the plot: A routine flight on Tromaville Airlines goes terribly awry for a group of hapless passengers when the engines fail and the plane crashes on what appears to be a deserted Caribbean island. The ragtag band of survivors includes Taylor (Bowen), an average dude from Tromaville; Lydia (Beauchamp), a haughty woman who doesn’t take kindly to Taylor’s advances, and Parker (Washburn), a Vietnam vet turned car salesmen who immediately puts his survivalist skills to use. As the crash survivors soon discover, the island is populated by a gang of highly trained terrorists. Led by the pig-faced Col. Schweinhart (Johnson), the terrorists are preparing a fiendish plot of unthinkable proportions—a hostile takeover of America! Taylor, Parker and the rest of the castaways (including a punk band, a yoga-practicing grandmother and a blind girl) soon arm themselves and take the fight to the terrorists. But the situation becomes far worse when the castaways learn that the terrorists are being funded and controlled by a cabal of right-wing corporations, military leaders and politicians, all of whom are bent on seizing control of the United States once and for all.

why it’s good: In his vertigo-inducing introduction to “Troma’s War,” director Lloyd Kaufman calls the movie Troma Films’ long-forgotten “masterpiece.” Kaufman has a propensity to talk big about his small movies; but, in this case, he may be right. There are few Troma flicks with the epic scope and unbridled bloodshed of “Troma’s War.” And oh, what bloodshed! The reason “Troma’s War” has been so long forgotten is because more than 15 minutes of graphic violence were cut from the film upon its initial release. The movie tanked at the box office and was relegated to video, where it quickly faded into obscurity. Luckily, Troma’s DVD release of “War” keeps all the violence intact—the never-ending gun fights, the exploding-heads-stuffedwith-grenades and so on. The chief cause of much of the gore and gruel is Parker, the addled Vietnam vet played by Rick Washburn. Within minutes of landing on the island, Parker is fully armed and carving the ears off his kills, shouting “Airborne!” before letting loose a volley of machine gun fire. And don’t forget the awful AIDS jokes: One of the terrorists is named ‘Senor SIDA,’ who, with his band of homosexual stereotypes, is poised to infect America with AIDS on behalf of the terrorists. And, of course, there are the requisite Troma standbys—naked boobs, pistol-packin’ grannies and hideous mutants looking to get a little action. If it all feels like one big “Rambo” parody, well, it is—Kaufman reportedly wrote the film as a response to what he saw as the Reagan administration’s glorification of war. Sadly, not much has changed—take out some of the mullets (and the AIDS jokes), and “Troma’s War” could just as much be an artifact of 2007 as it is of 1988.

why you should own it: If you love Troma, you should definitely own “Troma’s War.” And even if you’re not all that fond of Kaufman and his merry band of mutants, “Troma’s War” is still worth checking out for its endless supply of cheese and ham-handed political commentary. The DVD is chock-full of features, including interviews with cast and crew, an interactive tour of Troma Studios and a “Troma intelligence test.”