HELL HUNTERS -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 7/7/16

 

Interesting Brazilian locations, including Rio de Janeiro's fabled carnival, and some venerable actors doing a little slumming highlight the cheap-but-fun action thriller HELL HUNTERS (1986), now on DVD from Film Chest. 

An aging but lively Stewart Granger seems to be having a good time playing mad scientist Martin Hoffmann, an escaped Nazi (loosely based on Joseph Mengele) living in South America and performing experiments he hopes will result in a serum that will turn people into Hitler-heiling zombies.

Meanwhile, a rag-tag group of armed Nazi hunters headed by Amanda (Maud Adams, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, OCTOPUSSY) keep pursuing Hoffman through the Brazilian jungles.  An early gunfight between the two factions helps kickstart the film.

Amanda even goes so far as to marry Hoffman's nephew so that he'll take her to the ex-Nazi's secret jungle compound, the route to which she records in her diary before she's assassinated by Hoffman's lethal toady El Pasado (Eduardo Conde) in a suspenseful scene that takes place in an airport bathroom.

When Amanda's estranged daughter Ally (Candice Daly) comes to Brazil to attend her mother's funeral, she gets caught up in the search for Hoffman and gets a taste for revenge in which her training in self-defense and target shooting comes in handy.

What follows is a rather lighthearted--as well as lightweight--action flick with some touchy romantic interplay between the skittish Ally and an amorous young Nazi hunter named Tonio (Rômulo Arantes) that yields much amusingly bad dialogue and a softcore sex scene or two. 

Tonio's female partner Nelia (Nelia J. Cozza) is a dark, sassy beauty who likes to leap into the fray right alongside the guys even when the bullets are flying fast and furious. 

During the group's foray up the river toward Hoffman's elusive hideout (one of the production companies mentioned in the credits is called "Heart of Darkness") they pick up a man-mountain named Kong (Russ McCubbin) who adds to the film's comedy-relief quotient as well as ramping up the amount of physical mayhem whenever they confront the bad guys.

The inevitable bullet-riddled climax pays off pretty well for such a modest production, reminding me a bit of the finale of Ted V. Mikels' THE DOLL SQUAD (1973).  Nothing really amazing happens, but like the rest of the film it's well-paced and competently handled by director Ernst R. von Theumer, who also manages a nifty chase scene in and around Rio de Janeiro earlier in the film.

 

Acting is all over the place among the lesser members of the cast although they all seem to be having a good time.  Aside from the jovial Granger, Maud Adams is more appealing to me here than in both her previous Bond appearances.  And speaking of Bond, one-time 007 George Lazenby (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) makes a brief but welcome appearance as one of Hoffman's associates. 

The DVD from Film Chest is in 16x9 widescreen and is "restored in HD from the original 35mm print."  Meaning that the visual quality won't knock your socks off but it looks pretty good for a film of its age and low budget.  No extras. 

There are those, of course, to whom HELL HUNTERS will be well out of their tolerance range for low-budget and hopelessly hokey action flicks.  For me, however, it was a nice bit of good, clean, nostalgic fun. 

HELL HUNTERS -- DVD Review by Porfle

BLITZKRIEG: ESCAPE FROM STALAG 69 -- DVD Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 4/23/09

 

 

At a stultifying 135 minutes, Keith J. Crocker's ode to grindhouse Nazi-sploitation, BLITZKRIEG: ESCAPE FROM STALAG 69 (2008), is almost twice as long as his 1997 trash classic THE BLOODY APE, but not quite as much fun to watch. Still, the more prurient among us (excluding myself, of course, heh heh) will find much to enjoy, although getting to these tidbits of titillation can be pretty slow going until the lively climax.

With the writer-director of THE BLOODY APE at the helm, BLITZKRIEG's atrocities rub shoulders with lots of goofy comedy. Charles Esser plays Helmut Schultz, the rotund commandant of the camp, like a petulant kid whose mommy didn't love him enough. Shoehorned into the same uniform that he had fifty pounds ago and sporting a German accent that would be hard for Arnold Schwarzenegger to decipher, Schultz delights in performing inhuman experiments on prisoners even as his superiors warn him of retaliation by the rapidly advancing Allied forces. His Ilsa-lite sister Frieda (Gordana Jenell) is a junior officer who also enjoys tormenting the hapless POWs.

