Nazi exploitation
Encyclopedia
Exploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
and sexploitation film
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
that involves villainous Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
committing criminal acts of a sexual nature often as camp or prison overseers in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
settings. Most follow the standard women in prison formula, only relocated to a death camp or Nazi brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
, with an added emphasis on sadism, gore, and degradation. The most infamous and influential title (and the one that set the standards of the genre) is perhaps Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974), a Canadian production. Its surprise success and sequels led European film makers, mostly in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, to produce dozens of similar films depicting Nazi atrocities. While the Ilsa series and Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty was a Berlin brothel used by the SD for espionage purposes before and during World War II.In the 1930s Berlin, Salon Kitty was a high-class brothel in 11 Giesebrechtstrasse. Its usual clientele included German dignitaries and foreign diplomats...
were profitable, the other films were mostly box-office flops and the genre all but vanished by the mid 1980s.
In Italy, these films are known as part of the "il sadiconazista" cycle which is largely inspired by the art-house films Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty was a Berlin brothel used by the SD for espionage purposes before and during World War II.In the 1930s Berlin, Salon Kitty was a high-class brothel in 11 Giesebrechtstrasse. Its usual clientele included German dignitaries and foreign diplomats...
by Tinto Brass
Tinto Brass
Giovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...
, Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers that came into prominence in the 1970s and includes Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellochio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature...
's The Night Porter
The Night Porter
The Night Porter is a controversial 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.- Synopsis :...
, and Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...
's Salò. Prominent directors of the genre include Paolo Solvay (La Bestia in Calore
La Bestia in Calore
La Bestia in Calore is an Italian exploitation film released in 1977. Directed by Luigi Batzella and written by Batzella and Lorenzo Artale, it gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty...
, aka The Beast in Heat, SS Hell Camp), Cesare Canevari (L'ultima orgia del III Reich
L'ultima orgia del III Reich
Last Orgy of the Third Reich is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film directed by Cesare Canevari.- Plot :...
, aka Last Orgy of the Third Reich), and Alain Payet
Alain Payet
Alain Payet , also known under the pseudonyms John Love, John Pardaillan, John and Frederick Brasil Amor, James Gardner, James Gartner, Alain Garnier was a film director of French porn movies and erotica.- Biography :He began his career in 70s and for a decade served as an assistant director on...
(Train spécial pour SS, aka Hitler's Lust Train, Love Train for The SS), all from 1977.
History
A blend of sexual imagery and Nazi themes was pioneered by Italian directors and can be found as early as 1945 in Rome, Open CityRome, open city
Rome, Open City is a 1945 Italian war drama film, directed by Roberto Rossellini. The picture features Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani and Marcello Pagliero, and is set in Rome during the Nazi occupation in 1944...
by Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Rossellini was one of the directors of the Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.-Early life:Born in Rome, Roberto Rossellini lived on the Via Ludovisi, where Benito Mussolini had...
. Another Rossellini film, Germany Year Zero
Germany Year Zero
Germany Year Zero is a 1948 film directed by Roberto Rossellini. It is the final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy . Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively...
(1948), connects Nazism with homosexuality and pedophilia. A major influence on the genre was the controversial arthouse production The Damned (1969), directed by Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti
Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo was an Italian theatre, opera and cinema director, as well as a screenwriter. He is best known for his films The Leopard and Death in Venice .-Life:...
, about the rise and fall of a German industrialist family in the Third Reich. The film featured an orgy of homosexual SA-Men, and depicted one of the main characters who eventually joins the SS as a troubled multiple pervert, posing in a transvestite outfit, molesting little girls and finally committing incest with his own mother. Another early example of sexual themes and nazism combined can be found in the west German production Des Teufels General (The Devil's General) (1955) by Helmut Käutner.
The 1964 film The Pawnbroker
The Pawnbroker (film)
The Pawnbroker is a 1964 drama film, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters and Jaime Sánchez and directed by Sidney Lumet. It was adapted by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant....
includes a flashback scene showing nude women kept in a concentration camp brothel. But the earliest sexploitation
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
film set in a Nazi camp was Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7 is a 1969 U.S. women-in-prison B-movie directed by Lee Frost and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, the latter of whom also acts as a sadistic camp commandant.-Plot:...
(1969). It was also the vanguard of the modern women in prison genre that emerged in the early 1970s.
