HITLER! (1962)

It was a guilty pleasure to watch this hammy old movie about the personal life of Der Fuhrer.  It was a lot of fun watching Richard Basehart walk around chewing the scenery playing old Adolf.  Watching John Banner, famous for his role as Sgt. Shultz in Hogan's Heroes, seriously play a Nazi was also fun.  (John Banner was an Austrian Jew who's family was killed in the Holocaust and escaped from Europe just in time).

The film presents gossip about Hitler's sex life as fact.  It depicts Hitler as having had an incestuous relationship with his mother and being impotent.  He is fascinated by his niece, Geli Rabaul, because of her resemblance to his mother, but is unable to consummate the relationship due to his impotence.  When Geli tries to leave him, Hitler has her killed.  Hitler's sex life is saved by the sexy young photographer, Eva Braun, who helps Der Fuhrer to overcome his problems.  Fortunately, after Eva turns out the light and gets naked, Der Fuhrer is able to rise to the occasion.  Poor Eva, finds out too late, after she has agreed to commit suicide with Hitler, that even though Hitler married her, there can only ever be one Mrs. Hitler, and that was Mama.

This enjoyable exploitation movie is worth watching at least once.  It's got its moments.  The film's depiction of the so-called "Night of the Long Knives" when Hitler got rid of Ernst Rohm and the Brown Shirts, is actually fairly accurately portrayed and is worth the price of admission.

The Bad Catholic gives this old sleazy exploitation movie Three and a half out of Five Swastikas.

Richard Basehart taking a break on the set.

For his crimes he was sentenced to a long "Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea"

Nazisploitation: The Nazi Image In Low-Brow Cinema And Culture

In the introduction to the book Nazisploitation: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture (Continuum Books, 2012),  University of Tennessee Professor Daniel H. Magilow quotes New York Times movie reviewer Vincent Canby as writing in 1974 "If it's possible to reconstruct the interests, attitudes and values of a lost society from its garbage, then perhaps we should take a closer look at some of the junk that's passing through our movie theaters these days.  Would you want a future historian speculating about your life on the basis of a mossy old print of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS?"

Well, that's exactly what this book of scholarly essays seeks to do: examine what the genre of "Nazisploitation" movies says about society.   They run the gamut from pure exploitation movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and Eurotrash like Last Orgy of the SS to so called "art films" like The Night Porter, The Damned and Salon Kitty.

Although some of the essays were merely pretentious academic posturing, the majority of the book was fascinating.  Why do we find Nazis sexy?  What is the attraction people have to watching kinky BDSM set in a concentration camp?

The book is really interesting when it examines whether "art house" films like The Night Porter are art or merely jumped up exploitation movies.  Why is that picture of Charlotte Rampling topless wearing a Nazi uniform hat and pants seemingly everywhere in popular culture? Is Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds  a Nazisploitation film? The essay on Nazi Zombies is also very enlightening.

I don't want to know what it says about me that I'm interested in this subject.  However,  I would recommend this book highly to anyone with more than a passing interest in this sick subject.