Schultz's "pet" project is a mutant ape-man (seen only in deleted scenes) about which he boasts, "This beast will not only kill the enemy...he will rape the women, and defile the entire environment!" After a disapproving scientist nixes the project, Schultz tells his equally-corpulent toady Wolfgang (Steve Montague): "He must be blind not to realize the potential of my mighty man-ape!"

Meanwhile, burly Yank prisoner Jack Jones (Edward Yankus) is planning a daring escape with the help of his fellow inmates Lucille (Brenda Cooney), a plucky Scottish lass, and the fierce Natasha (Tatyana Kot), a Russian ball of fire whose unending torture sessions only make her more revenge-crazed and dangerous. Yankus, whose acting style consists mainly of reciting his lines without actually falling over, resembles an amusing cross between John Goodman and Al Gore. Crocker himself, as "James St. Bernard", appears as an American sad sack named "Bernard St. James."

Also joining the Allied opposition are two captured USO performers-- Marjie Kelly as 70s style jive-talkin' black mama Marjie ("Who in the hell are you two turkeys?" she asks Schultz and Wolfgang), and Tammy Dalton as a cute Southern-fried stripper named Candice, who, posing as a guard, greets an approaching Nazi with a chipper "Heil Hitler, y'all!" Kelley looks well fit in the buff, but after a brief flogging and a shower scene, she doesn't have much to do. But when sweet Candice is forced to perform her cheesy burlesque act for her jeering captors, Tammy Dalton pulls it off beautifully. It's one of the three or four really good setpieces in the film--suddenly Crocker and company are firing on all cylinders and, for a few minutes, it feels like we're watching a real movie.

For sheer, manic intensity, however, nobody in the cast can match Tatyana Kot. Her flame-haired dervish Natasha is a real treat to watch, whether she's spitting blood and screaming wild-eyed obscenities back at her torturers or running naked through the woods with a machine gun, mowing down German soldiers. In a flashback, we see her lure one of them into a bubbly bathtub for some almost-hardcore sex before gleefully castrating him, in an obvious homage to the tub scene from I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.

Another penectomy occurs in the Nazi torture dungeon, this time in full close-up as the sadistic and sexy Dr. Zuber demonstrates to a visiting Japanese general (Wayne Chang) the best way to neutralize an unruly male prisoner. Here, the awesome Steph Van Vlack, who is the closest thing in BLITZKRIEG to a genuine "Ilsa"-type character, delivers the film's most skilled performance while once again the direction and camerawork somehow click into just the right groove. Seductive yet steely-eyed and evil, the topless Dr. Zuber playfully toys with her captive until the scene comes to a cutting end with some fake-looking but rather startling FX. After that, I'm thinking that if Crocker had made Steph Van Vlack's Dr. Zuber the main character of this movie, it would've been a lot more awesome.

Additional horrors include Natasha's incessant ordeals of bamboo shoots under the fingernails, hot branding irons, a nasty finger vise, a stretching rack, etc., plus various other male and female prisoners being violated in depraved ways. These episodes are interspersed between numerous boring dialogue sequences until finally we get to the breakout finale, where the action finally kicks into high gear. In addition to the obligatory gory revenge against the Nazis, some of the good guys also get theirs in surprising ways and there's an ironic twist or two as well. It's no spoiler to reveal that Schultz gets away, since the whole sordid tale is a flashback that he's recounting years later to a shocked priest (THE BLOODY APE's Paul Richichi), in a framing story that has its own surprise ending.

Obviously, no film made for $10,000 is going to look all that impressive, especially when it's a WWII sex-and-sadism thriller set in a Nazi prison camp. The locations are okay although some of the camp exteriors look like they were shot in somebody's backyard. Costuming and set design (by co-scripter Keith Matturro) range from semi-realistic to impressionistic, with a ragtag group of Russian POWs looking the most authentic. Crocker decided to go with the cheaper digital video instead of film this time, although his 16mm black-and-white test footage (one of the DVD's extras) looks pretty cool.

