As
I've mentioned on this blog many times before, one of my favorite
film genres is that of the often maligned and ignored Nazisploitation movie. Though we have recently been treated to a relative plethora of
high concept Nazi movies in the recent past including Manborg and
Nazis At The Center of the Earth, its new found success especially in
the straight to DVD realm has led to a glut of increasingly silly and
poorly made stabs at an already silly concept that have given ideas
like Nazi Zombies, Nazi Cyborgs, and Nazi Zombie Cyborgs a bad name
(if they didn't have one already). In the coming days I'll be
reviewing three examples from the past year that I've chosen mostly
at random from what's available in the Nazisploitation marketplace,
to showcase how far we've come in the world of campy sci-fi fascism.
First up, a movie I've been waiting for for a long time ever since I
heard the title– Frankenstein's Army.
Frankenstein's
Army is the story of a group of Russian soldiers during World War 2
sent on a secret mission to find and report back on a rumored new
Nazi super weapon, only to find that the Third Reich has conscripted
the grandson of Dr. Frankenstein himself to use his family's research
to build a new army of undead makeshift monsters. Before you allow
yourself the natural impulse of cumming in your pants at the sheer
awesomeness of that logline, let me tell you first that this is a
found footage movie, a gimmick that I've railed against in the past
and still find mostly annoying, with a few notable exceptions.
Coincidentally, the last found footage movie I really liked also
involved Frankenstein's Monster, though in a literary context and
woefully absent Nazis, and no matter how this new film's shaky camera
and faux-realistic style seek to hamper my enjoyment of it, the
premise alone overcomes the attempted self-sabotage.
The
biggest draw of the movie is the monsters, almost all of which are
creatively designed and in many cases surprisingly creepy even for
this jaded horror fan. The one on the film's poster with the
sword-like stilts and drill sprouting out of his face is a recurring
threat, but we also get sickle handed ninjas, giant robotic
berserkers, and a particularly gruesome creature with an airplane
propeller for a face. The motif is established early on that all of
these abominations have been cobbled together from broken down
military machinery, and its a nice little touch, but the more fun and
novel each ensuing monster is to see in action, it only highlights
the biggest problem with the found footage format. Found footage can
work if you want or need to keep your big scary monster mostly in the
shadows, but when you actually have something as bad ass as
Franken-Nazis, you want to see every inch of them with the kind of
dark and foreboding atmosphere that can't really be accomplished with
a fast paced POV style. It leaves you wanting more, even as it gives
you so much to like.
The
other major problem I had with the movie, which is only somewhat the
fault of the found footage gimmick, is the selection of Russian
Communists as our “heroes.” Now, I'm not typically one to jump up
on a soapbox in favor of America First Jingoism, but Nazisploitation
is where I make an exception, and as an aficionado, I take issue
with its absence here. For me at least, Nazisploitation isn't just
about crazy Nazi shenanigans, its about crazy Nazi shenanigans
getting punched in the face by America (Fuck Yeah!). To have the bad
guys from Rocky IV fighting the bad guys from Raiders Of The Lost Ark
just doesn't make any sense to me, and because the nature of found
footage movies means the protagonists all have to end up dead and the
monster has to win, I couldn't get the same visceral satisfaction I
usually get from these movies. There's a thin line that all
Nazisploitation movies walk between legitimate satire and insensitive
mockery, and when the Nazi plan largely succeeds, you come
dangerously close to falling on the wrong side of it.
Even
so, I would still heartily recommend Frankenstein's Army for any
hardcore horror or gore junkie, as despite its very clear structural
flaws, it still manages to pull out an entertaining action horror
flick that kept me engaged mostly from beginning to end. It could
have been so much better with a few minor stylistic tweaks, but what
it brings to the table more than makes up for its deficiencies. In
its defense, as much as the found footage thing was obviously a
mistake, the film makes a point of avoiding what is usually the
gimmick's biggest issue, namely resulting in a bore fest where the
movie threads water for 85 minutes and saves the one interesting
moment for the last scene, amounting to little more than a jump
scare. The action starts up in Frankenstein's Army fairly early on,
and once it does, its an explosion of bloody chaos that doesn't stop
and only gets more and more disturbing and disgusting as it goes on.
I can't exactly say I couldn't have asked for more, but I can
definitely say I got more than my money's worth.
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