Love Camp 7 established the pattern for the many films that followed. The story resembles a "true adventure" pulp yarn from a men's pin-up magazine of the period. In order to rescue a Jewish scientist, two female agents infiltrate a Nazi Joy Division camp where prisoners are kept as sex slaves for German officers. There are scenes of boot-licking humiliation, whipping, torture, lesbianism, and near-rape, culminating in a violent and bloody escape. The stock characters include a cruel and perverse commandant, a lesbian doctor, sadistic guards who freely abuse the prisoners, and a sympathetic German who tries to help them.
The Ilsa influence
Producer David F. FriedmanDavid F. Friedman
David Frank Friedman was an American filmmaker and film producer.-Life and career:Friedman first became interested in entertainment after spending part of his childhood in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, traveling carnival sites. He met exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb during his stay in...
had a small acting role in Love Camp 7. He went on to produce Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS in 1974. Ilsa was unique in that the camp commandant was a sexy (and sex-crazed) woman played by the busty, and frequently nude, Dyanne Thorne
Dyanne Thorne
Dyanne Thorne is an American actress, nude model for pin-up magazines, and former Las Vegas showgirl...
. Between sex scenes, Ilsa subjects her male and female inmates to horrific scientific tests, much like Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
's notorious Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
at Auschwitz. Some of the tests on hypothermia and pressure chamber endurance were factual, while others were pure fantasy. For example, Ilsa has a male and female prisoner flogged to death to prove her theory that women can endure more pain than men.
The character is also loosely based on "The Witch of Buchenwald", Ilse Koch
Ilse Koch
Ilse Koch, née Köhler , was the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of the Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald from 1937 to 1941, and Majdanek from 1941 to 1943...
, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Koch was known for having perverse sexual dalliances with the prisoners and was rumored to have had lampshades made from human skin.
Ilsa includes the standard elements of sadism, degradation, whipping, sexual slavery, graphic torture, and a bloody finale with Ilsa shot dead and the camp set ablaze. This was a surprise hit on the drive-in and grindhouse
Grindhouse
A grindhouse is an American term for a theater that mainly shows exploitation films. It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease were featured.- History :...
circuit. Ilsa was resurrected for a trio of profitable sequels that ignored her Nazi origins and are closer to the women in prison genre. As a freelance mistress-for-hire, she became Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is a 1976 sexploitation women in prison film, the first sequel to Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.-Premise:Dyanne Thorne repeats the title role, but this time Ilsa works as head of the harem of Sheikh El Sharif...
(1976), commander of a 1953 gulag in Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia
Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia
Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia is a sexploitation "Men in prison" style of film that was produced in Canada in 1977. It is the third sequel of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.-Premise:...
(1977), and ran a corrupt Latin American prison in Ilsa, the Wicked Warden (1977).
Nazi films from Italy
Meanwhile, filmmakers in Italy were creating their own Nazi movies with Ilsa-type villains. In 1977 Malisa Longo starred in Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg as a black-booted, leather wearing and sexually sadistic commander of a prison camp for women. That year Longo also starred in Fraulein DevilFräulein Devil
Fräulein Devil, also known as Captive Women 4, Elsa: Fraulein SS and Fraulein Kitty, is a 1977 French Nazi exploitation film.-Plot:...
(aka Elsa: Fraulein SS) as Elsa, a former hooker with a penchant for S&M, who manages a Nazi "Pleasure Train" populated by prostitutes.
One of the most notorious films in this genre is La Bestia in Calore (aka SS Hell Camp), also from 1977. German actress Macha Magall played Dr. Ellen Kratsch, another icy blond Nazi who is sexy yet thoroughly evil. This film, with its extensive and graphic scenes of torture, brutality and rape, was initially banned in England. A milder, edited version was released in the U.S. as SS Experiment Camp 2. Magall was also in SS Girls (1976), another story set in a Nazi brothel.
The Nazi exploitation subgenre presented an opportunity for Italian studios to make very low cost horror pictures whilst tapping a previously ignored market — the exploitation war film. The Italian films are different from "Ilsa" in many ways — they focus on far more extreme aspects of human abuse (the most extreme example is probably in SS Hell Camp
La Bestia in Calore
La Bestia in Calore is an Italian exploitation film released in 1977. Directed by Luigi Batzella and written by Batzella and Lorenzo Artale, it gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty...
).
The films of 1976 include: Sergio Garrone's SS Experiment Love Camp (aka SS Experiment, SS Experiment Camp 2), depicting soft core sex scenes and the castration of an SS officer. SS Hell Camp, Luigi Batzella's second Nazi film, featured a sexually crazed mutant created by an Ilsa-like Nazi scientist. SS Girls
SS Girls
SS Girls is a 1977 Nazi exploitation film by Italian exploitation film director Bruno Mattei. This was the first film of former film editor Bruno Mattei. It stars Macha Magall and Ivan Stacotti.-Background:...
