Surf Nazis Must Die
directed by Peter George
starring Gail Neely, Robert Harden, Barry Brenner, and Dawn Wildsmith
Troma Entertainment
Ok, lets start with the bad news: This movie has a 3.2 rating on IMDB. That’s bad, but not bad enough to become an icon of bad cinema. Next, it’s a Troma film, and while Lloyd Kaufman is in the special features, it’s Peter George at the helm of this weird film. George’s credits are thin, and he’s best known for producing Skate Nazis Must Die. He’s consistent, if nothing else. Shot mostly around San Pedro and the oil pumps near the Port of Los Angeles, this campy film follows the turf war between Surf Nazis, led by Adolph (Barry Brenner). He dresses like Alex in A Clockwork Orange and his army of surfers dresses in baggies and spiked helmets. But the Surf Nazis murder the wrong surfer, and Big Mama (Gale Neeley) and her boyfriend Leroy (Robert Harden) hunt down the Surf Nazis for vengeance on her son. All this “action” takes place on the rusting, rotting oil infrastructure of the South Bay in Los Angeles. Other colorful surf gangs appear, including a Japanese Kabuki gang and a bunch of clean-cut kid surfers that look like they got lost on the way from Manhattan Beach to Rat Beach. Yes, there really is a Rat Beach in the trendy South Bay.
The highlight of this film, other than its wonderful title and the quarter fold poster included, is the surfing footage. Troma spent the budget to fly out to the North Shore of Hawaii and have a real surf cameraman get all the wave action you might want. That alone is worth checking this out of your local video store… oops, sorry. They went out of business about the time this film debuted. Good thing you can still get this from Troma’s online market. Surf Nazis Must Die may be a B movie, but it does have some charms even if the continuity is bad. Watch the swastikas on the cast, they flip from clockwise to counterclockwise from scene to scene and even within scenes. Yeah. It’s Troma. That’s its charm.
