VeteranLight
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Platicsco
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
RipDelight
This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Foreverisacastironmess
This was surely one of the strangest good-bad movies ever. It has lots of surfing, a little Kung Fu fighting, a ridiculous villain, and one kick ass lady! It isn't complex and doesn't have a story arc or anything and it may be too simplistic for some, but I found it rather incredibly hard to follow thanks to the bizarre editing as well as every single one of the snooze-inducing scenes with the Surf Nazis which were nigh-on incomprehensible. They were so loud and annoying, it was like they were a bunch of random people doing extremely amateur community theatre on the beach rather than coming off as actual actors! They didn't have a speck of personality between them and even though they were meant to be this big tough ruthless gang who didn't have any problems handling other surfer gangs, they were easily overpowered by one vigilante oldster? Whatever! "The beaches have become battlefields, the waves a war-zone..." the opening text scrawl so boldly declares.. Mm, well nope, I'm afraid it's nothing so epic! So near as I could tell the vague and slow as hell plot is that this one aggressive surfer gang who want to control the entire beach of California and all the other gangs because a humongous earthquake has wrecked the city.. That's so lame, a beach is a terrible location for a post-apocalyptic war-zone, it just doesn't have the same kind of visual and thematic punch as an inner city ruined ghetto, the image of that on a beach just doesn't sit right and makes it hard to suspend your disbelief, it feels like it couldn't happen! The setting looks so pretty it makes you wonder why everyone's even fighting at all when there's such a beautiful ocean right there that they could all chill out and have fun in! This oddball excuse for a movie didn't have the budget or panache to pull off such a concept, everything looks too dull and cheap. It's an ambitious little flick though, gotta give it that.. It's too bad that it's also one that never seems to grasp just how dumb it is, if it had opted for a more tongue-in-cheek approach it might have been slightly more well-received and have more of a fan base today. As it is I can agree that it's a terrible movie but to me it still wasn't all that bad, there were some things that I liked about it a lot. For one thing I loved the beach and all the slow motion footage shots that appear randomly throughout the whole movie, the effect to me was very visually positive and strangely uplifting, and that's what I took from it. I enjoy the offbeat silly fun vibe more than the actual story, to say it has Nazis in the title it's a very light and totally harmless movie, it had a certain cute goofy and youthful earnestness about itself. Had I tried to enjoy it purely from a plot standpoint I'd have hated it as much as everyone else seems to. The scene between the Surf Nazi known as "Smeg" and his mother in the kitchen is very telling I reckon. If it's meant to be a distopian city they're living in, then how come Smeg has a nice normal home that he can go to and a tough cookie mother who forces him to stay in his room when he's trying to sneak out? Are the Surf Nazis all just rowdy teens, playing nasty crazy games at being Nazis on the beach because there's nothing else to do and there's no law to stop them? I really liked the character of Smeg's mother, the actress really did her own thing with her bit part and was a lot of fun in her few scenes. Some of this movie is intriguing but it goes nowhere at all until the coolest mama of all time decides it's time to make a stand! The movie perks up and has a much better final act when she steps up and it stops being just Surf Nazis and finally turns into Surf Nazis Must Die! The character of Mama Washington was the one thing that really made this picture worthwhile for me and was definitely the most memorable thing about it. It was so different and cool to me seeing an old sassy black lady doing action hero stuff, not to say they can't or anything, but it was sure as hell the first time I'd ever seen that before! She was so funny and entertaining, as soon as it showed her and it was at the scene where she's smoking a cigar and playing cards with the other old ladies at the nursing home she was forced to live in and she says "I've gotta liven up you bitches!", I thought that gal's gonna do something big at some point! The transitional scene is so surreal where she leaps out of nowhere and strong-arms one of Nazis, you know which one I'm talking about.. So I'm pretty sure that at least some of it was made bad on purpose and it was clearly never made with the intention if being 'great cinema', but overall I found it a fun stupid movie to watch, and I think that may have been the whole point, and I for one could dig it. Peace out, Hang ten! x
govett
Folks, eat your heart out. I know Rand Hogen, who plays Teeth. His death-scream still resonates throughout Hollywood — and Bollywood, for that matter — as the model scream for all on-screen dust-biting. As for Rand himself, I know that from his incomparable acting you'd expect him to be a glitzy, world-traveling, supercilious snob, but he's actually quite a nice guy. (Thought the same can't be said about his brother, Rory, who, while no actor himself, fancies himself God's gift to the unevolved.) The rumor through the grapevine is that two rainmaking produces in Hollywood are bruiting about a project called Surf Nazis Are Fixin' to Die II, but it hasn't got enough funding yet. It seems to be a prequel filmed in the South on the Gulf of Mexico. I think they need to raise about $200. I sure hope that Rand gets the opportunity to reprise his role as Teeth, though by now he'll probably go by the sobriquet Dentures, which more befits a superannuated man. An Oscar awaits him, no doubt. Or at least a Reynaldo.
