parts of this movie. The explosive intensity in this film is buoyed by great one-liners and a feeling of tons of guilty pleasure. Also, the delightfully amateurish cast in Troma's War also must receive approbation for having lots of fun with this movie. Highly recommended movie to all connoiseurs of fun, low budget films. A movie treat guaranteed to provide an entertaining time with lots of friends.

RATING: ***1/2 out of ****.

This movie is a spoof of all those Rambo/Norris/Ahnuld commando bloodbath movies from the 80's. It is very unsubtle, full of cartoonish shootouts where the same bad guy terrorists get mowed down by the good guy plane crash survivors, some cheesy sex and boob scenes, with an original hard rock background music score. Basically, a random bunch of people crash on a Caribbean Island: punk rocker, Wall Street yuppie, hysterical woman, priest, etc etc; owned by Cuba. The island is a terrorist training camp for a motley bunch of cartoonish terrorists, loosely based on the 80's Communist types. There is a pig snouted redneck terrorist, a psycho Nazi Jew hating one, Russians, Arabs, a ninja, and even two Siamese twin leaders. They are going to land in the US and undermine us with AIDS and random violence, ala "Invasion USA", I guess. So this motley bunch of survivors, led by an ex Airborne Vietnam vet, start kicking some serious butt instead.

There isn't too much of a plot after that, but plenty of gratuitous violence on the level of Monty Python, with more shootout scenes than ten action movies put together. But the same bunch of terrorists keep getting mowed down by our heroes. It is funny yet the overkill grows on you after a while. But it definitely is chock full of special effects and weapons, especially for a low budget flick.

To call this a politically incorrect movie is a euphemism for a totally bad taste movie. But it does have it's charm, in a cheap, exploitative but not a stupid way. Definitely not for the weak at heart, while not gory compared to modern horror movies, it has some real bloody hamburger scenes