Nazi Cult Collection

[The Reaper Man@Cult Labs]

You're a brave man B!

[Ken]

Originally Posted by bdc

3 left now...

Make that 1

[bdc]

Nice one Ken!
0 left now...
Time to restock!

[Ken]

Just received mine in the post this morning.

[bdc]

Nice one!

[bdc]

Back in stock at OMG (5 left).

[bdc]

I know some of you have it,so where's the reviews?

[42ndStreetFreak]

Originally Posted by bdc

I know some of you have it,so where's the reviews?

Well I put up one last night...."Elsa". on the 'What films did you watch' thread.


Here;


"Elsa: Fraulein SS"

http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvelsa.php


"Salon Kitty" on a choo choo.


Welcome to the world of Eurociné!
If many (though certainly not all) horror/exploitation flicks of this time were low-end rehashes of the current American cinematic trend…Eurociné were making rehashes of those rehashes!

“Elsa” opens with upbeat classic music playing over stock footage of Hitler shouting a lot and his armies goose-stepping merrily along.
After this we are thrown into even more cheap padding footage taken from newsreels of various battles before the movie jerks into the film proper as we see a handful of bored, skinny, extras in baggy (and rather dubious looking) German uniforms shuffling down the road.
Almost all the extras in this are awful though. They either stand there slouching and looking bored (not good when dressed as a soldier) or staring at the camera with a look that says “how long till the lunch break”.

Thankfully the look and production design of the film improves a bit after the opening as we enter a chaotic Nazi headquarters in a mansion which is of course complete with multiple swastika flags, Hitler photos and a smug git (with a gloriously theatrical twitch) in a groovy looking Black and silver SS uniform (I’ll say it once again…say what you want about those damn Nazis, but the bastards sure knew how to dress) who sets the plot up.
So if nothing else we at least have some essential iconography on display.

After this scene setting sequence we have the ever essential ‘medical check-up sequence’ to pick the prostitutes.
The luckiest actor in the film?
The guy who plays the examiner who spends his time opening the women’s legs (as they lie down naked on his table) and getting right in there with his beady little eyes to check that all Nazi vagina’s are up to snuff. Or sniff.
So far so trashily good.

As we move onto the train all the delightful Naziploitation cliché components are here, from much groping in stiff uniforms, sexual humiliation (only mild though here), preening Nazis, shifty spies, theatrical fanaticism and a spot of Dietrich like singing involving piano perching, see-through lingerie and a big feathery boa.
But then unlike the train, the film loses steam as we watch numerous extras get bloodlessly shot in the head for saying nasty things about Adolf with their trousers down.
The dead direction, amateur staging, laboured dubbing and repetitiveness of it all starts to make the mind wander.

Thankfully Elsa’s rather magnificent breasts (Malisa Longo is no Dyanne Thorne but she looks damn hot and is willing to let it all hang out, and get zoomed in on, for the cause) bring our minds back to the movie.

It’s not long though before we’re back to a slow crawl again and get hit with blatant padding when we get to spend time with wimpy Frantz (dubbed over by someone doing an impression of James Mason. But even at his lowest career ebb I don’t remember James Mason licking the boots of a sadistic Nazi bitch with no knickers on!)

Sadly we have now come to the conclusion that, despite the high camp value and genuine ‘so bad their good’ moments, the film is often very slow, lacking energy and mired in too many flat dialogue scenes.
We do get a few dialogue gems though.
Frantz: “To spy while making love! Disgusting! But no one compels you to have orgasms”!

We have a little bit of violence to liven things up slightly that comes in the form of some rather mild torture (a bald old guy) and a brief bit of naked woman flogging.
The various shootings are ridiculously bloodless though and the weapons mostly sound like cap guns.
And boy! The action scenes are bad.
Those bored looking extras I mentioned just stand around in the open pointing guns in a confused manner pointing their cap guns and going ‘pop’.
Then occasionally one of them will clutch their chest and slowly and carefully fall to the ground in what passes as the horrors of war.

The lack of any real bloodshed, inventive torture (I know, I know, but we are talking Naziploitation here) or general sadism (I know, I know, but we are talking Naziploitation here) in “Elsa: Fraulein SS” is a let down as far as good old fashioned cheap thrills go and we only have the frequent nudity (and its lovely collection 70’s pubic bushes) to keep our interest up , away from the more unintentional joys of course at the sheer wonderful badness of it all.

