When this strange mix of war time drama, slapstick comedy, and horror-gore effects begins, an airplane crashes on a remote island somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Most of the passengers and crew die in the crash but a group of ragtag survivors manage to crawl out of the wreckage more or less in one piece. While the survivors bicker about what to do and how to get back home, the militant group that lives on the island clue in to their presence and assume they're a commando team sent to attack them.

As the survivors gather their wits and decide to fight for their lives rather than let the terrorists take them, they soon find out that there's a plot to destroy America with AIDS underfoot. A few minutes later, they've killed some bad guys and stolen their weapons and are launching an all-out war against the bad guys that would harm the American way of life. A lot of bullets are fired, a lot of squibs explode and a lot of people die as the war wages until the better end and bad, corny jokes are made left, right and center offending anyone and everyone they possibly can.

Presented here in its unrated director's cut, Troma's War will delight those who appreciate old school bullet wounds. Never a group to shy away from the gory goodness that some well-placed squibs can provide, this is a film filled to the brim with the kind of primitively charming effects work you just don't (or at least very rarely) see in shoot'em ups anymore since the advent of CGI. Kaufman notes in his commentary that this really isn't any worse than other films that came out around the same time and cites Robocop as an example, but he might be understating the amount of violence he and his cohorts have crammed into the hour and forty minutes that comprise the film, and that's a good thing indeed. The violence here is quite impressive.

Also worth noting is how the crew manages to make upstate New York look like a completely different country. A few well-placed palm trees and some clever camera work hide the fact that the film was shot somewhere between Manhattan and Buffalo. By utilizing a decrepit old army base for most of the action, the film has the right sort of look to let you actually believe that it's all taking place in a third world country somewhere.

What hurts the film somewhat are the shifts in tone. Troma's War goes back and forth between the crass humor that the studio has often used to make a name for itself and a more serious demeanor without really much of a reason. Sometimes the comedy works, sometimes it doesn't but so much of it feels at odds with other scenes that definitely have a darker, and dare I say it, almost serious feel to them. It makes for a pretty erratic viewing experience and it can sometimes pull you right out of the movie if you're not expecting it. Once you accept the fact that the film isn't to be taken seriously and accept the fact that some impressive stunt work and super rad scenes of carnage are going to be piggy backed onto some bad jokes and crass humor, it's easy enough to have a good time with this one, even if it's a really uneven picture.

Video:

Troma's War is presented in AVC encoded 1080i high definition framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. Past versions of the movie have been fullframe but there was typically a bit of extra space up top in a lot of the compositions. The widescreen framing here seems fine, nothing looks really compromised or out of order while detail and color reproduction is considerably improved over those aforementioned standard definition presentations. There's some print damage here and there and a few scratches but the image is clean enough and there's some good depth to the picture. Unfortunately there are some very obvious compression artifacts that are hard to miss, especially when things start moving around a lot on the screen or when there's a lot of smoke. In fact, in some scenes a relatively good looking picture turns into macro-block city. This doesn't last and it's not a constant but it is absolutely there and impossible to miss. It also happens frequently enough that it's a strike against the disc. Had this been authored better or had a higher bit-rate it definitely would have scored higher. As it stands the transfer still offers a decent upgrade in a lot of ways over the DVD, but that compression isn't so hot. In fact, the compression is flat out lousy.