, directed by Bruno Mattei
Bruno Mattei
Bruno Mattei was an Italian film director, screenwriter and editor who gained a cult following for a wide variety of exploitation films that covered many genres, ranging from women in prison to zombie films...
, is a blatant copy of Salon Kitty. Mattei also made SS Extermination Love Camp (aka Women's Camp 119) starring Lorraine de Salle. This film depicts horrific scientific experiments performed on prisoners based on actual documents. SS Special Section Women stars John Steiner
John Steiner
John Steiner is an English actor. Tall, thin and gaunt, Steiner attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and worked for a few years at the BBC. Steiner featured in a lead role in a television production of Design for Living by Noel Coward. Later he found further work primarily in films...
as a sex-crazed SS Commandant whose love for a Jewish girl costs him his manhood. Achtung! The Desert Tigers, from Luigi Batzella
Luigi Batzella
Luigi Batzella was an Italian Z-movie director, writer and former actor who used numerous pseudonyms. Some of them were Paolo Solvay, Ivan Kathansky, A.M...
, is interwoven with stock footage and scenes at a Nazi camp in the desert where tortures abound.
1977 saw the release of The Gestapo's Last Orgy (aka Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler), which depicts a love affair between a camp Commandant and a prisoner. SS Camp 5: Women’s Hell is SS Experiment Camps sister film featuring the same cast and crew. Red Nights of the Gestapo is a softcore sex film with SS soldiers abusing women in a castle. Helltrain (SS Heltrain) is about a brothel train managed by the SS. Nazi Love Camp 27
Nazi Love Camp 27
Nazi Love Camp 27 is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film by western director Mario Caino starring Sirpa Lane. The film is notable for its truly grim scenes, dramatic plot and hardcore sex scenes.- Plot :...
, starring Sirpa Lane as a Jewish girl forced into a brothel, is notable for its hardcore sex scenes and for being written by famed scripter Gianfanco Clerici.
By the end of the decade the genre had run its course.
Nazi pornography
Adult films also exploited Nazi scenarios in a string of sadomasochistic "roughie" pornographic films in the '70s and early '80s. Examples include the Mitchell brothersMitchell brothers
The brothers James "Jim" Lloyd Mitchell and Artie Jay Mitchell were pioneers in the pornography and striptease club business in San Francisco and other parts of California from 1969 until 1991, when Jim was convicted of killing Artie.They opened the O'Farrell Theatre in 1969 as an adult cinema...
' Hot Nazis, Nazi Love Island with John Holmes
John Holmes (pornographic actor)
John Curtis Holmes better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd , was one of the most prolific male porn stars of all time, appearing in about 2,500 adult loops, stag films, and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s...
and Seka
Seka
Seka is an American pornographic actress who appeared in many pornographic films during the late 1970s and the 1980s.-Career:...
, and Hitler's Harlot. One of the last entries, Stalag 69 (1982), starred Angelique Pettyjohn
Angelique Pettyjohn
Angelique Pettyjohn was an American actress and burlesque queen. She is best known in show business for her appearance as the drill thrall Shahna in the Star Trek episode, "The Gamesters of Triskelion".-Biography:...
as an Ilsa-type SS officer. The story was largely a remake of Love Camp 7, bringing the cycle back to its origins. The genre remained mostly dormant for the next two decades. In 2006, Mood Pictures, a Hungarian producer of S&M films, released Gestapo, Gestapo 2, and Dr. Mengele in 2008, all of which are set in a Nazi prison camp and pay homage to Ilsa and the Italian exploitation films.
Present
In 2007, as part of Robert RodriguezRobert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodríguez is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He shoots and produces many of his films in his native Texas and Mexico. He has directed such films as Desperado, From Dusk till Dawn, The Faculty, Spy Kids, Sin City, Planet...
and Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
's tribute to exploitation cinema, Grindhouse, director Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...
created a trailer for a fake film called Werewolf Women of the SS, starring Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage is an American actor, producer and director, having appeared in over 60 films including Raising Arizona , The Rock , Face/Off , Gone in 60 Seconds , Adaptation , National Treasure , Ghost Rider , Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans , and...
and Udo Kier
Udo Kier
Udo Kier is a German actor, known primarily for his work in horror and exploitation movies.-Early life:...
