Il fantasma di Sodoma

Who makes the Nazis? I'll tell you who makes the Nazis.

All the Os. Lucio. Who makes the Nazis? Not-bad movie.

Who makes the Nazis? Mugging Smirk actors. Haunted house antics. All the ghosts.

Who makes the Nazis? Fulci's a long gone...long gone breed. Long gone...long gone breed.

Remember when I used make great films babe? Before I was laid low with diabetes?

Who makes the Nazis? House with Nazi spirits. Who makes the Nazis? Lost tourist in jeeps, laughing. Who makes the Nazis? This film is real weird. Real Johnson Allan, Joe. Joe is as good as gold. And all the ghosts in the Nazi hotel. The real mould.

AL CLIVER'S COBWEB EYES!

Who needs the Nazis? Bad-ass movie? Rai-Uno, Shirley Jackson, haunted police.

Italian directors are a long gone, long gone breed, long gone, long gone breed.

Who makes the Nazis? Not bad Movie? Here's a word from Ful-ci:

"When you're out of horror, just give them real boobs. Mattei's not your enemy, Argento's your enemy. At least I don't murder bush monkeys (like Umberto Lenzi)."

Long gone, long gone breed. Who Makes the Nazis?

Di-dit-dit-dit. Dit-dit-dititititit.

So - Late eighties Italian horror time again, and the same old premise as Graveyard Disturbance, House of Lost Souls, House of Clocks, Ghosthouse etc etc. Bunch of youngsters end up in haunted house and are terrorised on a really low budget. This is a late era Fulci film too so you can throw logic right out the window.

Negatives are the crappy story, crappy pacing, lack of gore and stupid ending. Positives are Al Cliver as a coke snorting Nazi having a chug during the orgy at the start of the film! It's also got Joseph Allan Johnson in it from House of Lost Souls (love that one), Berzerker and Slumber Party Massacre. He gets to act drunk and play Russian roulette in this one, so that's a plus.

Other pluses are the avalanche of boobs in just about every scene and Fulci's bizarre take on what constitutes a horror movie that basically plagues his last six or seven films. Doctors recommend that you don't think about the plots of this, Demonia, Cat in the Brain, House of Clocks, Touch of Death and especially Sweet House of Horrors as they will cause permanent brain damage. I've watched all of these and there nothing me watched these all me wrong. You won't catch me with my trousers! This is on YouTube so you can watch it for free anyway. Not sure what the score would have been if I'd forked out cash for this.

This is another film which stands as the perfect showcase for director Fulci’s sad decline throughout his final years (actually, this is the third such example I’ve watched) and, by extension, that of the popular “Euro-Cult” style.

It opens in 1943 with a (hilarious) orgy at a secluded villa by a group of perverted Nazis, which one of them conveniently films – a sequence which is haphazardly intercut with genuine stock footage of the war. The scene then shifts to the present day with a group of teenagers who happen upon the villa and decide to spend the night there: one of the girls is seduced by the ghost of the amateur film-maker but wakes up to find that, apparently, it was only a dream! The gang departs in the morning but, mistakenly, take a roundabout route which invariably brings them back to the dilapidated villa; this time, they discover that they can’t leave the premises – the phone which was previously working is now dead, and the exits have all been mysteriously blocked! Soon, one of them is engaged in a game of Russian Roulette with the same ghostly Nazi, who even offers him a night with a prostitute if he comes out alive: amazingly, he does but the sexual encounter doesn’t quite go the way he planned! At this, he goes berserk and attacks one of his friends – but falls down a flight of steps and is killed. Later on, the prostitute herself appears to the most hysterical of the girls (who harbors a lesbian affection towards one of her companions) – the older woman shows her her friend making out with the third girl of the group but, when she goes to confront them, finds that it was ‘all in her mind’! Then, it’s the turn of the girl who first met the Nazi to become involved with one of the boys (for whom she had hitherto showed no interest) – but, as soon as he touches her, the girl’s skin starts to come off! Eventually, the gang discovers the reel of footage shot by the Nazis intact and they watch it in an attempt to solve the enigma in which they’ve become unwittingly entangled – this is followed by the Nazis suddenly appearing to break down the doors, an explosion…and, then, the whole gang wakes up from a deep slumber in front of the ruins of the villa in question! Doh!!

