Thursday, March 31, 2011

Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 (2008)




Director: Keith J Crocker

Starring: Tatyana Kot, Steve Montague, Wayne Chang, Minerva Borack

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A New Era of Nazi Terror!

Plot: Enter Stalag 69, where torture is just the Beginning for this bloody band of Nazi Butchers! Germany, 1945. Stalag 69, a POW camp ruled by the sadistic SS commandant Helmet Schultz, is nothing but a blood-soaked playground for this perverse Nazi monster who uses his American, Russian, and British prisoners in cruel and ghastly biochemical weapons experiments. When a group of young, wanton USO girls are captured and fall into the hands of Schultz and his battalion of butchers, the brutality is turned up and the unsuspecting girls are gored, gouged and ground up - all for the pleasure of Schultz and his SS brothers and sisters. Now it's up to the rag-tag survivors of the camp to strike back against their captors and Escape from Stalag 69, alive or on a slab!




My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? Nein.


This is it...the last of nearly 30 Nazisploitation flicks in 31 days. A low budget film maker in 2008 decided that the genre still had some mileage left; enough to make BLITZKRIEG. Boy, was he wrong.

Say, aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?

There really wasn't much else one could do with the genre. It's an offshoot of the Women in Prison genre which is pretty limited to begin with. There's just no place to take this genre where it hasn't gone before. That doesn't mean that you can't go out and make your own - it just means that you'd better bring something remotely interesting to the table or fans will walk out on you.




Meet our hero!


The Krauts in this picture didn't have to worry about digging.
This guy's not going through any tunnels.

Those are fake, by the way...just like grandma used to have back in dubya dubya two!


BLITZKRIEG is a very low budget movie which means the effects will probably suffer, the acting is going to be OK at best (one can only hope it won't be humiliating) and it will probably run too long. Under the circumstances, the effects are quite good and much better than I expected. Kudos, kids!



While it's clear the actors aren't pros, most do appear to be earnest in their performances but there are a few who are so bad/under experienced that they couldn't begin to hide their thick NJ/NY accents which is kinda funny. The standout performance by far was Jonathan Brown as Berkenholtz. He's very good and one wonders how someone with acting chops made it into the flick.

Don't get too attached to that thing!

Awwwww. Too soon?

And here we have an example of authentic period pubic grooming habits...




That leaves the running time. It's two hours and 15 minutes long! That's an awful lot of movie even for a big budget flick. I've got an awful lot of respect for anyone who makes a movie, especially one like this and while it's not that great of a film, there are a few spots that are enjoyable.

Listen to this clip at the :47 mark for something truly special...



Jonathan Brown (right): Good actor in a not-so-good picture.

Did Crocker make this because he's a fan of the genre and thought he could bring something to the Nazisploitation table? Or perhaps he saw this genre as an easy way to get noticed which translates into actually making money. Who knows and, really, who cares. Nearly 40 years after the genre was born, it's evident that some people just won't let go of the past.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Liebes Lager (1976)




Director: Lorenzo Gicca Palli

Starring: Karl Koenig, Red Ascott, Ronny Coster, Luciano Pigozzi

More info: IMDb

Plot: The German officers who run a camp for the wives and girlfriends of traitors of the Nazi regime are fearing for their lives with the impending Allied forces closing in. They need a lot of money to buy fake IDs and for transportation out of the country so they prostitute the prisoners to a nearby POW camp.



My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.







I'm beside myself. This is fucked up. LL is a comedy...about raping and prostituting women!!!!!! Sure, it starts out innocently enough with the hanging of three female prisoners with one of the German officers espousing the merits of the science of hanging. I thought maybe it was just a little bit of dry, dark humor but most of the movie goes from serious drama to broad slapstick. I was rightfully unsure what to think throughout the entire picture.


THEN they start raping the women! Now I'm really confused. The picture plays out like an adult, misogynistic feature length episode of SGT. BILKO with Phil Silvers only Silvers is a real douchebag to women. This is a bizarre flick.


