Today on the 5: I had never bothered to watch Surf Nazis Must Die because I had associated it with Troma films, which can be very hit or miss. After I read that Troma only distributed the movie, I decided to give it a watch and I'm really glad I'm did.
Ozone Nightmare
Surf Nazis Must Die Retro Review
Welcome to your daily five for Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024. If you've watched any of the episodes that I've done with Len Kepizinski over on his channel as part of his Forgotten Movie Den series, you have probably picked up that he and I are very hit or miss on trauma films. Trauma films started off and they had a couple of really great low budget hits. And then there was a point where they started to get way to into their own humor and the quality really dipped. And so generally, if I've seen stuff that has trauma, unless it's a certain film like, say, The Toxic Avenger or something like that, I generally don't watch it. I had always heard about a film from 1987 that is titled Surf Nazis Must Die. But I always thought trauma had made that. So I was never in a big rush to see it, but I happened to cross some article on some movie website. And they mentioned that trauma just distributed that that a group called the Institute actually made it, which I couldn't find any information on, but I thought, oh, okay, wait a minute. If trauma just distributed it, it might be a fun movie. The reviews are basically middling to bad, which is actually usually a good sign for me with low budget film. So I thought, all right, let me just give this thing a shot because it's on Tooby. And I'm sure a number of other streaming services for free. So I'd have to pay anything to watch it. It might be even on YouTube. I don't know, but I watched it on Tooby. And as it went along, because the premise itself is simultaneously really interesting and bonkers at the same time. The idea of this movie is that in the current day of 1987 or the near future, I don't know that it ever specifies that maybe it's set a year, but it's definitely set around 1987. There's no real futurism to it, at least not obvious futurism. In LA, there is a huge earthquake. That earthquake causes so much destruction that the police are overwhelmed, just trying to manage the aftermath of the quake and in that the wake of the quake, which I did not mean to run that, but that's the only way I can say it, a gang of surf Nazis. And that's what they are. They adopt the names of actual Nazis, Adolf, Mangala, Eva. They take over some portion of a stretch of LA beaches because they want to consolidate power. I think because there's oil derricks in the beaches. And so they want to take over a place called Power Beach. I'm putting a lot of this together just from what I see in the film. And there are other surf gangs that are in warrior style, very flavored. As far as there's a there's a group of martial artists surfers. There's a biker surfer gang, even though, actually, I don't think they're surfers. I think they are just bikers, even though they somehow get called to a meeting about the surf stuff. There's the designers. There's a there's a couple of different ones. I have to look up all the names, but basically that is the main story is the surf Nazis. That's what they are taking over this beach. And then there's a subplot with a woman who has been displaced due to the earthquake and comes across the Nazis because they murder her son. And that becomes really the secondary and ending of the film. Now, the thing that saves this movie, because it's very low budget, you can tell. It has pacing problems. The middle, as a lot of people have complained, is not the greatest because I think they just didn't have the budget to be able to do better fights and stunts and things like that. But what saves the film is two things. One, they never treat the premise as a joke because they could have. They could have gone traditional trauma style way over the top in making the premise goofy. They never do. They treat it deadly serious, which is excellent. And then the revenge plot with the mother who's been displaced is great because it feels like it's taken from an entirely different movie. And yet it fits amazingly well into, again, what is a goofy and fascinating premise. And that's what makes the movie work. Now, it could easily be remade for a for a low budget. And I think it could be improved in many ways. But as it is, this is a better movie than I think most of the reviews you will find. Say it is. I had a blast with this thing. Soundtrack is actually pretty good. The performances while over the top of times are not horrific. You can watch these people. And again, it's such a weird specific premise that because they never make it a goof, it makes the movie more watchable than I think if they treat it as a joke. And that's really what saves it. So I'm not going to tell you, it's a flawless film that people are sleeping on. It's not. It has its problems. But overall, for again, the reviews you'll read and the reputation has, this is actually a really entertaining movie. And all the more so because you can watch it for free. So again, keep your expectations where they should be for a low budget film like this. And it's not trauma. So it's better than that. But again, surf Nazis must die better than you might expect it to be. And that's enough for me later.