Video Nasties: Gestapo’s Last Orgy
In this weekly series I’m taking a look back at some of the films that, in the early 1980’s, were caught up in the Video Nasties moral panic in the UK. When video first arrived in the UK it was not covered by our censorship laws, and that, combined with the reluctance of the studios to embrace the technology, meant that many of the early releases were lurid, uncensored, horror films.
The tabloid press mounted a campaign against the films, and with a new right wing government in power and the growing influence of pro-censorship campaigner Mary Whitehouse, the Director of Public Prosecutions was instructed to draw up a list of films liable to prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act. I’ll be attempting to look at every one of the 74 films that made this list, giving you a snapshot of the controversy around each film before watching and reviewing it.
THE BAN
It’s. Called. Gestapo’s. Last. Orgy. Of course it got banned. The Italian Nazi camp films were a small and short lived cycle, but a lot of them, understandably, got caught up in the nasties controversy. Gestapo’s Last Orgy (also known as Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler) is a nasty film based on a nasty idea; taking the rumours that the Nazis, as well as murdering Jews in their millions, also used Jewish women in concentration camp brothels as a reward system for their soldiers, and making a violent sexpoloitation film out of them. Yeah, stay classy, Italian film industry. The film doesn’t appear to have come to the BBFC since the 80’s, but it’s probably a fair assumption that it would have problems, given the outright rejection of similarly themed nasty Love Camp 7 in 2007.
THE FILM
Gestapo’s Last Orgy is the perfect example of the kind of disservice the DPP list did to movie watchers. It compels (some of) us to go and seek out these infamous films, and then we end up spending 96 minutes – 96 minutes I am never getting back, and could have spent rewatching Matinee – watching this horribly technically inept, unspeakably boring, cinematic excrement which would have (and should have) died a natural and unmourned death some 30 years ago if not for that list, just because some authoritarian prat in the 80’s tried to stop us watching it.
I Spit on Your Grave may be difficult to watch, but at least it is well made and asks some pertinent and troubling questions, even if you don’t like it, it has value as a film. Gestapo’s Last Orgy is worthless. It’s not got anything to say. It’s not got any good performances. It’s not well made. It’s not scary. It’s not, except in concept, even especially nasty, and it’s about as much fun as brushing your teeth with acid. It’s not even really interesting or provocative enough to be offensive. It’s just ugly, in any way you care to mention.
There’s really nothing enticing (if you are remotely normal) about the combination of the suffering of Jewish women at the hands of the Nazis and exploitative sex and nudity, and less so when many of those nude scenes revolve around the torture of the women, and notably the torture of Daniella Poggi’s Lise. Lise says that all she wants at the camp is to die, and she refuses to succumb to any of camp commandant Von Schartke’s (Adriano Micantoni) tortures. Determined to break her he vows not to kill her until she begs for her life. This very weak story is framed by a sequence set 20 years later when Lise and Von Schartke (who haven’t aged a day) meet at the ruins of the camp. The development that sees Lise, late in the film, declare her love for Von Schartke might have been offensive (or even interesting) in a better film, but since we don’t believe it or Lise’s motivation to lie for a second it becomes merely risible. It’s hard to tell much about the performances in a dubbed film, but Poggi certainly appears to have been cast for her astonishing beauty and willingness to shed her clothes rather than for her acting. Okay so Lise would be blank faced during the tortures, but there’s a real vacancy about Poggi, a blankness behind the eyes that fights against us identifying with her.
How boring is Gestapo’s Last Orgy? Well, it begins – thrillingly – with five minutes of driving footage. Droning voiceover relates some of the testimony at Von Schartke’s trial as he drives, but since we don’t know who he is it seems as though someone has mixed up the reels and accidentally put the wrong film’s first reel on. It does get more eventful, but never really more interesting.
Technically the film is a total mess. It looks to have been filmed on leftover sets from a low rent Hogans Heroes knockoff (which is really bad considering that even Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS managed to get to use the real thing). The stock is washed out and inconsistent, the lighting is so poor it often obscures detail and the shot choices are extremely pedestrian. The editing is an offence to God and Man, and the dubbing is much, much worse than that. Frequently the filmmakers just don’t bother with dubbing, in one sequence a woman is hit twice before anyone even considers dubbing a slapping sound in.
The ‘horrific’ scenes are often just ludicrous, at times (such as when the Nazis eat a stew made from Jewish babies) it’s so obviously calculated to shock that it’s laughable, and at others it’s just straight up stupid. Never is this more true than when Lise is threatened with her head being lowered into a box full of rats, who will supposedly eat her face while she’s alive. Scary. If the rats weren’t OBVIOUSLY extremely docile and cute gerbils. ‘Awwww, look at the cute fluffy gerbils’ is not the reaction you want to a torture scene in the middle of a concentration camp based video nasty. The sex scenes fare little better, even the one that you might legitimately feel free to enjoy (the film’s sole entirely consensual sex scene) is botched, as Lise and the camp’s doctor endlessly roll around while a gentle ballad called ‘Lise’ drones away on the soundtrack for three very, very long minutes.
There is probably a good and thought provoking film to be made about the Nazi treatment of Jewish women. This is not it. Worse than that, it’s not even an entertaining or enjoyable exploitation movie. Okay, it’s not the worst nasty I’ve seen (just you wait), but there is nothing to recommend Gestapo’s Last Orgy.