Other bonus features include an entertaining commentary track with Crocker, Matturro, Kot, and Wild Eye Releasing's Rob Hauschild, a making-of featurette called "Nazis Over Nassau", the original 16mm extended trailer "Schindler's Lust" (1995) starring THE BLOODY APE's Larry Koster, deleted scenes, a cast and crew Q & A session from the film's premiere, production stills, bloopers, trailers, and short film by Crocker entitled "Desade '88." Image and sound quality are okay, although the really bad accents rendered much of the dialogue difficult for me to make out.

Although the production values are exceedingly low, it's fun watching Keith Crocker attempt something this ambitious on such a small budget. And while it takes a bit of effort to get through this overlong and often tedious schlock epic, there are enough elements of sex, violence, and perversion--along with some pretty off-the-wall comedy--to make the trip worthwhile for fans of this bizarro brand of entertainment.

BLITZKRIEG: ESCAPE FROM STALAG 69 -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE AFRICAN QUEEN -- Movie Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 2/4/16

 

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951) is the story of two people you'll want to get  to know very much--Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut, a goodnaturedly uncouth little man who runs a tiny supply boat up and down the river in German East Africa in 1914, and Katharine Hepburn as Miss Rose Sayer, a Christian missionary who, along with her brother Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley), brings God's word to the natives until German soldiers burn down the church and village, kill her brother, and leave her all alone in the jungle.

Director John Huston deftly blends comedy with tragedy in the opening scenes.  Shortly before their horrific encounter with the German military, the Sayers invite Charlie to tea during a supply stop.  He hasn't eaten in awhile, so his stomach starts making the most impolite growling noises to which Rose and her brother react with growing dismay until finally Charlie explains brightly, "Ain't a thing I can do about it!" 

Charlie returns later to bury the brother and take Rose away in his boat, the "African Queen".  But her first thought is to somehow aid in her country's war effort by whatever means available.  Hearing of a German gunboat, the "Louisa", which is terrorizing the countryside from a large lake somewhere downriver, she hatches a scheme in which Charlie will devise a couple of torpedos out of compressed gas bottles, with which they will then ram the Louisa with the torpedos sticking out of the African Queen's bow. 

Humoring her for the time being--and not realizing that he has begun something he won't be able to back out of--he later mocks Miss Sayer's request in a grumbling approximation of her prim accent: "Can you make a torpedo?  Then do so, Mr. Allnut." 

This belly-laugh moment, courtesy of Bogart's irresistibly natural, likable performance as the ragtag river rat, is just the beginning of what will be a rip-roaring adventure, a tender romance, and a gut-busting comedy.  The independent production, filmed mostly on location in Africa in lush Technicolor, is one of John Huston's warmest and most heartfelt films.  This is due in large part to the chemistry between the two stars and Huston's ability as a master director to showcase them at their best.

Miss Rose Sayer is naturally brave and resourceful, which helps make up for her naivete' and inexperience with life in general.  She adapts quickly and becomes instantly addicted to the thrill of adventure as a substitute for sexual intimacy (her first excursion down the rapids leaves her as though she'd just had her first sexual release). 

Learning to handle Allnut's boat is symbolic of her growing familiarity with the man himself while he, in turn, finds himself suddenly yearning to bring out the inner woman behind the straight-laced exterior. 

Allnut is one of Bogart's funniest and most uninhibited characters--his emotional honesty and expressiveness are at their peak here.  Often a single look on his face will convey more thought and emotion than many actors can manage with an entire speech. 

Hepburn is ideally cast as the initially very proper, timid spinster who gradually lets her hair down (literally) and begins to appreciate the more sensual and even carnal aspects of life as her love for Charlie Allnut blossoms toward fruition.

Their journey down the river is a series of funny and romantic vignettes interspersed with moments of harrowing danger which are excitingly staged.  The rapids are a major obstacle, as are mosquitoes, leeches, and, in one suspenseful sequence, German bullets.  Through it all, Rose's indefatigable attitude brings out the best in Charlie, and together they give each other something to live for even when things are at their worst.

