Monday, June 30, 2014

THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY (1977) DVD Review


Gestapo's Last Orgy, The (1977) d. Cesare Canevari (Italy)

Often described as a remake of Liliana Cavana’s notorious art house classic The Night Porter, Gestapo’s Last Orgy is actually quite its own beast. Both films do feature a female concentration camp survivor reuniting with her Nazi oppressor years later, but whereas Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling’s S&M antics charted controversial waters, it’s clear that theirs is a consensual, if twisted, relationship. For Commandant Von Starker (Adriano Micantoni, billed here as Mark Loud) and Lise (Daniela Poggi, as Daniela Levy), the quirky relationship is forged in the fires of dominance and defiance. Von Starker seeks to crush the beautiful Lise’s will, but since she has already divorced herself from her emotions, he derives no satisfaction from torturing her. He must make her “love life” again, so that he may achieve the ultimate victory by depriving her of it. He ends up falling for her, while she in turn grows increasingly more powerful, more dangerous.


Opening with the mournful cries of Alberto Baldan Bembo’s haunting theme music, an onscreen quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, and straight-faced audio recollections from concentration camp survivors, this is a Nazisploitation flick like no other. Set at a fictitious “love camp” for Nazi soldiers to be rewarded for their front line efforts and told largely in flashback, it’s an assured, technically proficient affair armed with outstanding production values and grounded performances that range from competent to excellent.


GLO’s aesthetic recalls that of Tinto Brass’ venerable efforts on Bob Guccione’s Caligula, and yes, that’s a compliment. Both pictures feature vivid, prurient sexual fantasies set against a backdrop of degradation (rape, murder, torture, incest, cannibalism, coprophagia), and both are all the more disturbing for being too artistically competent to dismiss as mere schlock. (Trivia: Brass’ previous movie was none other than 1976’s Salon Kitty, whose success was responsible in part for the Italian Sadiconazista wave. Trivia #2: GLO’s original title was Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler.)


The supporting characters are just as memorable, with Alma (Maristella Greco), the vicious bisexual kapo, leading the pack. The only person strong enough to match Von Starker, the two Nazis share a twisted sexual relationship, with Lise their common prize. (When Alma offers the blonde a pair of shaggy panties made from the heads of her fellow prisoners, it’s a bizarre, perverse act of affection.) Greco’s enormously enjoyable operatic approach provides a welcome counterpoint to Poggi’s near-catatonia and Micantoni’s gruff bluster, snarling her way into our hearts.


From female prisoners burned alive or fed to hungry Dobermans during menstruation to Jewish infants marinated and served for evening repast, no taboo is sacred to Canevari or co-screenwriter Antonio Lucarella, and the same jaw-drop admiration expressed for such subversive, confrontational works as Nikos Nikolaidis’ Singapore Sling or Crispin Glover’s What is It? is felt.


If a filmmaker is going to play the Nazi-as-ultimate-sadist card, then by jigger, he or she had better play it. In this respect, Gestapo’s Last Orgy holds nothing back. Never boring and thoroughly despicable, it’s a sick, nasty little flick, and that’s what we paid for.


The Gestapo’s Last Orgy is available now from Intervision and can be ordered HERE.

http://www.amazon.com/Gestapos-Last-Orgy-Daniela-Poggi/dp/B00JRFNLL4


--Aaron Christensen, HorrorHound Magazine

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