SURF NAZIS MUST DIE (1987) – BAD MOVIE REVIEW

SURF NAZIS MUST DIE (1987) – The ideal companion piece to the original Point Break! Rest assured, the Surf Nazis are depicted as the scummy villains they are and that they do get their just desserts in this 83-minute bundle from So Bad It’s Good movie Heaven. Though distributed by the venerable Troma Team, Surf Nazis Must Die was actually produced by the Institute. The film was directed by Peter George and written by George with Jon Ayre. 

This post-apocalypse flick is not the typically self-conscious, over-the-top Troma madness that we all love. Its more subdued but still energetically bizarre tone often provokes complaints from hardcore Troma fans who expected something like The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High or Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD.

Surf Nazis Must Die is refreshingly played mostly straight – but still howlingly bad – and the actors performers don’t spend their time practically winking at the audience over how absurd the whole thing is. That’s a nice change of pace in this age when there are way too many “look how bad and zany we are” low-budget flicks down on their knees begging for cult status.

Obviously, this Institute production is trying to fit into the post-apocalypse sub-genre of Mad Max imitators from the 1980s. SNMD earns its place with its originality. For one thing, rather than a global cataclysm, the movie is set in the aftermath of a very localized apocalypse – the California coastline has been ravaged by a series of monumental earthquakes.

Yes, the long-predicted Big One finally hit and unleashed additional quakes that sent every inch west of the San Andreas Fault into the Pacific Ocean and chopped off most of the California coast all the way down through Los Angeles and vicinity. Fires, floods and other catastrophes turned the entire region into a disaster area. 

Western California is on its own and we’re told that authorities are dealing with too many major calamities up and down the state to enforce the law or provide other aid to the people in the affected zone. This adds a fun kind of Escape from New York feel to the proceedings, but, in typical Bad Movie fashion, it makes no sense. 

We’re told it’s been months since the Big One, but no explanation is given for why the rest of the United States – or even Canada – haven’t provided humanitarian aid or peace-keeping forces. And it can’t be because of churning seas making it impossible for ships to approach because the leader of the Surf Nazis insists that soon the waves will be filled with Nazi battleships ready to invade.

Why? How? We’re never told and eventually that story element is dropped forever with characteristic Bad Movie charm. But we have our Surf Nazis!

The remnants of California’s beaches are ruled by violent surfer theme-gangs, like the feral bands from The Warriors, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Roller Blade, City Limits and many other post-apocalypse films from the 80s.

The Surf Nazis are the dominant gang but face competition from the Samurai Surfers, the Pipeliners, and others, including the Designer Waves, a trio of blow-dried, Chippendale Dancer types including B-movie icon Ted Prior.

As bizarre as it may seem, the notion of a surfer gang that uses Third Reich imagery and paraphernalia isn’t as out-of-nowhere as you might think. California Reich was a serious documentary which depicted the Neo-Nazi subculture that had taken root in the Golden State for several years. Surf music and Deutschland Uber Alles mingled for an alarming amount of time before thankfully petering out.

At any rate, this movie’s Surf Nazis not only control the cocaine trade up and down the coast, but they take part in armed robberies and other crimes. Their Hitler Youth affiliate of younger delinquents carry out purse snatchings and the like.

Some of the Surf Nazis use the names of actual Nazis. They’re led by Adolf (Barry Brenner from the Maniac Cop movies), his babe Eva (Dawn Wildsmith of Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers fame), and weapons-forger extraordinaire (well, more like ordinaire) Mengele (Michael Sonye).

There are a few other key members of the gang, like the shirtless Brutus (Gene Mitchell, at right), who is as buff as Ted Prior and adeptly wields a harpoon-gun in some very eye-catching scenes of violence. Another Surf Nazi who stands out from the crowd of others is Hook (Joel Hile), whose missing hand is repeatedly replaced by a series of designer prosthetic weapons from the howling mad Mengele.

(Hook looks like the guy from the Zima commercials, but isn’t.)

Throw in Smeg (Tom Shell), a middle-class kid trying to become homicidal enough to fit in with the Surf Nazis even though he’s as non-threatening and inauthentic as the white bread teens who try to act like tough rappers. Smeg’s Mom is played by cult actress Bobbie Bresee.

A turf clash between the Surf Nazis and the Samurai Surfers results in a hilariously lame martial arts fight scene which is so awkwardly choreographed that I have no idea how we viewers are supposed to tell who won. Apparently, it was the Surf Nazis, because the Samurai Surfers retreat.

Oddly, this flick fails to exploit the kitsch potential of forming a Surfer Axis between the Surf Nazis and their Japanese counterparts. At any rate, Adolf calls a meeting among all the gangs that terrorize the beaches when they’re not showing off their surfing skills.

