-Grindhouse Fest is the special section in Celluloid Dimension where you can discover all the goodies from the golden age of exploitation cinema. Have fun!
The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977) Directed by Cesare Canevari
Cesare Canevari’s operatic Nazi exploitation flick hits your morality with the customary dose of sadism and gratuitous salaciousness that typifies the unsavory genre, but the wallop it inflicts feels different, more lacerating and mortifying, and the unpleasant aftertaste lingers with you well past the end credits. This feeling is not to be anticipated when the usual expectations are more of a sensation of perverse exultation at having seen a sleazy pop entertainment than a repugnant, earnestly mean-spirited, sadiconazista feature film.
Canevari’s heavily banned picture offers a fresh treatment of the barbarous violence of Nazi eugenics and its degenerate ideology by depicting evil with harsh acerbity and exploitative lewdness rather than with the mindset of a pulpy, lowbrow entertainment. Granted, it is loaded with senseless pornography, sensationalistic violence and plenty of sadomasochistic torment, but it is exploitation with discernment; the film transcends all standards of malice and breaks all boundaries of decency to capture, in an insightful hyperbole, the turpitude of National Socialist philosophy at its most dissolute and unhinged. Canevari taps more into the controversy of European proto-Nazisploitation – Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, Tinto Brass’ Salon Kitty, Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter and many others – than into the outrageous North American Nazisploitation featuring raunchy, sexy bosomy women and virile, sadistic Nazi officers in fetishized SS uniforms – Don Edmonds’ Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and Lee Frost’s Love Camp 7 – it’s as if we had before our eyes more a film determined to unsettle you than to entertain you. The experience – if it can be described in words – is like a kind of low-budget, artless Salò. With Pasolini’s permission, I would venture to speculate that Canevari is pulling off his own version of Salò, though instead of powerful fascists in a sumptuous palazzo, we get debauched Nazi officers in a concentration camp. It’s a harrowing descent into the worst of the human being inebriated with power. The Nazi exploitation subgenre may not be the most appropriate for exposing the corruption of man, but Canevari makes it suitable by employing the exploitation paraphernalia in such a way as to jolt and viscerally resonate in a tone that is more uncomfortable than comfortable.
An opera of devastating reminiscences opens the doors of the Nazi inferno on earth when we become listeners of mournful and bloody testimonies of the victims of the Nazi concentration camp in a court trial; we do not see the survivors, we only hear, their voices are superimposed with the images of a man driving a fast car through the hills. When he arrives at his destination, he meets Lise Cohen (Daniela Poggi), as they interact, we learn that they met in the past in a death camp, the man is actually Conrad von Starke (Adriano Micantoni), a vile former Nazi commandant, and Lise, one of the victims of the extermination camp where Conrad was in charge. He is delighted to see her, she is evidently not, and he thanks her for giving a phony eyewitness account of what she went through in that hellish Nazi land. The two are reunited in the same place where they met, as they walk through the now derelict structures, the story takes us into the past, the origin of it all, through Lise’s perspective.
The plot focuses on the sexual humiliations that all female prisoners in the concentration camp run by SS Commandant Conrad von Starke must endure. To survive the inhumane lifestyle that is preached in this Nazi camp one must be willing to pass the sordid ordeals that the Nazi officers enforce. But not only is it enough to accept the demoralizing and sadistic treatment, the victims must also act submissively and fearfully in front of the Nazi high command, since these degenerates only get horny when they perceive the terror and suffering of their victims. Lise, played with a perplexed and traumatized countenance by Daniela Poggi, is left in a catatonic state of pure apathy in the face of violence after having seen so much ruthlessness in so few days in that Nazi camp. This paralyzing condition is not at all pleasing to Commandant Conrad who is obsessed with her but wishes to arouse emotions of trepidation and subjugation in her. Therefore, the nefarious commandant devotes himself to subjecting her to all kinds of degrading and nauseating tortures to stimulate fear in her. The quasi-pornographic tortures take up much of the film, each atrocious sequence to which he subjects her is worse than the next. However, Poggi’s breathtakingly sexy and affecting performance anchors all this nonsensical brutality with such acting prowess that the exploitative, cyclical execution becomes startling, cruel indeed, but startling. Moreover, the whole hyper-violent canvas of viciousness is enhanced by a portentous music courtesy of Alberto Baldan Bembo. The musical flourishes that the pompous score provides to the grotesque visuals impart an aura of grandeur to the film’s cinematic ugliness. While Canevari is clever at moving the camera, it all looks very tacky. But it is precisely there, when the melodramatic music completely transforms all that tackiness and elevates it to something solemn.
To declare Canevari’s intimidating film one of the filthiest of the Nazi exploitation films would be an understatement, this is the filthiest of all Nazi exploitation films. It’s so foul that even actress Daniela Poggi has expressed regret throughout her career for having accepted the lead role in The Gestapo’s Last Orgy, but that doesn’t matter because her performance is terrific and effective. Without Poggi’s performance there would be no tragedy or substance to be found in this exploitative endeavor, she gives legitimate rationale for the existence of this sleazy journey through Nazi depravity. Daniela Poggi faces challenging scenes one after another. The plot is not at all palatable as I highlighted at the beginning, yet witnessing the horrific events from Poggi’s character’s point of view somehow humanizes her character more and the empathy we have for her grows considerably over the course of the film. Probably the only sin of Canevari’s rough opus is the fact that it exaggerates immorality to a cartoonish extreme – when the kinky female Nazi officer played outrageously by Maristella Greco is introduced into the plot admittedly the gravitas of the film is lost a bit and it tends to devolve into overt torture porn – but these intrinsic proclivities in the genre are what ultimately give the film the bravery to push the boundaries of political incorrectness.
The story is portrayed as a gory Nazi melodrama, one brimming with tropes that quickly call into question the qualities of the filmmakers who made this essential piece of Nazisploitation, yet just as it calls into question their reputations it also reaffirms the commitment of the creators behind The Gestapo’s Last Orgy to depict cruelty at its most corrosive and dangerous. There are paradoxical moments, where you are simply appalled by what you see and at the same time mesmerized by it. For instance, in the film’s most disturbing sequence – which ironically is the least sexual – when the high-ranking Nazi officers are dining in a room festooned with elegant Nazi iconography, it is in this scene that Canevari’s film unleashes all kinds of visual, verbal and philosophical grossness. The top Nazi officers discuss with emetic satisfaction and enthusiasm their plans for the annihilation of the “inferior” race. By the way, the characters do not exhibit mere satisfaction, they literally get off on it. The big supper ends in a display of cannibalism and infanticide that is as revolting as it is operatic for Canevari’s camera lens. Cruelty is limitless in this film, but it is effective in showcasing these atrocities, effective because it manages to shock us with compelling images that are exploitative yet sobering.
Cesare Canevari has directed a film that is impossible to recommend, and yet it is such an essential and impactful piece of cinema. The Italian director only made nine films in his short film career, but with this he leaves a mark on Italian genre cinema that will be impossible to erase. Why? Well, because once you watch this film there is no turning back, its insidious images are engraved in your mind. Underrated? I don’t think so, rather I believe it is a neglected film or one that few simply are aware of; lamentably, it is still subjected to censorship in the UK. But for those who dare to penetrate the dark and sordid confines of this Nazi hell I am sure they will find it a film that deserves a re-evaluation. For the squeamish, simply abstain, the film shamelessly features coprophagy, deviant sex and gore with much specificity. All that remains for me to add is that I assure you that it is one of the most unique exploitation films you will ever see.