Crew
Directors – Michael Herz & Samuel Weil [Lloyd Kaufman], Screenplay – Mitchell Dana with Lloyd Kaufman, Story – Lloyd Kaufman, Additional Material – Eric Hattler & Thomas Martinek, Producers – Michael Herz & Lloyd Kaufman, Photography – James London, Music – Christopher DeMarco, Special Effects Supervisors – William Jennings & Pericles Lewnes, Makeup Effects – David Barrett, Anthony Calandrillo, Lawrence Ferber, Jorge Fernandez, Tom Martinek, Stephen Patrie & Paul Pison, Production Design – Alexis Grey. Production Company – Troma.
Cast
Sean Bowen (Taylor), Steven Crossley (Marshall), Michael Ryder (Parker), Carolyn Beauchamp (Lydia), Tod Johnson (Captain Schweinhart), Patrick Weathers (Roger Kirkland), Lorayne Lane DeLuca (Maria), Jessica Dublin (Dottie), Charles Kay Hume (Hardwick), Ara Romanoff (Cooney), Rick Collins (Colonel Jennings), Lisa Patruno (Kim), Alex Ceshart (Sean), Brenda Brock (Kim), Alida Harris (Nancy), Susan Bachli (Susan), Dan Snow (Reverend Brown), Paolo Frassanito (Senor Sida
Plot
A plane from Tromaville crashes on the island of Providenzia in Cuban territory. The island is the training ground from terrorists from around the world. The terrorist leader Captain Schweinhart immediately assumes the crash survivors to be commandos and begins torturing those he captures demanding to know their plans. With the aid of those among the group who have military training, the survivors begin arming themselves and fighting back where they prove a formidable foe.
Troma Films emerged in the mid-1980s with films like The Toxic Avenger (1986) and Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), both of which made a virtue of their low-budget, cheesily ridiculous and over-the-top makeup and splatter effects and in making a beeline for the wilfully offensive and un-PC elements. Both of these were a modest success that proved sufficient to launch Troma and their trademark style during which were multiple sequelised. By the point of Troma’s War, Troma had also made the likes of Mother’s Day (1980), Surf Nazis Must Die (1987) and Rabid Grannies (1988).
Troma appeared to regard Troma’s War as some kind of prestige production and placed a good deal into it than their other films. Lloyd Kaufman had conceived the film as a satire on Ronald Reagan’s pro-war policies and the war glorification of films like Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). Troma gave the film a much bigger budget than usually lavished on their films (their most expensive ever at $3 million). This is evident on screen in terms of the scale of the military action and having quite a large cast.
On the other hand, a good number of things are still familiar from the average Troma film. The cast, all unknowns, are filled with bad actors who give their performances in terms of exaggerated cartoonish caricatures – something that Troma seemed to prefer to regular acting. And there is all the bad taste that Troma relishes in – rape scenes and one of the villains (Paolo Frassanito) who is introduced with pustules all over his face and talks of a plan to infect the USA with AIDS. One of the girls is dragged away as Paolo sits popping his facial pustules while singing Born in the U.S.A. (1984).
There are all the familiar gore effects – where a pair of Siamese twins get cleaved in two by a sword, where the priest (Dan Snow) has his tongue ripped out and so on. This ended up with Troma’s War being cut to shreds by the MPAA – the R-rated version released to video runs to 91 minutes but the full uncut dvd version (seen here) is 104 minutes, nearly fifteen minutes difference.
On the other hand, you have to question what exactly Troma were trying to achieve with Troma’s War. Lloyd Kaufman clearly wanted to make some serious statement about war and US policy. But is that something that easily sits alongside such a cartoony approach? How can you get outraged about the atrocities of war if the film is inviting you to make fun of deformity and AIDS?
There were certainly a bunch of US-made war movies that came out in the latter half of the 1980s, following the massive success of Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986). It is quite possible that Troma might have been inspired by the Sam Raimi-starring Thou Shalt Not Kill … Except (1985), which took an enthusiastic splatter movie approach to war. Another way to consider it might of thinking of Troma’s War as a variant on a film like Red Dawn (1984) – there is almost the same plot here where an army of civilians arm themselves and mount a guerilla campaign that ends up defeating the more well-trained and seasoned soldiers. Although where Red Dawn’s heroes were teenagers, this is a typical Troma crosscut of misfits and oddballs that includes grandmothers, mothers, a rock group and a blind woman.
Eventually, Troma’s War does sort of become Troma’s epic. You can’t take it seriously as anti-war film – the mix of ribald farce, bad taste humour and unclear satirical targets make it rather of a mess on that front. And as an actual war film, it has plenty of war violence and shooting, but none of conducted with a particular artistry. However, it is a film where Troma seems to at least care about most of the characters on screen and give them something approaching a roundedness (as opposed to caricature and making fun of them) that you end up championing their fight and eventual triumph.
Lloyd Kaufman’s other films as director are The Toxic Avenger (1984), Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989), The Toxic Avenger III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989), Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1990), Tromeo & Juliet (1996), Terror Firmer (1999), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000), Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006), Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 (2013), Return to Return to Nuke ‘Em High Aka Vol. 2 (2017) and #ShakespearesShitstorm (2020)).
Trailer here