Huston's technical skills are dazzling throughout the film.  The location photography is not only stunning but often amazing as well, as when we see a number of large alligators diving off the bank into the water right after Bogart has moved out of the frame--all in a single shot.   The process shots are as well integrated into the action as possible for the time and, for me at least, proved little distraction.  Allan Gray's musical score is another of the film's many pleasures. 

The story reaches its triumphant conclusion aboard the German gunboat, where our unlikely hero and heroine reach the end of their journey in fine style.  Like SHANE, which is tied with KING KONG (1933) as my favorite movie of all time, there are scenes throughout THE AFRICAN QUEEN which bring me to the verge of tears.   Not because these scenes are particularly sad, or particularly happy, but simply because they're quite disarmingly beautiful. 

Read our review of the BEST OF BOGART COLLECTION

THE AFRICAN QUEEN -- Movie Review by Porfle

THE BEAST IN HEAT -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 6/23/19

 

I guess somebody had to try and outdo ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE SS, and director Luigi Batzella does his darndest with the horrendous Nazisploitation shocker THE BEAST IN HEAT (Severin Films, 1977), a film so irredeemably vile at times that some scenes might even make Dyanne Thorne's legendary blonde torture tart drop her jaw on the floor with a hollow thud.

Macha Magall (THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE, CASA PRIVITA PER LA SS) plays Dr. Ellen Kratsch, a Nazi scientist whose inhuman gene experiments have turned a once-human test subject into a big, hairy, slobbering troll monster (Sal Boris) who loves it when a beautiful naked woman is tossed into his cage so that he can rape her to death in the most horrific and savagely animalistic manner imaginable (and yes, that includes cannibalism).

I forgot exactly what scientific purpose this serves, but we're talking about the Nazis here so anything goes. Which it does, with all manner of other atrocities going on in Dr. Ellen's laboratory involving captured members of the Italian anti-Nazi underground and their hapless loved ones in an effort to dissuade the group from its disruptive activities. 

If you've seen ILSA, just imagine it as a warm-up for what happens in this super-sordid nightmare of depravity which, if you're like me, will have you on edge waiting for the director to cut away to something else, which he doesn't do.

Meanwhile, the deceptively sweet-looking SS sadist (the delicately-featured Macha Magall as the inhuman torturess is a striking study in contrast) presides gleefully over it all and even takes an active part in the sexual torment of various male prisoners.  Giving what is probably the best performance in the movie, Magall's supremely evil villainess is a real piece of work.

While all this goes on, there's actually an attempt to put on a somewhat normal war movie elsewhere in a nearby Italian village where the underground rebels are trying to rescue their innocent women and children from the clutches of the Nazis. 

It's a rather pedestrian narrative that's directed, as is most of the movie, in an entirely no-frills fashion (but with lovely rustic Italian settings) and, despite overripe acting and some comically bad dubbing, features some fairly exciting and well-staged battle sequences that I found pretty entertaining.

Even here, however, there's the occasional overlap with the other half of the movie, meaning that when the Nazis move into town to round up the women and children, we're treated to more horrors (babies used as target practice, young girls molested and executed) while our main good-guy underground hero is hauled into Dr. Ellen's lab to be subjected to her most perversely sadistic seduction. 

And thus we see the schizophrenic nature of the film, with Nazisploitation at its most extreme (it truly wallows in the deep end of depravity) rubbing shoulders with a rather earnest little war movie that even has its cloyingly sentimental moments. 

But it's that incredible, gibbering human warthog of a rape monster that will really separate those who run screaming from THE BEAST IN HEAT and those who settle in to see if they can endure it.




Buy it from Severin Films

Release date: June 25, 2019
Scanned from 35mm negative elements

Special Features:

    Fascism On A Thread – The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema: A new feature length documentary featuring interviews with Dyanne ‘Ilsa’ Thorne, Malissa ‘Elsa’ Longo, Filmmakers Sergio Garrone, Mariano Caiano, Rino Di Silvestro, Liliana Cavani, Bruno Mattei and many more.
    Nazi Nasty: Interview with Stephen Thrower, Author of MURDEROUS PASSIONS
    Trailer

THE BEAST IN HEAT -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

"SECRET WEAPON" Arrives on VOD/Digital HD July 7 and DVD July 21 -- Watch The Trailer HERE!

