The Cut-Throats

The Cut-Throats (1969)

** (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining mix of sexploitation and WWII melodrama as an American Captain leads five soldiers into Germany where the plans are to break into a compound and steal some important documents. Before long one of the soldiers falls in love with a German woman.

This film is obviously inspired by THE DIRTY DOZEN as we get some rejects going behind enemy lines but you certainly shouldn't be expecting any sort of great movie. No, this film here is pretty much an ultra low-budget sexploitation picture that offers up some rather silly action scenes but the main goal is to show off the various beautiful women who have no problem taking their clothes off.

The film has a line at the start where we're told we're in Germany but it's obviously not. The California setting is rather obvious and there's not a single second where you're going to feel as if you're in Germany or that it's WWII. The film certainly shouldn't be taken serious as it's clear this was just meant to be the second or third film at a drive-in.

For the most part the film remains entertaining throughout and it certainly helps that it lasts just 74-minutes. The running time goes by rather quickly as director John Hayes at least keeps everything moving. The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from a film like this but do you want acting or nudity? If it's nudity then there's plenty here with a lot of beautiful women including Uschi Digard.

This film is a little odd, mixing cowboy motifs with wwII era plot, but is an interesting film with all its plot twists, and of course, lovely ladies bearing it all for the camera. Uschi Digard's small but truly awesome role as the general's daughter makes this film well worth renting or buying on ebay just for her top-heavy erotica scene. Other than that, the action sequences and story are actually well done, however it's obvious this was shot in the states from seeing the monstrous steel towers suspending electrical cables over the valley bellow. Still, an interesting film to check out.

American commandos ( I guess the producers did not have enough money for a dirty dozen so they instead only have a half dozen) in the closing days of World War II behind enemy lines are assembled for a mission to attempt to take out key members of the German high-command by raiding their isolated stronghold on the outskirts of a small village.

They discover their intel was slightly off or at very least left certain things out. The most obvious is that it turns out to be not a place of real strategic interest but rather the favourite brothel of several Wehrmacht generals and once inside the Yanks find a dozen young uber-frauleins trained in all aspects of the Kama Sutra and some things that aren't in it.

Momentarily distracted by the charms of the lovely ladies the men on the mission are not around to see their commanding officer Captain Kohler interrogate the madam to find what he is really looking for i.e. jewels stashed somewhere in the headquarters/brothel.

The war abruptly ends during the party the guys are having but they don't know it and soon they are back on the warpath. They are just in time to interrupt and massacre a group of celebrating German soldiers who are headed for the brothel. One of the Germans escapes, gets to the brothel and arms the prostitutes who then train their guns on their former American tricks.

I have never been so confused at the beginning of a movie and I'm sure plenty of people going to see this grind-house special wondered if they had wandered into the wrong theater during the opening titles.

I, myself wondered if the video store where I got this had mistaken an old western with a similar title to the flick in question and put it in the wrong box as the opening titles are clearly meant for a western with a western theme song called the ballad of Jimmy Johnson and a picture of a cowpoke on the range.

The obscenely misleading opening titles sequence certainly does belong in another movie. I just wonder how it got into this one. No reason that I can think of makes the slightest sense. I mean, was this meant to be some kind of an elaborate practical joke? We do see a character named Jimmy Johnson (John Keith), a commando with a cowboy hat practising lariat roping in the forest but he is killed almost immediately. His sergeant Joe Tackney (Jay Scott, the actor not the film critic) abruptly tells him and us that he is not on the range but in World War II Germany. Weird! Then there is the strong sexual content which might have garnered it an X-rating in 1969 when it was made. I wonder if those that rated it R actually watched the whole movie. For 2009 it would get an R rating but for 1969 the rating probably should have been X by the standards of the time.

Nothing on the VHS box I got this film indicates any of the racier content. It just has a bunch of actors I had never heard of and a picture of a typical world war two action movie on the cover. I thought I was getting a bargain but little did I know how much of a bargain. This is a cult hit grind-house title and has been packaged under different names over the years including She Devils of the SS, SS Cutthroats and the video title Cut-Throat Kommandoss under which I found it.

The alternate title She Devils of the SS is clearly meant to cultivate a kind of "il sadiconazista" (a distasteful yet strangely popular cinema sub-genre looked down upon even more than pornography) in spite of the fact this film pre-dates those Nazi sexploitation films of the 1970s. Thus the different title was likely to have been formulated some time after films like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1977).

Throw in B-movie action and scenes heavy on visuals but light on subtext and what you have here sorely lacks substance. The production team attempted to transferring the premise of 1960s World War II impossible mission movie like The Dirty Dozen or The Devil's Brigade and inject aspects of an exploitation shocker for drive-ins.

The Russ Meyer school of screen casting was apparently used here and we have several pornographic and sexploitation stars appearing in this film in various roles.

Notes: Michael Pataki who appeared in a lot of bizarre indie productions is in this uncredited as the German soldier at the beginning who kills Jimmy Johnson.