L'ultima orgia del III Reich (1977)

... aka: Bourreaux SS
... aka: Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler

... aka: Gestapo's Last Orgy, The

... aka: Last Orgy of the Third Reich

Directed by:

Cesare Canevari

Cashing in on the Nazisploitation craze sparked by the success of the ILSA films is one thing, but making a compelling film out of the material is quite another. This one manages to be both exploitative trash in questionable taste and, because it takes itself seriously minus any camp, a harrowing little drama all at once. It's pretty nasty at times and gives fans of this kind of trash exactly what they want while simultaneously illustrating some of the real-life horrors that went down in Nazi Germany during WWII. Things begin as a car drives down a winding road. We hear audio of court proceedings as a woman recounts what happened to her and her sister at a concentration camp where nearly all of the 4600 female prisoners had died on orders from the commandant. It's now five years after the war and the overthrow of the Nazis, and the commandant of the female internment camp - Conrad von Starker ("Marc Loud" / Adriano Micantoni) - has already been through the Nuremberg trials, imprisonment and "rehabilitation" back into modern Germany. He was able to skirt stronger punishment thanks to a confession given by Lise Cohen (Daniela "Levy" / Poggi), one of the prisoners. Lise has gotten into contact with Conrad since then. She wants to meet up with him again for a reunion of sorts. And she wants to have the meeting at the now vacated prison camp; a bunch of crumbling old buildings in an overgrown field.

As memories from the past quickly flood back we flash back to prison camp Naugen as Lise first arrives there. The guards weed out the useful women from the ones they immediately want to dispose of. And by "useful" I mean the ones who are attractive enough to fill up brothels and be used as sex slaves. One woman who gets upset when the guards take away her child has her face beat in with the butt of a rifle. A group of young soldiers brought on as staff are shown a slideshow of depraved human behavior including a starved woman getting raped and not even realizing it because she's so hungry, a mother and daughter tied nude in a 69 position and left to die that way and a woman who loves eating excrement and rubbing it all over her body. The soldiers are then "rewarded" by having their pick of a female prisoner, who are all lined up in the nude in front of them. Commandant Conrad says they can have sex, but it cannot be pleasurable for a Jewish woman so the men must make them suffer while raping them. Elsewhere in the camp, all of the pregnant, old and / or unattractive women are led to their death in a giant oven.

Lise proves to be one of the toughest females at the camp. She never shows fear or sadness despite whatever situation she's put in. In fact, she'd prefer to die than be tortured, raped and degraded on daily basis, plus she's already lost the will to live because she feels responsible for the gestapo finding her family. When Konrad threatens her with a gun and she doesn't even flich, he laughs "What fun would it be for me to kill you when you have no desire to live?" He then makes it his personal mission to break Lise using a variety of tortures. He wants to destroy her body and her mind until she's finally afraid of death and then he'll kill her. Commandant Conrad's sadistic, demented bitch assistant Alma (Maristella Greco) takes time to help him reach his goal when she isn't busy feeling up the prisoners looking for a menstuating girl to feed to her rabid Doberman Pinchers. Alma shows Lise her collection of silky panties made from the hair of dead prisoners and her soft gloves made from newborn baby skin. She threatens to skin Lise alive but doesn't get her desired reaction. The whole spectacle makes Conrad get off. Literally. In his pants. Yes, the sick-o Commandant gets really turned on by torture, humiliation and death. He even likes to be humiliated himself and Alma is quick to oblige. She whips him, berates him, acts like she's his mommy and then sticks a riding crop up his ass (!)

Conrad strips Lise naked, ties her up and whips her repeatedly, but doesn't get so much as a scream. She's then hung up over a cage full of flesh-hungry mice and punched in the stomach until she pukes. One of Lise's friends has sex with a guard who's been after her for awhile in hopes that he can somehow help Lise, but she ends up being strung up and slowly dipped into quick lime. After witnessing her death, Lise has a complete mental shutdown and is taken to the clinic where a compassionate doctor (Fulvio Ricciardi) tries to help her snap out of it. The doctor is disgusted by what Germany has become and tries to help whichever girl he can get away with helping. He's letting the young Lia (Antiniska Nemour) get away with pretending like she's ill just so she can avoid the barracks. The doctor discovers that Lise's family is actually alive and relays the information to her, which helps her snap out of it. Unfortunately, she's still got to eventually return to the camp only this time she actually *wants* to live. And it all begs the question, how is Lise able to survive her ordeal and why, years after her concentration camp experience is over, is she wanting reunite with Conrad after he made her life a living hell.

Filled with violence (though little actual gore), full frontal nudity, sex, rape and various sadistic tortures, this will certainly click all of the right boxes for fans of this stuff and it has the added bonus of being reasonably well-made on what is clearly a very low-budget. There's a memorable theme song called "Lise" on the soundtrack which combines vocals (by Myriam Del Mare) and German spoken word passages (by Ingeborg Jordy). It was a Video Nasty in England and remains banned there to this day.

Exploitation Digital and Shock-O-Rama Cinema have both released DVDs in the U.S. The director also made the original Emmanuelle film Io, Emmanuelle (1969) starring the gorgeous Erika Blanc and the very rare sleazy giallo Killing of the Flesh (1983).

★★★