Let the sleeping
sadionacistas lie.
Dead Snow is indeed highly recommended, even if you don't like Nazis. It's like modern-day
Evil Dead II or
Braindead (both of which are of course paid homage to within).
But the whole Nazi exploitation was a genre that was more popular than it ever should have been in the 70's. Although you had such entertaining all-in-the-family films such as
Love Camp 7 and
Fräuleins in Uniform aka
Eine Armee Gretchen (partially a German production!) coming before the actual fad, the film that truly broke the flood gates was
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (cue Shakira). Ilsa is actually pretty watchable for what it is, it even tries to have a coherent plot and some of the torture scenes are as "ewwww" as in recent gornos. SomethingAwful had it on their "100 worst movies list", and the review was so hilarious that it made me watch it and started me down the slippery slope of exploitation movie fandom. Of course,
Ilsa had two sequels,
Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks and
Ilsa: The Tigress of Siberia, plus sleazemaster Jess Franco's WIP flick
Wanda the Wicked Warden was distributed as
Ilsa: The Wicked Warden. None of the sequels have Nazis, but are highly enjoyable nevertheless. (Funnily enough, Ilsa herself is killed at the end of every film, yet still always survives in the next sequel without any explanation whatsoever...)
Back on-topic, the Italian exploitation filmmakers would copy anything that was a big hit in the States, so with the Ilsa earnings stupendous amounts of money considering its subject matter, they started churning out such family-friendly titles like
Deported Women of the SS Special Section aka
Le Deportate della sezione speciale SS,
SS Experiment Camp aka
Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandatur,
Gestapo's Last Orgy aka
L'ultima Orgy della III Reich,
SS Extermination Camp aka
Women's Camp 119 aka
KZ9 - Lager di Sterminio,
Hitler's Lust Train aka
Train Spécial pour le SS,
Nazi Love Camp 27 aka
La Svastica nel Ventre,
SS Girls aka
Casa Privata per le SS,
SS Hell Camp aka
Horrifying Experiments of the SS Last Days aka
La Bestia in Calore. Most of the above had the dubious honour of entering the UK's "Video Nasty" list (ie. films banned from distribution because of overtly violent content). Curiously,
Elsa, Fräulein SS aka
Fräulein Kitty seems to be an entirely French affair (pun intended), and multinationally produced
Salon Kitty was an attempt to make an "artistic" take on the whole genre, with real plot and some thought (but of course with plenty of nudity and sleaziness), directed by none other than Tinto Brass!
Seriously, if you feel interested in this ocean of sleaziness and guilty pleasure, check out the first Ilsa and Salon Kitty. If you are not throwing up, or dialing 911, and your SO still has not left you and there's no Partyvan in sight, feel free to check the others as well. But be warned. They are not for the sane of mind. Only for people like me.
Of course, when you speak of Nazisploitation, you cannot ignore the totally crazy, totally tongue-in-cheek, totally trashy Troma film
Surf Nazis Must Die!. "Who rules the surf? SURF NAZIS!" Quite unsurprisingly, it doesn't take place in a WW2 concentration camp, but in present-day (or then near-future) US.... actually, this is a violent comedy, not such sleaze as the "real" Nazisploitation.
Then there's Russ Meyer. I assume that every healthy male in the Western world MUST know who he is. In his late films, there started to be something of a common thread. First, in
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls there is a gratuituous Nazi, although he's a minor character and not a well-known figure. Then,
Supervixens opens with the march
Deutschland erwache! and features Martin Bormann as a major character - he survived and has emigrated to the US, where he has a service station "Martin Bormann Super Service" which is a central location in the film. Next was
Up!, where one Adolf Schwartz, who has also survived and now lives in a Neuschwanstein copy somewhere in the Midwest US, has problems with his potency, despite the efforts of a voodoo priestess and a guy in 17th century Pilgrim costume. But the trouble won't last long when someone drops a piranha into Adolf's jacuzzi, and the rest of the film is a whodunit with plenty of boobs. The last "real" film of Meyer's was
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, which again opens with
Deutschland erwache! and again features Martin Bormann, except that this incarnation is a very different take from the one in
Supervixens. Russ Meyer is always heartily recommended, and not just for the Nazis. His films - especially later ones - combine witty social criticism, humour, insane characters and of course, boobs, in an irresistible package that wouldn't or couldn't ever be mainstream.
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But the spirit of Nazisploitation lives on . There's the fairly recent (2006) indie film
Horrors of War. Since they have almost-authentic (borrowed from re-enactors) gear, they should have just filmed a small-scale WW2 film of late Western front. Unfortunately (from filmmaking point of view: from trash fan POV, fortunately) they did not. Instead, they have Nazi zombies/werewolves on the loose as a result of failed supersoldier project, and a US infantry unit is pressed by the OSS to take them out. Acting is beyond ridiculous, and the low budget shows in the secret laboratories and the monsters. Recommended only for genre aficionados - it's not that easy to find, either.
Also from modern times,
Outpost would be a totally boring and mediocre shoestring-budget
Alien(s)-set-on-Earth, but it features time-travelling undead Nazis. You see, late in WW2 they made these experiments on teleportation, but they got stuck inbetween dimensions, and a group of mercenaries accidentally releases them... oh well, it's not a good film even though it has Nazis. Everything is so saturated so that you can barely see what's happening, and the acting is not really supporting the action. Neither is the less-than-polished script.
For some reason, modern horror is not what it once used to be. So they have to add random Nazis to give it more "ooomph".
Frontier(s) aka
Frontiére(s) features (in addition to wholesale slaughter, twisted mutants and some skin) a whole inbred family of Nazis led by a former SS officer. Who whistles
Lili Marlene when he orders a subhuman to be butchered and eaten. You'll never wait for Sidi Rezegh to load with the same mindset ever again! If you like gorno, then the Nazis help this film to rise above mediocrity and make it worth watching.