4DIGITAL MEDIA INVITES HOME AUDIENCES TO JOIN THE FIGHT WITH THE HISTORICAL ACTION FILM

"SECRET WEAPON"

 Based On A Remarkable True Story
SECRET WEAPON Arrives On VOD And Digital HD
On Leading Digital Platforms July 7 And DVD On July 21


In the midst of World War II, when a powerful secret Soviet rocket launcher is accidentally left behind during a retreat of Russian troops, a special opps team is sent into the heart of Nazi Germany to rescue the weapon. Against all odds, the unit must retrieve the launcher or ultimately risk the Germans finding it first.

WATCH THE TRAILER:

 
SYNOPSIS
In the depths of World War 2, a powerful secret Soviet rocket launcher is accidentally left during an unexpected retreat of Russian troops. Lethal in the hands of the Germans, a special operations unit is sent to rescue the launcher, to ensure Germans can never find and use it to win the war. Against all odds, the unit must fight to retrieve the secret weapon, no matter what it takes.

PROGRAM INFORMATION
Release: July 7, 2020 (VOD & Digital HD On Leading Digital Platforms), July 21,2020 (DVD)
Written/Directed By: Konstantin Statskiy
Produced By: Ruben Dishdishyan, Aram Movsesyan, Elena Denisevich
Starring: Alexander Ustyugov, Timofey Tribuntsev, Anatoly Gushin, Polina Polyakova
Distributor: 4Digital Media
Production Company: Mars Media Entertainment
Genre: Historical Action
Runtime: 99 minutes
Rating: NR
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 (1.78.1)
Audio: 2.0 Stereo and 5.1 Surround
Language: Russian (English subtitles) and English

"SECRET WEAPON" Arrives on VOD/Digital HD July 7 and DVD July 21 -- Watch The Trailer HERE!

"BACK TO THE FATHERLAND" -- Opening Theatrically June 14 in NYC/Opening in LA June 28 -- See Trailer HERE!

BACK TO THE FATHERLAND

DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY: KAT ROHRER AND GIL LEVANON

Award-winning documentary BACK TO THE FATHERLAND will open theatrically in New York on Friday, June 14 (Cinema Village) and Los Angeles (Laemmle Music Hall) on Friday, June 28 with a national release to follow.


WATCH THE TRAILER




Gil and Kat, both filmmakers, struck up a friendship during their time at college in New York City ten years ago. Gil comes from Israel, Kat from Austria. Their families' history is strikingly different. Gil is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Kat is one of a Nazi officer.

The exodus of many young secular Israelis to Germany and Austria prompt Gil and Kat to embark on a journey: to find other grandchildren of Holocaust survivors who had moved to Germany and Austria and learn how their grandparents reacted to that decision. Could returning to the site of their pain decades ago create reconciliation between generations?

BACK TO THE FATHERLAND follows the journey of three families in transition; Israeli grandchildren from the “Third Generation” and their respective grandparents.The film deals with both sides of the historic tragedy and the attempt to build their own future, without ignoring the past.

KAT ROHRER (DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, AUSTRIA)
In 2002, Kat Rohrer founded her New York based production company, GreenKat Productions. Since then Kat has directed and produced more the ten short films, music videos, documentaries, and a wide variety of industrials and commercials. Kat acted as DP on the feature length documentary “Larry Flint: The Right to Be Left Alone”, which screened worldwide and has been aired on IFC. Her last documentary “Fatal Promises,” which deals with Human Trafficking, has been shown across the US and Europe in film festivals, anti-trafficking and fundraising events and college campuses.

GIL LEVANON (CO-DIRECTOR, CO- PRODUCER, ISRAEL)
Gil Levanon has been writing, producing and directing award winning commercials, industrial and short films for over fifteen years. After completing her BFA in directing and graduating with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she associate produced in The Rolling Stones Showfor MTV and later associate produced promos for USA Network ,NBC. Her short film “Manfred” won second place in the Israeli Documentary Challenge Competition and screened in Cinematheques around Israel.

