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.

SS Hell Camp (1977)

Director: Luigi Batzella

Starring: Macha Magall, Gino Turini, Edilio Kim, Xiro Papas, Salvatore Baccaro

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Horrifying experiences in the last days of the S.S.

Plot: After countless experiments with genetic mutation, a sadistic SS officer (Macha Magall) finally creates a sex-crazed man-beast that she can use to torture the terrified female prisoners at a Nazi POW camp during the throes of World War II. As she stuffs her evil creation with massive doses of mega-aphrodisiacs to keep it randy, she's all too aware that Allied forces could land at any minute and destroy everything she's worked for.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? I think I could.


Did you see that trailer? Holy shit! This one looks like a hoot, right? Only partially, really. The film is split between the evil Nazi experiments (led by Dr. Ellen Kratsch, played by the lovely Macha Magall) and the resistance fighting the Jerrys. The fun Dr. Kratsch business only commands about 30% of the picture with the rest going to the standard war business and that's where the problem lies.



Magall was a lot of fun and looks fantastic. Her pride and joy is the man beast she's created to ravage the ladies and impregnate them with his superior seed. He's played by comedian, Salvatore Baccaro, and he's going to town in every scene he's in, even when he's in the background which causes intentional laughter at every turn. If he looks familiar, we previously saw him in SS GIRLS (1977). He also did a few minor spaghetti westerns and he turned up in the bad Italian STAR WARS (1977) rip-off, STARCRASH (1978).




















So the fun bits open the film and it's made even more outrageous by having the beast sound like the Bugs Bunny Tasmanian Devil.

Nom nom nom nom nom nom...

The war/sabotage business in between the crazy shit isn't anything special but it is far better than the same type of thing I've seen in the other Nazisploitation flicks so far. It's not dull and lifeless like the others. The film makers are definitely trying to make a good movie. Too bad it's not enough of what people want. You know, the shit you see on the posters - the kind of thing they're selling to get butts in seats. I digress. That's what exploitation does by its very nature. Having one that is thoroughly entertaining is not as commonplace as you would expect.

Cool non-Nazi doctor scene #1 - When the soldiers are rounding up citizens in the village, grandma goes Rambo on one of them with a knife and pays the ultimate sacrifice!







Cool non-Nazi doctor scene #2 - One of the soldiers wrangles a baby away from its mother/grandmother and tosses it up in the air for target practice! That's fucking nasty. If these Nazi guys keep doing shit like this they're likely to get a reputation for being bad people. Geez.






Back to the fun stuff...








The biggest disappointment aside from being too much of a war movie and not enough exploitation is Giuliano Sorgini's score. Not only is it pretty weak, most of the time it doesn't even work. It's as if it were written for a giallo. Hell, they lifted scenes from other Italian war movies, whey couldn't they have lifted the scores? Tarantino does it all the time and he gets praised for it.

I know this is a cool shot and all but how could the crew be so inept in an otherwise well-shot movie?

One soldier who isn't very nice rapes a woman and then assassinates her captive box!

Ooooh! Torture me next! Please?

The beast has a hunger for pubes!











SS HELL CAMP is not a bad exploitation film at all, it's just not nearly as much as I wanted or what the opening minutes seemed to promise. What saddens me is that this could have easily been the best of the Nazisploitation bunch but it missed the mark and slides into second place. When it works that exploitation angle, it bests even ILSA. Too bad Batzella and friends didn't go full out and make that picture instead. Sigh. Maybe the next one, NAZI LOVE CAMP 27 (1977) will make up for it although I doubt it.