Troma's War (1988)

Directors:

Michael Herz
Lloyd Kaufman

Writers:

Mitchell Dana (writer)
Eric Hattler (writer)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

NOT a true story but who cares!

Plot:

A small group of typical Tromaville citizens find themselves in the path of a terrorist army controlled by the power elite...

Plot Keywords:

Terror | Violence | Box Office Flop | Death | Rape

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Carolyn Beauchamp	...	Lydia
Sean Bowen	...	Taylor
Rick Washburn	...	Parker (as Michael Ryder)
Patrick Weathers	...	Kirkland
Jessica Dublin	...	Dottie
Steven Crossley	...	Marshall
Lorayn Lane Deluca	...	Maria
Charles Kay-Hune	...	Hardwick
Ara Romanoff	...	Cooney
Brenda Brock	...	Kim
Lisbeth Kaufman	...	Jingoistic baby
Lisa Petruno	...	Jennifer (as Lisa Patruno)
Alex Cserhart	...	Sean
Aleida Harris	...	Nancy
Mary Yorio	...	Laurie

Also Known As:

1,000 Ways to Die (USA)
Club War (West Germany) [de]

Runtime:

Germany:91 min | USA:105 min (director's cut) | USA:87 min (R-rated version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-18 | West Germany:18 (heavily cut) | UK:18 | Netherlands:16 | USA:R | USA:Unrated (director's cut) | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Company:

Troma Entertainment

Trivia:

Film debut of Joe Fleishaker, Troma's 500 pound action hero. He was originally cast as an extra, but Lloyd Kaufman took a liking to him and gave him a bigger role.

Quotes:

Taylor: [about Parker] I don't know whether he's a psycho or just crazy.
Hardwick: He may be a psycho but he's definately not crazy.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

jaw-dropping, over-the-top satire

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.