ABOUT FIRST RUN FEATURES
First Run Features was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers to advance the distribution of independent film. First Run quickly gained a reputation for its controversial catalog of daring documentaries and fiction films. Today First Run remains one of the largest independent distributors in North America, releasing in theaters nationwide; to schools, libraries and other educational institutions; on home video on DVD and Blu-Ray; to television broadcasters; and online through a diverse group of innovative digital partners.

Recent releases include "Moynihan," "Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe," "Chasing Portraits," and "Germans & Jews." 

Check out our website: www.firstrunfeatures.com
 
Official film website: www.backtothefatherland.com

Feature Documentary, 77 mins, In English, German and Hebrew (with English subtitles)

"BACK TO THE FATHERLAND" -- Opening Theatrically June 14 in NYC/Opening in LA June 28 -- See Trailer HERE!

SURVIVING BIRKENAU: THE SUSAN SPATZ STORY -- DVD Review by Porfle

When you have a Holocaust survivor with a vivid memory and a desire to tell her story, you don't need any more than that. SURVIVING BIRKENAU: THE SUSAN SPATZ STORY (2019) is augmented by a wealth of period photographs and film clips, but it's the words of Susan Spatz herself that keep us mesmerized.

At 96, she is a prime example of going through hell and back again, having come out of her three-year ordeal with a burning desire to make the most of the remainder of her life.

As she says, her survival wasn't a happily-ever-after ending, but only the start of her struggle to find her place in the universe again.

 

Her story begins with her privileged childhood in Vienna in the 1920s, an only child she admits was spoiled until the Nazis came and turned everything upside-down.


With Austrian Jews being relocated into ghettos and worse, her father escaped to Brussels while her mother insisted on staying behind with Susan, supposedly to see how her husband fared before leaving.

As Susan relates, her mother's actual intention was to remain behind with her lover, a decision that condemned her and her daughter to imprisonment by the Nazis. Susan is frank about her lack of sentimental memories of the woman who chose her man over her daughter's well-being, a decision that soon landed Susan in the dreaded concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Her eyes are alight with vivid images of the past as she relates, clearly and in great detail, the horrors and hardships encountered there.

 

We've heard many similar stories before, but as always, hearing them from yet another individual who lived through the ordeal brings a different and newly fascinating wealth of day-to-day details which can only begin to convey what the actual experiences must have been like.

She talks of familiar horrors--the crematorium with the tall, fiery chimney, freight cars filled with dead bodies, crowds of naked people being separated according to who can still work and who is fit only for extermination--along with the hardships of simply staying alive one more day in some of the worst conditions imaginable.

Her eventual transfer to the camp at Birkenau and a wildly fortunate opportunity to join the pool of administrative assistants gave her a somewhat less precarious existence, and in fact was the most important factor in her survival.

She then reveals how the impending arrival of allied liberation forces brought about a long, horrific death march before she finally found herself suddenly free from bondage after three incredibly harsh years.

What comes next is Susan's story of life after living death, a life not easy but one which she was eager to live to the fullest.  A failed marriage, motherhood, and a college degree are all part of the story of this amazing woman who still displays a faded number tattooed on her arm. 

SURVIVING BIRKENAU: THE SUSAN SPATZ STORY is a thoughtful, evocative, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring story that eschews sensationalism in favor of simply letting her tell her story the way only a survivor of that time possibly could, and in being fortunate enough to hear it, we are all the better for it.






Buy it at Amazon.com

Language: English
Region: All Regions
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Dreamscape Media
DVD Release Date: May 14, 2019
Run Time: 71 minutes

About The Holocaust Education Film Foundation
Established in 2018, the Holocaust Education Film Foundation was started to build an international, interactive online community one Holocaust survivor story at a time. Through full-length documentaries, distributed globally through numerous platforms, the online site and educational programs, the 501c3 foundation seeks to ensure that we never forget.

