La dernière orgie du IIIème 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.

If it's a bad film you're after, then I recommend seeing anything from the abysmal Nazisploitation sub-genre, as unless I'm missing something; they're all terrible! Never has there been a film type so moronic and redundant, and The Gestapo's Last Orgy doesn't do anything to make me reconsider that notion. I suppose in fairness; it has to be said that this isn't as bad as the completely crap SS Experiment Camp, but it really isn't too far off. My only reason for bothering with this film is because of the fact that it was a part of the DPP's Video Nasty list back in the eighties, and I'm pleased to say that now I've seen three of the four Nazisploitation flicks on the list, I only have one left to go (the almost certainly mind numbing Love Camp 7). The Gestapo's Last Orgy is slightly more epic than most of the rest of the sub-genre, but that's not a good thing as it only means that it's even more boring. The plot has something to do with a prisoner of war whom various sick Nazi's see fit to experiment on, only for her to start playing her own game with them...or something. The storyline is too meandering to be satisfying, and most of the film is caught up in showing how sick the Nazi's were - like we need a film to show us that! I'm a big fan of cult cinema, and almost all the sub-genres have some decent films among them - that is, except Nazisploitation. Overall, I have to say that unless you're working your way through the Video Nasty list - this is one to avoid!

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?

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')

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.