-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Patrice Rhomm
Written by Victor Hadria, Marius Lesoeur and Patrice Rhomm
Starring:
- Malisa Longo as Elsa Ackermann
- Olivier Mathot as Maj. Frantz Holbach
- Patrizia Gori as Liselotte Richter
- Pamela Stanford as Gundrun (The Singer)
- Claudine Beccarie as Erik Muller
Rating: 
Choo Choo! All aboard the Nazi express!
During the golden age of Euro sleaze, Spain had its “S”-rated skin flicks and proto-slashers, Germany was transforming arthouse into something thrillingly dangerous, Britain was trying to keep pace with North America’s horror renaissance, and Italy… well, Italy bulldozed the competition. The boot-shaped country reigned supreme as the Hollywood of European exploitation, turning out an endless parade of genre films while sending its most talented filmmakers overseas, where American locations became the backdrop for some of the most exhilarating chapters in Italian genre cinema. And France? Well, let’s be honest. The French were busy dressing exploitation in arthouse clothing and churning out more hardcore pornography than just about anyone else in Europe. But when someone says “Euro sleaze,” Nazi exploitation isn’t exactly the first thing that comes to mind—no offense to the handful of French films that gave it a shot. Nor was France ever the continent’s premier factory of gloriously trashy sleaze. Yet against all odds, Patrice Rhomm’s Captive Women 4 proudly waves the tricolor for French Nazisploitation, proving the French were perfectly capable of rolling around in the mud with the rest of them.
If North America had Dyanne Thorne’s gravity-defying bosom, Europe answered with the irresistible curves of Malisa Longo. If America has the iron-fisted Nazi dominatrix Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Europe counters with the deranged sadism of Fräulein Devil. On paper, Captive Women 4—a.k.a. Fräulein Kitty—sounds like ninety minutes of glorious cinematic depravity. Unfortunately, and forgive me for spending two paragraphs hyping it up, Patrice Rhomm’s film is an absolute dud: one of the most lifeless Nazisploitation pictures I’ve ever endured. And believe me, I’ve sat through more swastika sleaze than I’d care to admit, yet few have been this terminally narcotic.
The plot is little more than a bargain-bin rewrite of Tinto Brass’ Salon Kitty. Instead of an opulent Nazi brothel, Patrice Rhomm relocates the debauchery to a train transformed into a rolling bordello for high-ranking officers of the Third Reich. Malisa Longo stars as Fräulein Devil, a former prostitute promoted to Nazi officer and madam of this mobile den of vice. Yet the train’s luxurious flesh trade is merely a front: its true purpose is to expose deserters, traitors, and anyone whose loyalty to the Führer wavers. While intoxicated officers lose themselves in the arms of undercover prostitutes, Fräulein Devil listens, watches, and, at the slightest hint of treason, puts a bullet in them without hesitation.
Predictably, the narrative soon grinds to a halt, making room for an endless carousel of softcore padding. Oddly enough, the violence is timid, almost embarrassed by its own existence, while the sex scenes stretch on with exhausting determination. Every expected Nazisploitation cliché is present and accounted for, yet none of it generates the delirious energy the subgenre thrives on. Instead, Rhomm plugs every narrative hole with cheap erotica and melodrama that lumbers forward without an ounce of urgency.
Malisa Longo does everything she can to wake this movie from its coma. She’s effortlessly seductive, deliciously nasty, and positively thrives whenever the film embraces its leather-and-whips depravity. For fleeting moments you can almost see a worthwhile drama clawing its way through all the sleaze. Then Rhomm promptly smothers it. His direction feels strangely hesitant, as if he’s checking off exploitation requirements instead of reveling in them. The result is a movie that should be outrageous but somehow feels oddly constipated, trapped beneath stiff visuals and camerawork that never seems confident enough to let the madness loose. Nice try, though.