Super61isdown
OK, OK, first of all, I love Troma. Lloyd Kaufman is a brilliant man, creating a company that is entirely based around camp horror with humor, most of them with talented actors (or untalented ones, just for old time's sake) and distributed them out to filmfans. You can tell a film is a Troma film if it includes the following: 1) B-movie actors (although, they do have SOME well known celebs in their films 2) Over-the-top gore and violence, not disturbing, more nasty and disgusting, but for humorous purposes.3) Kinky sex scenes, filled with soft-corn porn, Lesbian interaction, outrageous sex-jokes 4) Virtually no plot. But a hilarious title for the film.When I heard about "Surf Nazis Must Die", I probably jumped three feet in the air for joy. I mean, what else do you want? Surfing, Nazis, a angry Black woman, TROMA?!? It should be the PERFECT Troma film! Unfortunately, this particular film makes you wonder why Kaufman didn't kick director Peter George in the teeth after seeing the final cut of the film. In the end, the only thing the film succeeds in being a good Troma movie is the title...thats it.Well, where do we start? There's virtually no plot. I know, I know, I wasn't expecting "On the Waterfront", but come on...even "The Toxic Revenger" had somewhat of a plot, and if not, over the top violence...this had nothing. The story set somewhere in the future (at least the 80's/early 90's version of the future, where tie-dye shirts are still in style apparently), where an Earthquake has destroyed most of the California coast line (ummm...ooook). Out of the chaos, surfing gangs begin a war to stake claim over the beach. One of the most ruthless gangs is....OK, is that obvious? The surf Nazis. The Nazis are really just a bunch of scraggly lookin' white supremacists who wear tethered clothing with poorly drawn swastikas written on them. Adolf is the leader...hmm, clever. He looks like he's about 40 years old, but hangs out with high school kids. The others are Eva, Sneg, Gangdala and Hook, and none of them have any back story (althought for some odd reason, they try to portray Sneg as being some dumb, naive teenager with a mother who is worried about him, in some pointless subplot). Adolf tries to unite all the gangs on the beach so they can rule the coastline (a plot line ripped off of the far-more superior film, "The Warriors"), but none of them want to be under the command of the Nazis, so one by one, they turn on them and are killed...end of that story. Now, there's a young man named Leroy with his tough-as-nails mother who live near the beach. Leroy, being black, is attacked by the Nazis and killed. This leads Leroy's Momma to escape from her retirement home and seek revenge against the murderers.I basically told you the entire flick. It's that basic and small. You probably get more out of watching the trailer for the film than watching the actual film. The violence is surprisingly toned down, with virtually no gore, which makes it look like a film made over the weekend at a budget of $75 dollars. The fight scenes are poorly choreographed, looking like they improvised it at the set. The acting...eh, it's alright. One thing I noticed is that they tried to make this film look more serious than campy...which is the kiss of death, being that the film is called....SURF Nazis MUST DIE!!! Oh, thats another thing...it's called "SURF Nazis MUST DIE", but in the film, only three of them are actually killed (out of a gang of about 7, not including the youth punks). Scenes were long and boring, with very little pay off. The surfing scenes were nice, though. Obviously, it was footage of professionals surfing in Hawaii (California does NOT have that nice of waves) and most of the film was shot in my home town of Huntington Beach.It you wanna watch a good Troma movie, watch "Tromeo & Juliet" or "Cannibal! The Musical!" instead. Leave this one to wipe-out, and hang to dry.
kingofchelmsford
For, amongst other things, the excellent soundtrack, for having a character called "smeg",for the lush shots of the sky and the bunker area, and for the immortal line "taste some of mommas home cooking Adolf", this films deserves 10 out of 10.I think the films worst enemies were Troma themselves for the misleading cover art and hyping up the title by adding the "must die" part. I think many people will be disappointed because they are taken in by the cover and blurb. Here in Britain the film was originally released simply as "Surf Nazis" and featured a less sensational cover, you knew more what to expect, although the "a clockwork orange for the 1980's" tag line was a bit of a joke.