And as for the end, well, what can one say except…Heh?
Worst stock footage explosion ever leads into a bizarre open-ended finale that seems to hint at a damn sequel! As if! Talk about wishful thinking.
Definitely one for Naziploitation completists (and fur lovers) only.

[bdc]

I somehow missed that!
Great review btw.
I thought Elsa was ok but I like Special train for Hitler better,more sleaze!

This must be one of my favorite scenes from Elsa.

[42ndStreetFreak]

"Helga: She Wolf of Spilberg"

http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvhelga.php

Ohhh…dear. Welcome to the stinky world of Eurociné once again.
Here they have blatantly ripped off the classic Naziploitation movie “Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS” (although avoiding any Nazi connection) and done it with all style you would expect from Eurociné...which is of course no style at all.

Even in the world of slip shod dub jobs on Euro trash the dub here stands out as one of the worst.
Nothing comes even close to matching the actor’s lip movements and once again it sounds like a bunch of psychotic mice recorded on a crinkled cassette tape.

Before we ship off to the prison we see that Helga has a personal showering assistant who rubs her bubbles for her before she gets down to a spot of clumsy screwing with her main guy, a thug named Hugo, who’s a hairy dude with a bad porn moustache all of which makes him look like Harry Reems crossed with a Mexican bandit.
The eroticism is of course cranked up big time by the music, which sounds like you’re stuck in a 70’s lift.

When we got to the ‘dreadful’ prison we find it’s actually just an old farm with a Doctor who selects prisoners for some ‘welcome to the farm‘ hay rape.
“Ahhh! No, leave me alone! Noooo”! cries the unfortunate victim in clipped English tones as we take no less than 3 different scenes to finally get her damn raincoat off!
When we finally do though it’s worth it as far as pleasant on the eye nudity goes…but not so welcome when it comes to the less than pleasant sonic assault on the eardrums (yet again!!) when the soundtrack to this ravishing is revealed to be nothing but an excited baboon falling into a drum kit.

Thankfully gratuitous nudity does rear its hairy head in various scenes (including an extended, ever essential, medical check-up) strategically placed to keep the audience awake.
Damn fine naked ladies too.
But quite frankly to have such beauty in this film is like putting a delicately sculptured icing sugar rose on top of a turd cake.
As far as being gratuitously beastly to women goes, “Helga” certainly joins the ranks of those Naziploitation films even if it’s not remotely as violent or generally twisted.

To be fair though the film does come actually come alive at one point, as far as delivering some true exploitation goes at least, during a ‘naked blonde girls gets flogged with a belt’ sequence that does get pretty raunchy due to the fact the whipping looks quite hard and is in fact leaving distinctive red lines on the poor suffering actress’s poor pale arse.
I’m sure the BBFC would still have a problem with this scene today.

The underrated Malisa Longa as "Helga" looks as good as ever and her ‘uniform’ of crimson silk top and tight, black silk trousers looks quite striking, if a little absurd.

But, away from these few grubby lumps of exploitation nutrition that are tossed at us, the movie is hampered not only by its technical ineptitude but by endlessly repeated sequences which are nothing but blatant padding and also gives you the hideous impression, , if you happened to have looked away for a minute, that the movie’s started all over again and that you’ll never be free of it!
And being stuck forever in the presence of a ceaselessly looped “Helga” would be a cruel fate indeed.

Nothing much at all happens as far as any real plot progression goes in fact until things suddenly pick up right at the end, where all of a sudden (in a burst of plinky plonky piano backed war movie stock footage and brief, badly done, original action scenes) an entire civil war suddenly comes to an end in a matter of minutes.

And if I thought the end of Eurociné’s “Elsa: Frauline SS” was an anticlimactic mess, then the freeze frame final shot in “Helga” puts it too shame.

So overall “Helga” is stuck with almost non-existent direction, hysterically random and awful library music, erratic editing , truly horrendous dubbing and a leaden pace.
We do have a certain ‘so bad it’s quite amusing’ charm to things and the constant nudity and occasional exploitation moment liven things up…but really sitting though this non-Nazi Naziploitation knock-off is a dreadful chore indeed.