The film, then, is a mix of haunted-house horror (involving the typical obnoxious-vacationing-teenagers-getting-lost angle) and Nazisploitation (with the soft-porn elements that this entails) which can, perhaps, best be described as hypnotically bad. While Fulci might have done something with this plot in his heyday, here he’s defeated by a boring cast (though the girls, at least, look good in and out of clothes) and the utterly gratuitous gore mandated by the genre at this juncture (but which the evidently shoestring budget couldn’t hope to satisfy in a convincing manner!).

In an all-too-familiar scenario, a group of teenagers traveling in Europe discover an isolated villa and choose to stay there overnight, unaware of the mansion's dark, war-time past.

Italian filmmaker, Lucio Fulci, ventures into the realms of Nazi-exploitation with this crudely produced, yet strangely entertaining, obscure, low-budget film. 'The Ghosts of Sodom' begins in a typically sleazy manner, with a short portrayal of a drug-laden Nazi party of debauchery being filmed by one member of the party who we will soon come to know as Willy (Robert Egon). Despite the pseudo-eroticised nature of the opening segment, the sequence soon takes a rather unpleasant, repellent tone before the cut-shot quickly transports the viewer back to the present day. It is here that we are introduced to the main characters and, rather characteristic of a Fulci film, these characters remain underdeveloped throughout and seemingly have no individual personality. This is an unfortunately consistent flaw with a large number of Fulci's movies but more so with this film. Despite a few brief instances, the majority of lines in the film could have been spoken by any one of the six main characters. Sadly, this rather glaring fault is coupled with numerous instances of wholly pointless and asinine dialogue.

However, this is not to say that 'The Ghosts of Sodom' is an entirely bad movie. In fact, for a production of this type, it is a rather accomplished piece of film-making. Fulci utilises a beautiful, enchanting soundtrack in a professional, productive way to create a dynamic, dramatic and foreboding atmosphere when coupled with the astonishingly gloomy, despairing and mesmerising visual elements that had become one of his trademarks. Although there are only a few gory shots to satisfy those viewers who have become accustomed to Fulci's often-excessive usage of gore, one should be able to appreciate that the erotic and supernatural elements of the film provide the fodder here. Unfortunately, the rather slow-pace and often empty, prolonged instances of tedium can certainly subtract from the viewing enjoyment and distract the viewer from appreciating the more intricate and important plot-aspects; a true concern as the story is far from enormously intricate. However, in reality, how many similar films do not suffer from these same problems?

One can appreciate this film for the superb, atmospheric presentation if they are able to ignore the predictability, plot/character flaws and kitsch of the whole production. Despite the somewhat inane storyline (although adequate for the production) and often-ridiculous scripting of the movie, one can certainly waste eighty minutes on films far poorer than this. 'The Ghosts of Sodom' is quite simply Nazi-exploitation with a supernatural twist which, in places, is full of tension with the 'Russian Roulette' sequence being the absolute peak of heart-pounding suspense. Fans of Fulci's other films may be disappointed, but fans of the sub-genre may find various things to like about this film despite the movie not being as explicit as other movies of its type. My rating for 'The Ghosts of Sodom' - 6½/10.

The Ghosts of Sodom (1988)

1/2 (out of 4)

The film starts off in 1943 where a group of Nazis are having an orgy when forces drop a bomb on them and kills them. Flash forward to current times when six teenagers get lost and end up at the place that was bomb (somehow it was undamaged). Soon the ghosts of the dead Nazis are seeking vengeance.

THE GHOSTS OF SODOM came from the later period of Fulci's career as well as the very end of the Italian horror boom. Both Fulci and the genre were pretty much dried up during this era and it sadly shows in this awful film. Some have argued that even the classic Fulci titles were mainly gore and perhaps that's true but they also had some energy, atmosphere and style. Those things are all missing from this picture.

The biggest problem is the fact that Fulci is working with very little money and there's just very little that you can actually do. The story itself should have made for a great film as you could have had one grisly death after another. The Naziploitation genre is full of these types of films so something could have been done. However, there's nothing but boring scenes of the teenagers talking about being lost and every once in a while you get some pretty girls taking their clothes off.

Being a Fulci film you'd expect some gore but you'll be disappointed because there is very little. Again, the lack of a budget meant not much could be done with the special effects so we're basically left with nothing. The death scenes are all rather bland and boring and the only saving grace is that the orgy sequence is so bad that you can laugh at it. THE GHOSTS OF SODOM should have been so much more but sadly it's just proof that the genre and director were at the end.

Il fantasma di Sodoma (Sodoma's Ghost) is for sure not Fulci's finest moment but entertaining in a cheesy and nostalgic way. Recommended only for the die-hard Fulci adepts or for those chosen few that are on the quest to watch everything he was involved with.