Read our review of the Holocaust Education Film Foundations's TO AUSCHWITZ AND BACK: THE JOE ENGEL STORY

SURVIVING BIRKENAU: THE SUSAN SPATZ STORY -- DVD Review by Porfle

NAZI JUNKIES -- DVD Review by Porfle

In Film Movement's two-part TV documentary DVD, NAZI JUNKIES ("The Hidden History of Drugs in the Third Reich"), we get something which is, for me, much different than the usual rehash of familiar World War II material.  Because here, we learn of what a major role performance-enhancing drugs played for not only Nazi soldiers and German civilians, but for Der Fuhrer himself.

Inspired by Norman Ohler's book, "Blitzed: Drugs In The Third Reich", this is a riveting account of an army and its leader fueled to the gills on various substances that kept them wide awake for days, performing at dangerously intense levels, and generally feeling invincible as their Blitzkreig steamrolled over Europe and then recklessly made its way into Russia where some of the most horrific warfare in human history would take place.

We see the main drug of the military, Pervitin, being mass-produced and handed out as part of each soldier's standard kit.  It's like something out of a sci-fi yarn about chemically-enhanced super soldiers except that it really happened, as is recounted here in fascinating style with documents, interviews with historians and participants, and, most importantly, a wealth of both photographic and briskly-edited film material that lavishly illustrates the narrative while keeping the "talking heads" stuff to a minimum.

Part One, "Hitler the Junkie", is all about the big "H" himself and how Der Fuhrer's personal "physician", Dr. Theodor Morell, kept him stoked up with a cocktail of intravenous delights that gave him that delusion of grandeur needed to fancy himself a brilliant leader whose every thought was part of some perfect plan for world domination. 

With anyone else the story of his gradual mental and physical deterioration might be tragic, but in this case it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  This gives "Hitler the Junkie" its most satisfying quality even as the rest of what we see as a result of this madman's reign of terror is as incomprehensibly horrific as always. 

The film puts us right there in Hitler's bunker during those last days and details Ol' Bristle Lip's final descent into drug-addled madness as he and Eva Braun, along with the rest of the remaining "elite", prepare to send themselves on an express elevator to Hell.

Until then, we get a detailed diary of Hitler's daily injections and what they were doing to his mind and body, with speculation by historians as to what extent this perpetual saturation of illicit substances in his bloodstream affected his thought processes and decision-making abilities.

Part Two, "Nazi Junkies", tells of how the Third Reich used drugs on its own soldiers in order to push them to the absolute peak of efficiency and fighting fervor, with millions of tablets of "Pervitin" being distributed to the troops on a daily basis along with whatever else might keep them sufficiently supercharged.

We get a streamlined history of the war, again via a marvelous wealth of historical film and other visuals, but this time we see the invasions of Poland and France and various major battles with the knowledge that the German soldiers are performing in a state of drug-fueled mania.

Later, the disastrous and prolonged invasion of Russia finds them running out of drugs and, as a consequence, trading motivation for despair.  One of the most shocking revelations of these final days of the Third Reich is the use of children in midget submarines who were pumped full of drugs and sent on suicide missions against enemy ships in their tiny metal death traps. 

Of course, as with any documentary of this nature, there are images of unimaginable atrocities including much concentration camp footage (where drug experiments were carried out upon the helpless prisoners) and the mass extermination of civilians in both Europe and Russia during which the soldiers performing these acts eased their consciences through copious amounts of self-medication.

I had no idea that WWII Germany's fierce fighting machine, its seemingly invincible Aryan supermen in uniform, were a bunch of hopped-up junkies and speed freaks burning the candle at both ends until the wheels fell off (to mix metaphors badly) and that their own Big Cheese himself spent most of the war with a needle sticking out of his fat, pulsating veins.  As such, I found NAZI JUNKIES highly enlightening and effortlessly fascinating from start to finish.

Order it from Film Movement

Order it from Amazon.com


TECH SPECS:
Director: Christian Huleu
Format: NTSC
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Film Movement
DVD Release Date: April 2, 2019
Subtitles: None
Run Time: 104 minutes

NAZI JUNKIES -- DVD Review by Porfle