L'ultima orgia del III Reich

I've read some reviews of this film and I think they are missing something. OK! This is a nazisploitation flick - there's a concentration camp for Jewish women (for coincidence, most of them young and pretty), there is a scene in which a woman is thrown to the dogs for feeding them; in another one young girls are standing side by side waiting to be raped by German soldiers; and there's also a sadomasochistic relationship between Commandant Starker and a woman officer and so on..... But beyond these attractions, "L'Ultima Orgia del III Reich" is about a love relationship between Commandant Starker and a Jewish girl, Lise. It is a love relationship born first from fear - the omnipresent death surrounding and threatening everything had succeeded in drowning hate in a lake of numbness - Lise had hardened herself into indifference and Starker's violence stirs something in her. A dark love affair ensues, and nonetheless it is in some ways a truer depiction of love than the one that is usually given by the average film, where everything is clean and white.

Commandant Starker had made everything he could to break Lise (she had even been tied upside down, her head near a floor crowded with mice). But he had noticed he couldn't make her lose her mind.

And then Lise she seduces Starker. They start a love relationship, fed by opportunism, hate, fear and luxury and driven by power and death. There's a moment in which Starker says to Lise: "I showed you death, now you can start to really live".

But this a a doomed relationship - born in a concentration camp, fed by fear and numbness, aroused by death and violence and corroded by hate and quiet despair. It is an interesting story. Try to leave your prejudices at the door and you may be surprised.

Out of sheer lurid curiosity I rented this Naz-xploitation flick and it fully lived up to its shocking promise. This treats the Nazis not just as "sadists" commonly understood, but true sadists, i.e., those who are sexually excited by inflicting pain, mental toment, anguish and death on others. So, it serves up not just the violence expected in concentration camp storytelling, focuses exclusively on sexual cruelty. It's production values are uneven, but it's obvious someone spent a fair amount on producing this, and it makes one wonder: did the filmakers really think there would be a wide audience for this depravity? I can't imagine any cinema programming this. The banquet scene, where some debauched "doctor" proudly and leeringly announces the evening's entree, "pot roast of unborn Jew", is out there on the disgusting scale with the banquet scene in "Salo". In other words, this is extreme stuff. Yikes.

It's also obvious that the screenwriters did their homework on the writings of DeSade; the speeches some of these characters make could have been transposed from "The 120 Days of Sodom". Plus, the fact that the depravity all takes place on an isolated castle ground, on an island in the middle of a river, is yet another Sadean tableau.

Not for weak stomachs.

Daniela Levy stars as Lise Cohen, a Jewish woman caught in World War 2 and sent to a concentration camp that doubles as a Nazi brothel for the exhausted soldiers. Commandant Conrad von Starker (Marc Loud) runs the camp with his she wolf wannabe at his side. Starker takes liking of sorts to Lise as she becomes his tortured pet project. Full of the usual nasty things you you would expect from a Naziploitation flick (rape, torture and killings) a few things creep up every now and then that you might not have seen before. One such scene was an interesting dinner scene that served up equal parts corny Nazi propaganda-like dialogue to go with their meal of Jewish baby flesh (nasty). One scene however was quite funny where Starker trying to break Lise suspends her over a fish tank of flesh-eating rats (in reality a whole bunch of friendly gerbils). A mediocre job of filming things with an overuse of slow-motion and slides. As long as you don't expect a masterpiece you will be OK.

It takes something special to shock those of us who chew popcorn through Hong Kong gore movies and watch the bulldozer decapitation scene from "Island Of Death" to cheer ourselves up. Blood and guts won't do it: if you've ever seen a movie like "Flower Of Flesh And Blood", you hardly blink at a badly-acted torture scene or two. Nastiness isn't enough: those who've sat through the rape scene in "I Spit On Your Grave" won't find any of the sexual violence in "Gestapo's Last Orgy" remotely disturbing. So why is this strange, strange movie more unsettling than any of the other obscure trash/gore/exploitation flicks some of us love so much?

Unlike "SS Experiment Camp" or "The Beast In Heat", "The Gestapo's Last Orgy" isn't quite ridiculous enough to be camp...unlike "Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS", it's not an outrageous bad-taste romp for whooping drive-in punters. Influenced more by "The Night Porter" than anything else, this unsavoury bucket of softcore death-camp swill actually thinks it's A Proper Movie.

Director Cesare Canavari has a ball ripping off Fellini, Godard, Pasolini and Tinto Brass on a college-project budget, while the script attempts to explore Sadeian themes with some level of seriousness. Uniquely among the Nazisploitation films, the movie specifically refers to the prisoners as Jewish. But this is a movie in which Nazis sit round a dinner table saying "there's nothing better than a pot-roast of unborn Jew!" - in a "dramatic" boat scene, a technician can be seen kneeling in the back of the boat. It's a cheapo, badly-made schlock shocker just like all the others! Its pretentions are what make it so mindbogglingly shocking - what the hell were these people thinking?

Unlike the extremely camp exercise in bad taste that is 'Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS' , Gestapo's Last Orgy is a more unflinching look at the atrocities committed in a Nazi concentration camp, shot in a quasi-serious style. With its harrowing scenes of sexual abuse and violent death and torture, it is easy to understand why this movie might be considered more shocking than other similarly themed flicks from the same era; but is delivering a rawer and nastier (but still very exploitative) movie any more distasteful or disrespectful than making light of the subject matter?

In my opinion, all Nazisploitation movies are treading on dodgy ground and if you're going to use such a touchy subject to make a film that is designed to titillate and disgust, then you might as well go the whole hog. Director Cesare Canevari certainly thinks so; with Gestapo's Last Orgy, he delivers an often sickening piece of no holds barred cinema that should satisfy most fans of extreme movie-making.

Daniela Poggi plays Lise Cohen, a beautiful young Jewish woman being held in a Nazi 'love camp'. Believing that she is responsible for the death of her family, she has lost the will to live and offers no resistance when tortured by evil Commandant Conrad von Starker (Adriano Micantoni). Frustrated by the lack of emotion shown by the woman, Conrad makes Lise his special project and tells her that she will learn to love life once she has experienced real fear.

When a friendly doctor discovers that Lise was not actually to blame for the death of her loved ones, he tells her, thus restoring her will to live and, in turn, her fear of death. In order to survive, she must now pretend that von Starker has succeeded in breaking her, and become his lover...

With scenes of mass extermination, violent rape, and general lack of respect for human life, Canevari's sick flick is certainly disturbing; although not packed with the the wall-to-wall gore that one might expect, the sheer nastiness of some moments make this one hard to stomach at times. When the head honchos at the camp tuck into a meal made from 'unborn Jew', or douse a woman in Cognac and set her on fire, it's not necessarily the visuals that will make you gag, but the idea being portrayed.

Occasionally the pace of the movie lulls and sometimes Canevari sees fit to get rather pretentious with his direction, but, on the whole, the film is a decent enough watch for those seeking some sleaze. And although I imagine the makers never intended to provide any laughs, I defy anyone to not giggle at the moment when Lise is suspended above flesh-eating rats (actually rather disinterested gerbils) or the 'sex' scene between Lise and the doctor, which consists of several minutes of them rolling around together naked, but never actually seeming to bother with any serious boning!

6.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 7 for IMDb).