The playful music is laughably bad and the comedy isn't funny. I'd probably respect the film makers for daring to do something different, bold and controversial if only the gags were funny. It's an Italian production so broad, unfunny comedy is nothing new (they and the Japanese have a lock on that kind of thing). Man, I can't get over the raping. It was horrifying and it's made worse because of the lightheartedness of the shit before and after it.



Then the prostituting happens (the title is German for Love Camp) and eventually the camp is attacked by the Allied POWs that came for the action. A huge gun battle ensues with the women getting the upper hand on their captors and going apeshit with guns on not just the Germans but the Americans. Remember that these are German women who had ties to traitors (through marriage, relations, etc) so they not only want their captors dead but the enemies of Germany. THAT was fucking badass awesome!





In one spot there were several seconds of the greatest first person shooter video game never made! Nice!!!


The battle at the end is the best part and that's what keeps it from getting a lower score. The film's 104 minutes long (!!!) and it definitely needs some trimming. This is one bizarre flick, one whose tone I've never seen before. The strangely placed jokes among the raping and general unpleasantness really put me ill at ease. I guess it's because I couldn't figure out what to think about it. LIEBES LAGER is definitely alone in the Nazisploitation genre as the only (intentional) comedy. Not exactly a surprise considering the subject matter but then again, it's the lowest of the low sub genres of sleaze and only one movie dared to go there? I kind of felt let down.

Stalag 69 (1982)



Director: Selrahc Detrevrep

Starring: Angelique Pettyjohn, Dorothy LeMay, Nadra, Mary Lou Angie, Madge Gande

More info: IMDb

Plot: 3 Allied agents (1 bearded male, 2 females in fatigues) parachute into North Africa and land in the middle of a desert Nazi installation and are taken prisoner for some S&M and hardcore sex fun and games.

My rating: 2

Will I watch it again? No.

Welp, I think this is it. This is the worst Nazisploitation flick of them all and it couldn't have come at a worse time...near the end of my fucked up quest to watch every Nazisploitation flick out there in the span of a month. Ugh. And there's still two more to go.


It's painfully obvious that STALAG 69 is a mishmash of at least three Nazi-themed porn films shot on video. What's worse is that they're all REALLY bad. The music is horrible, the acting is worse and the sex scenes will put you to sleep. This one stinks on ice. It's like this...when a Nazi interrogator goes to put this chick in chains (above pic), it takes several minutes because he doesn't seem to know what he's doing. Yeah, it sounds hilarious until you start watching it. The only thing I found amusing was that he was doing it in full uniform sans pants.


The ONLY thing that may interest anyone is that the last part of the flick features Angelique Pettyjohn as the sadistic Nazi bitch from hell.



Who is she? Maybe this'll jog your memory...



Nice space cans. Outside of that curiosity, this is 88 minutes of pure dumb. It's inept in every way and an embarrassment to everyone involved. It's shit like this that makes me rethink my life...if only for a total of 88 minutes.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Holocaust II (1980)




Director: Angelo Pannaccio

Starring: William Berger, Tina Aumont, Elisabeth Tulin, Kai Fischer, Susanna Levi, Andres Resino, Gordon Mitchell

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Driven by a common desire: REVENGE!

Plot: A secret group of Jewish activists locate and murder the doctors and soldiers who tortured their relations in a notorious extermination camp.



My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? I'm sorry I watched it the first time.


Oh, that's rich!

I've been cheated. The posters suggest this is a Nazisploitation flick. The ONLY sploitin' goin' on is the murder of a nude woman...


and a couple of topless beauties.



The only Nazisploitin' goin' on is a mere few seconds of flashbacks.



THAT'S IT! The rest of it is a drama/thriller set in modern day. Yawnsville, man, yawnsville. And that they called it HOLOCAUST II, to suggest it's a follow-up to the 1978 ratings smash TV mini series, HOLOCAUST, is adding insult to injury. Woof. It's nothing more than a boring revenge-with-a-twist flick trying to capitalize on an established known property and a genre - neither of which it has anything to do with. This has only the slightest thread of Nazisploitation and, if you're a fan of the genre, you should avoid this one as it's the least deserving to be in the company of Ilsa and pals.