Adolf, whose Hitlerian rants are never as campy as they should be, wants the gangs to form one big army under his leadership, the better to own the coast and pave the way for those Nazi battleships that never show up. It comes to a war when the other gangs refuse, even though the Surf Nazis have about a dozen members compared to the three or four each that the other groups can muster. (I love low-budget movies!)

A supporting character throughout the movie has been Leroy Washington, a black middle-manager for an oil-drilling operation that is still running along the California coast. More Bad Movie charm, because sometimes we’re told it’s a virtual wasteland there, but other times we see businesses functioning normally and casual beachgoers continuing to show up, despite the omnipresent crime.

Leroy’s mother, Eleanor Washington, is played by Gail Neely and emerges as THE star of Surf Nazis Must Die. Most of the other story elements may have fit the post-apocalypse mold, but she alone seems to have stepped out of a 1970s blaxploitation flick.

Eleanor was shown losing her home to one of the earthquakes earlier and Leroy had to place her in an abusive institution for the elderly. Mama Washington runs her own side-movie of sorts, disrupting the routine of the oppressive, callous staff and leading her fellow older women into poker games and cigar smoking.

The turning point in the film comes when Eleanor’s beloved son Leroy is killed and mutilated by the Surf Nazis for trying to stop one of their crimes in progress. Our action heroine feels she has nothing left to live for and sets out for revenge.

Let me make it very clear that Mama Washington is NEVER the butt of any humor. She is just a very unconventional action star, given that she is a bit overweight and not gaudily outfitted. The disconnect between Eleanor’s heroics and the way she does not fit the usual stereotype of any butt-kicking heroine from any era is a large part of this movie’s appeal.

In any mainstream movie, her role would be played by a sexy young woman, or if it was played by Gail Neely, she really would be presented comically instead of just unconventionally. Eleanor uses her fists to round up weapons and ammunition for her revenge quest.

Our heroine stalks the beaches trying to get a lead on who butchered her son and seizes the hapless Smeg when he is bragging about his Surf Nazi crimes to impress beach babes. Later dialogue indicates that Mama Washington blew Smeg away after getting the information she needed, but this is contradicted by scenes which depict the punk still alive after his encounter with Mama. Again, we fans of Bad Movies gleefully eat up such continuity errors.

Now that she knows it was the Surf Nazis who murdered Leroy she does a hit and run strike in which she burns all their surf boards, sending Adolf into the kind of histrionic fits that we’ve been waiting for all movie long.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Surf Nazis mistakenly believe the rival beach gangs burned their boards, and aggressively launch a series of bloody attacks on their competitors until only our title gang is still alive. One Surf Nazi catches acid to the face in his death scene and a few background Surf Nazis also die in these climactic battles.

The next morning, the motorcycle riding Eleanor steps in to finish off her son’s murderers. Hurling grenades at first, then switching to bullets, she whittles down the remaining Surf Nazis, saving Adolf and Eva for last. Mama Washington decapitates Eva and blows away Adolf.

In a nod to 80s slasher films, just as Eleanor rests, assuming it’s all over, Adolf springs out of nowhere to attack her. She’s not having it, of course, and this time makes sure her foe really is dead.

Mama then remounts her motorcycle and, rather than return to the abusive nursing home, rides off on her own as the movie comes to a close.     

Like all of the best So Bad They’re Good movies, Surf Nazis Must Die features a lot of strangely gripping elements. There’s weird music, Surf Nazi interactions which seem like forerunners of Dead Presidents scenes from Point Break, and hilariously lame martial arts fights which include half-assed cartwheels and other nonsense.

We also get treated to the aforementioned cool-looking harpoon-gun killings by Brutus. Plus, there’s the absurd but eye-catching van that Mengele has tricked out with the features of a shark, including a fin on top. Dialogue informs us it’s a real fin from the slain shark that ate Hook’s hand when he was surfing one day.

On a more serious note, the beautiful surfing footage – though it’s marred by periodic Sieg Heiling from our Surf Nazis as they ride the waves – is very well done and was filmed in California and Hawaii.

Other impressive visuals include the grim disaster and firefighting footage apparently lifted from real-life California earthquakes and their aftermath. There’s also the appropriately bleak graffiti-smeared ruins where the surfer gangs hang out. In the Surf Nazis’ case the filmmakers eerily make their lair vaguely resemble bunkers and, in one disturbing scene, death camp showers.   

And did I mention the post-apocalypse biker bar with a pair of dominatrixes and their human footrest? Or that in Polish the title is Faszystowscy Surferzy Musca Zginac? (If you’re wondering, in Spanish it’s Los Surfistas Nazis Deben Morir.)   

What a weird but unforgettable film, joyously tasteless from start to finish. The only way it would have been better would have been if Eleanor used a shotgun during her revenge quest. Why Surf Nazis Must Die has not been adapted as a Midnight Musical for the stage is beyond me. 

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