. According to Zombie, "Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There's all those movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS; Fräulein Devil
Fräulein Devil
Fräulein Devil, also known as Captive Women 4, Elsa: Fraulein SS and Fraulein Kitty, is a 1977 French Nazi exploitation film.-Plot:...
; and Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7
Love Camp 7 is a 1969 U.S. women-in-prison B-movie directed by Lee Frost and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, the latter of whom also acts as a sadistic camp commandant.-Plot:...
—I've always found that to be the most bizarre genre." On December 18, 2007, Zombie posted an entry on his MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
page, asking if people would want to see a feature-length version of Werewolf Women of the SS.
In Frank Miller
Frank Miller (comics)
Frank Miller is an American comic book artist, writer and film director best known for his dark, film noir-style comic book stories and graphic novels Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300...
's 2009 film version of the pulp comic
The Spirit
The Spirit is a crime-fighting fictional character created by writer-artist Will Eisner. He first appeared June 2, 1940 in "The Spirit Section", the colloquial name given to a 16-page Sunday supplement, distributed to 20 newspapers by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and reaching five million...
The Spirit
The Spirit (film)
The Spirit is a 2008 American superhero noir film, written and directed by Frank Miller and starring Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Dan Lauria, Paz Vega, Jaime King, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson. The film is based on the newspaper comic strip The Spirit by Will Eisner...
, the supercriminal known only as "The Octopus" (played by Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and film producer. After becoming involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles such as in the film Goodfellas before meeting his mentor,...
) is portrayed as being so insane that, rather than picking a recurring theme as most supervillains traditionally do, he dresses in an entirely different wardrobe on a day to day basis, depending on his mood (additionally providing a matching costume for his henchwoman, Silken Floss). In one scene, he is wearing a full SS officer's uniform, and his hideout has been adorned with flags, statues, and portraits of the Third Reich.
Themes
Most of the Nazi exploitation films have stalagStalag
In Germany, stalag was a term used for prisoner-of-war camps. Stalag is a contraction of "Stammlager", itself short for Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts-Stammlager.- Legal definitions :...
settings with young female inmates like Women's Camp 119. Their tormentors are female or male Nazi officers in SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
uniforms, usually speaking with a fake German accent and irrelevant or mispronounced German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
words, who often use "experiments" as excuses to implement sadistic physical violence (perhaps inspired by the work of people like Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
, who performed medical experiments
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
that often killed people). There are scenes of sexual conduct or, more routinely, exposed nude bodies of the victimised inmates. The level of violence depicted in these films may often reach the gore
Splatter film
A splatter film or gore film is a subgenre of horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the...
level.
It should be noted this genre mainly focused on female SS officers. It presented them as lusty as well as buxom women such as Dyanne Thorne's Ilsa, who also sexually abused their male prisoners (mainly in non statutory female on male rape fashion). As the setting is a Stalag, not a concentration camp, the prisoners are mainly Allied soldiers, not Jewish civilians.
There are also many films that do not follow the conventions of Nazi exploitation, such as Bordel SS (1978) of José Bénazéraf
José Bénazéraf
José Bénazéraf is a French filmmaker and producer.After having finished his studies in political sciences, he started his career by producing Les lavandières du Portugal in 1958, a film of Pierre Gaspard-Huit...
(one of the very few Nazi exploitation films to hold the dubious honor of having actual hardcore sex) and Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty was a Berlin brothel used by the SD for espionage purposes before and during World War II.In the 1930s Berlin, Salon Kitty was a high-class brothel in 11 Giesebrechtstrasse. Its usual clientele included German dignitaries and foreign diplomats...
(1976) of Tinto Brass
Tinto Brass
Giovanni Brass , better known as Tinto Brass, is an Italian filmmaker. He is noted especially for his work in the erotic genre, with films such as Così fan tutte , Paprika, Monella and Trasgredire...
. These films are not usually considered as "prototypical" Nazi exploitation films and qualify more for the "art house
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
" sub-genre. However, because of the vague term, even the film Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter
The Night Porter
The Night Porter is a controversial 1974 film by Italian director Liliana Cavani, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.- Synopsis :...
) (1974) by Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani
Liliana Cavani is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers that came into prominence in the 1970s and includes Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellochio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature...
that — in the opinion of many — lacks the exploitation motive, may be deemed one such film.
Laura Frost's book Sex Drives: Fantasies of Fascism in Literary Modernism (2002) (ISBN 0801487641) says that the genre is part of a problematic attempt to link political deviance (i.e. fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
) with sexual deviance (i.e. sadomasochism, homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, transvestism
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
, pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
).
