Troma's War

TROMA'S WAR isn't a great film by any respects but this highly cheesy war movie is certainly the best Troma film I've seen to date. This is because the majority of Troma films are cheap, gross-out comedies with rubbish acting and effects. This has the cheapness and the rubbish acting, but in some places it's actually quite decent.

You could call TROMA'S WAR a camp classic if you were feeling charitable and it's certainly an '80s film through and through. It's an over the top cheese fest about a group of people stranded on a desert island where they discover an evil guerrilla army is running rampant. Inevitably it's up to them to stop it which they attempt to do in the most violent ways imaginable.

There's no real plot here after the initial set up, just a bunch of random action and war sequences joined together. The film is marred by horrible over acting and more screaming than in a dozen horror flicks, but it does have a wealth of war action and violence to recommend it. Seen uncut it's a gruesome film with some surprisingly explicit moments like the excruciating tongue extraction scene and plenty of bloody squib hits. There's also plenty of topless nudity and explosive stuff going on. A masterpiece it isn't, but I found it oddly watchable and enjoyable and in high definition it at least looks good.

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!!!

WAR! is another quickie exploitation film churned out by the Troma Team. Like all of Troma, the film is heavy on the bad taste (even comes with AIDS jokes) nudity, action, etc. etc. At the end of the film, all the film's heroes and heroines face the camera and cheer "America!" I guess this is so we don't boo and hiss the film too bad. I saw TROMA WAR's in the best possible enviorment for a Troma film, the old Times Square, in a run down theatre with a wall made up of tarp, along with a local lunatic who decided to sit in his seat in the lotus position and face the audience during the film. Now it's all Disney and Yuppie-Moneytraps on 42nd Street. Too Bad.

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 ****.

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.