MonsterHunter

Ranking somewhere below the women-in-prison and above the nunsploitation genres, the “Nazi chicks” movies more than any other type of film make you wonder about the intended audience. I’m not one to judge anyone for what types of movies they like or don’t like, but it’s safe to say that those of you out there pining away for those heady days of the mid to late seventies when lots of aspiring actresses were willing to peroxide their hair, strap on the jackboots, and carry a riding crop like they were expecting to mount Sea Biscuit instead of some toad in an SS uniform are undoubtedly a bunch of degenerates. Whose bright idea was it to attempt to eroticize anything about a genocidal dictator and his mindless followers? And doesn’t it seem the least bit gauche that the Italians and the French would be the ones primarily responsible for these things?

The opening credits paraded by over a bunch of black and white newsreel footage of the Nazis doing stuff like marching around and saluting one another. To drive the point home that no expense was incurred while creating this opening salvo of un-entertainment, they had some generic and mildly soothing classical music playing in the background. I thought some practical joker at the DVD plant had pulled a fast one on me and snuck a History Channel documentary in there. The only thing missing was a slightly bored narrator droning on about “the German war machine” and “France immediately surrendered.” Thankfully, after the opening was over a bunch of unconvincing Germans in crisp, new, uniforms (straight from the costume shop to the set!) were shown walking around what must have been a local park somewhat dejectedly.

Now that the fact that we’ve had what we in the business call the “establishing shot” (i.e. we’ve established that this is going to be a low budget movie with little to no imagination), the story begins to come into focus, though you’ll be left wondering whether you still need a stronger prescription after getting a look at it. It’s 1943 and the Nazis are having some problems in their quest take everyone over who didn’t lay down like the French did. There’s lots of whiners, traitors, cry-babies, and bad apples gumming up the works in the Reich and Hitler has figured out that if he just gets rid of all the Nazis with bad attitudes, he could really start beating up Johnny Yank and all those guys from other countries that pitched in by gassing up our planes and stuff like that.

But how does a ruthless dictatorship root out non-believers? What to do? What to do? Suddenly, an officer has a plan! Let’s load up a train full of German hookers and travel to the front, servicing all the troops! Okay, okay. I can see the wisdom in that plan - if you happen to be one of the guys at the front getting serviced, but how in the world does it help to reveal all the low down dirty dogs in their midst?

With such a great plan in the works, who should be the one running it? What about the guy that thought it up? Nope. He’s being executed for thinking it up. Loose lips sink slut ships and all that I suppose. What about Major Franz’s girlfriend, Elsa? Great idea! But just who is Major Franz and his girlfriend Elsa? Franz is a old white-haired dude who might remind you of that old white-haired dude from the Police Academy movies, but with a badly dubbed accent and drinking problem. Elsa is his girlfriend/prostitute.

Franz has become disaffected with the Nazi war effort and sees it as the ruination of Germany and can’t wait for it to be over. Elsa is really pumped up about getting selected to be the conductor on the Orgasm Express and is outraged that Franz is such an anti-war pansy. She’s especially outraged that he can’t get it up without getting drunk. Throughout the movie, she and Franz periodically engage in screaming matches with much swearing and probably some slapping, though I forget because whenever they started fighting I went and hid in my closet because that’s how I was brought up.

I don’t think I ever figure out how any of this was going to aid in determining who was faithful to the Reich and I’m not sure if the movie ever did either, but this is what they attempted to serve up: the train is bugged so that Elsa can listen in on everyone’s conversations. When the officers are with the girls on board, they talk about how much they think Hitler is a big poopy-head and then Elsa busts in with the Gestapo and has the offending guy shot. This is exactly the sort of scheming you would expect from the brain trust that invaded Russia in the middle of winter and who allied themselves with Italy. With a total of around eight hookers, this doesn’t impress me as a very thorough plan. These poor gals are going to be plum wore out by the time they get through “interviewing” the entire German army! And that’s assuming that every guy who’s no good is going to be talking politics while getting laid!

For added drama’s sake, the resistance has a hooker-spy planted on board the Whoretrain. Somehow they’ve gotten the idea that this train is really special (and I don’t think I have to tell you that in its own way, it is) and therefore must have some secret weapon on board. Thus, they need to have it destroyed. For reasons that must have been top secret, even to the viewer, Major Franz shows up on the train at some point in time. He fights with his old lady and eventually ends up in the arms of the hooker-spy. He convinces her that he’s sick of the war and volunteers to deliver a message about the train to the resistance guys hiding in the woods near one of the stops. This leads us to follow him on his rather unremarkable trip to rendezvous with the resistance forces, impressively made up of a priest, two guys in need of a haircut, and guy with rag draped over his face.

Meanwhile, Elsa has discovered the hooker-spy’s identity and is engaging in some low level torture of her (half-hearted whipping followed up by some unconvincing acid that looked like Mountain Dew). After hooker-spy cracks, Franz returns but is not greeted warmly and ends up hiding under the train. Later the train gets attacked by the resistance and Franz and Elsa end up having a show down in a forest.

This movie committed the cardinal sin of all bad scuzzy films: it wasn’t hardly scuzzy at all! What’s the point of wallowing through suspect subject matter, crap story, minimal production values, and a dubbed soundtrack if nothing sickening is going to take place? Early on you’re thinking that this one is going to be memorably yucky since Franz ends up licking Elsa’s boots after one of their fights. But that’s it. You cut out some dirty words and some routine bumping and grinding between the whores and the officers and this thing could play on regular TV without any problem. The added bonus of such a “TV cut” would be that some truly awful elevator/porn music would also be lost with the bumping and grinding. I was surprised at how ordinarily bland most of the action was. So some goofs who were tired of losing the war kept getting shot because Elsa ratted them out? Who cares? In the final analysis, Elsa Fraulein SS just doesn’t have nearly enough juice in its caboose to prevent it from merely being the little engine that could only inspire disinterest.

© 2008 MonsterHunter