Legal status in Britain
Sometime in the early 1980s, Nazi exploitation films made their way onto the BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
market, made popular by the growing VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
home video technology. With major Hollywood studios steering clear of the new format, it was left to small, domestic companies to populate the shelves with tapes. A small company from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, GO Video, purchased the rights to an Italian film named SS Experiment Camp. The company ran a marketing campaign with full page ads showing a naked woman hanging from her feet, a swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
dangling from her wrist and an SS commander looming in the background. Adverts for the film in video rental stores became a target for protestors, who picketed such stores and petitioned for the film to be banned. After the Video Recordings Act
Video Recordings Act
Video Recordings Act may refer to:*Video Recordings Act 1984 in the United Kingdom*Video Recordings Act 1987 in New Zealand*Video Recordings Act 2010 in the United Kingdom...
, most of the Nazi exploitation films (labelled 'Nazi Nasties
Video nasty
"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982 which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse and various religious organizations.While violence...
') became illegal in the UK. The following Nazi exploitation films were banned:
- SS Experiment CampSS Experiment CampSS Experiment Camp is a 1976 Nazi exploitation film directed by Sergio Garrone. The plot concerns a Nazi officer who wanted a testicles transplant. It gained infamy in the 1980s for its bad-taste sexual and violent content involving, as the title suggests, Nazi human experimentation...
(SS Experiment/Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur) - The Beast In HeatLa Bestia in CaloreLa Bestia in Calore is an Italian exploitation film released in 1977. Directed by Luigi Batzella and written by Batzella and Lorenzo Artale, it gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty...
(SS Hell Camp/La Bestia in Calore) - Gestapo's Last OrgyL'ultima orgia del III ReichLast Orgy of the Third Reich is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film directed by Cesare Canevari.- Plot :...
(Last Orgy of The Third Reich/Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler/L'ultima orgia del III Reich) - Love Camp 7Love Camp 7Love Camp 7 is a 1969 U.S. women-in-prison B-movie directed by Lee Frost and written by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse, the latter of whom also acts as a sadistic camp commandant.-Plot:...
- Deported Women of the SS Special Section (Le Deportate della sezione speciale SS)
Of the above films, only SS Experiment Camp is now available in the UK.
Israeli literature
In Israel specifically, during the 1960s "Stalag fictionStalag fiction
Stalag fiction was a short-lived genre of Israeli fiction Nazi exploitation that flourished in the early 1960s, at the time of the Eichmann Trial.-Premise:...
" was pocket books whose stories focused on the unique features of this genre. The phenomena took ground in parallel to the 1961 Eichmann trial. Sales of this pornographic literature broke all records in Israel as hundreds of thousands of copies were sold at kiosks.
They were inspired by Ka-tzetnik 135633's The House of Dolls
The House of Dolls
The House of Dolls is a 1955 novella by Ka-tzetnik 135633. The novella describes "Joy Divisions", which were allegedly groups of Jewish women in the concentration camps during World War II who were kept for the sexual pleasure of Nazi soldiers....
, the experiences of a Jewish girl prostituted in the "Joy Division" (Block 24) of the Auschwitz camp, the factuality of which is disputed.
Holocaust pornography
Holocaust pornographyHolocaust pornography
Holocaust pornography, known also as "Stalag porn", following the 1955 publication of the The House of Dolls, functions at the extreme end of Jewish pornography....
, known also as Stalag porn following the 1955 publication of The House of Dolls, functions at the extreme end of Jewish pornography.
See also
- Sexual enslavement by Nazi Germany in World War II
- Joy Division (World War II)
- Nazi chicNazi chicNazi chic refers to the approving use of Nazi-era style, imagery, and paraphernalia in clothing and popular culture, especially when used for taboo breaking or shock value rather than out of genuine nazist sympathies....
- Clothing fetishClothing fetishClothing fetish or garment fetish is a sexual fetish that revolves around a fixation upon a particular article or type of clothing, a collection of garments that appear as part of a fashion or uniform, or a person dressed in such a garment....
(Military, police, and Nazi chic)
Further Reading
- Daniel H. Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges, and Kristin T. Vander Lugt (eds.) Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture (New York: Continuum, 2011).
- Sara Buttsworth, Maartje Abbenhuis (editors), Monsters in The Mirror: Representations of Nazism in Post-War Popular Culture(Greenwood Publishing Group, 2010). ISBN 978-0-313-38216-1
External links
- Nazi Exploitation Cinema An exemplary listing of Nazi exploitation films
- Sadiconazista Analytical essay on Nazi exploitation films
- Filmografia di Liliana Cavani