As Condenadas

This sickie has very good production values, decent acting and an exciting storyline for this kind of trash. Them deranged nazis is at again in one of those generic "women's work camps". It's not as graphic as others but the vile tone is unbelievable harsh as the officers torture and humiliate young jewish girls and...(hold tight!)...EAT THEM AND THEIR UNBORN BABIES!!?! It's unsettling as hell cuz it's so well made. There's also a lot of De Sade-like master/slave games going on. Only for the most jaded thrill seekers (like me) who're tired of Hollywood's PC blockbusters.

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.

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.

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.

The beautiful blonde (Daniela Poggi) is sent to a concentration camp for female Jews to be sexually used by the German soldiers. She is not afraid of dying, since she believes she provoked the death of her family in a ghetto. Commandant Conrad von Starker (Marc Loud) feels challenged by her behavior and decides to torture her, making she faces the horror of death. Later, she becomes her sexual slave of along the period of war. In the post-war, they meet each other, with this meeting ending in a tragic way. This type of 'exploitation movie' recalls `Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS', with a shallow drama which recalls `The Night Porter' and violence like `Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom'. At least, Daniela Poggi, who works naked along all the movie, has a beautiful body and the violence is limited, therefore it is watchable. I do not like this genre, but there are movies worse than `L' Ultima orgia del III Reich'. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): `As Condenadas' (`The Condemned')