Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

Beautiful, moving film.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

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

Yep, this is a movie that actually exists. All of Troma's movies are available online and this makes "The Toxic Avenger" look like, no "Citizen Kane" isn't good enough. I'd say the "Breaking Bad" episode "Ozymandias". I first came across this looking at Wikipedia's unusual articles. I guess there were just a lot of these around the 1985-1987 period. This summary is the exact quote from Wikipedia's description. I just had to use that. Don't sue me, Wikipedia! I remember going over to RottenTomatoes and believing that this had the lowest rating of anything on the entire website with a 1.8 (not the percentage). "Manos: The Hands Of Fate" is still lower (with 1.1) but this is still a truly awful movie.With the title, it's just as ludicrous as you would expect. I saw a short film on YouTube called "Kung Fury" about Hitler time traveling and recruiting Nazi dinosaurs. That film was more believable than this one. This wasn't even good for laughs. For characters with the title "Surf Nazis" they barely even surfed. They mostly just stayed on their motorcycles. Was "Biker Nazis Must Die" too strange of a title? I heard that Roger Ebert saw this movie and walked out thirty minutes in. I guess it's not quite in my Top 5 worst, but definitely Top 10. The movie features surf Nazis and that's about it. What's amazing is how horribly acted the film is. These actors seem to be messing up their lines all the time.The action scenes are horrendous. When they're fighting on the beach, it's hard to tell if they're even actively fighting. It looks more like they're just tripping over each other. We saw a lot of footage of people surfing. What does this mean? The movie literally starts by showing a bunch of Neo-Nazi children. That's more stupid than it is insensitive. What happens to these kids? What is their purpose? There's another scene where people are yelling in the background. Why? Why is everything in this film shot so badly? I'm kind of reminded of an even worse film (which was ALSO on the unusual articles list) called "An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn!". From what I've seen of "The Day The Clown Cried" it couldn't be worse than this. Stick with the more intelligent Nazi films. There is one good thing about the film and that's that it goes by really fast. That was a plus! Someone thought this was entertaining? 1/2*

This film unashamedly attempts to replicate Kubrick's 'A clockwork Orange' and is also similar to other youth gang movies such as 'Romper Stomper' and 'Suburbia' The issues of radical politics, racism, disillusioned youth, vengeance and gang violence are all addressed, but there is nothing original about this film. There is excellent cinematography and an interesting synth score which seems appropriate. The story focuses around a the 'surf Nazis' the dominant surfer gang in California, they kill a young African American, but things go wrong for the gang when the victim's Mother seeks a bloody revenge. The story is simple and the acting pretty abysmal, but if you're a fan of the amateur charm of Troma movies then this probably won't bother you, as long as you accept there are a lot less laughs and a lot less tits than other Troma classics such as 'Class of Nuke 'em High'

In the near future, a Californian beach has been taken over by a ruthless gang called the "Surf Nazis" led by Adolph who literally surf sometime and would hurt anyone who comes in their way. When an African American fellow named Leroy gets murdered by them, his mother buys weapons and wants revenge for her son's death and against those maniacs.Silly if entertaining and action-packed futuristic Sci-fi action comedy that's not as bad as everybody says, well what can you expect from Troma? bad acting, cheesy special effects, violence and nudity abound. If you can really suspend your disbelief then you'll enjoy this movie if your into low budget flicks and Troma movies.Also recommended: "Battle Royale 1 & 2", " Escape from New York", "The Warriors", "Terminator Trilogy", " Troma's War", " Rock & Rule", " Mad Max", "The Road Warrior", " Escape 2000", " Combat Shock", " Shaft" ( 1971), " The Toxic Avenger Series", " They Live", "The Running Man", " Cannibal! The Musical", " Natural Born Killers", "Tromeo and Juliet", " Leon The Professional", " Sin City", "Waterworld", "Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD", "American History X", "Menace II Society", "I Spit on Your Grave", "Akira", "Fist of the North Star (Anime)", " Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky", " Total Recall", " Robocop", "Tank Girl", " Wizards", "Blade Runner", "Barefoot Gen", and "A Clockwork Orange".