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Gestapo's Last Orgy
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (1st February 2022). |
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The Film
 Five years after the war, concentration camp commander Conrad von Starker (Tomb Of Torture's Adriano Micantoni, billed as "Marc Loud") has been rehabilitated back into German society due to the inexplicable testimony of former Jewish prisoner Lise Cohen (Last Harem'as Daniela Poggi). They arrange to reunite at the camp (the seaside fortress used in the oddball giallo In the Folds of the Flesh) and the past comes rushing back while they explore the ruins. 1943 finds Conrad chomping at the bit to be transferred to the front rather than serving as a glorified pimp at a concentration camp that functions as a bordello for rehabilitating the returning soldiers. Don't sympathize with him just yet, as von Starker proves to be quite the nasty character, incinerating a group of women after an orgy – in which he insists that soldiers must dominate but never make love to the enemy – and gorging himself on the human flesh served at a dinner party as part of a visiting professor's (Scream of the Demon Lover's Renato Paracchi) taste test of a plan for using Jewish prisoners as livestock (capping the evening off with a human crepe suzette). Intrigued by new prisoner Lise's unflinching reaction to the atrocities, he balks at her wish that he kill her and get it over with since it would be no fun if she has no desire to live. He and sadistic co-commander Alma (Maristella Greco of Hotel Paradise which was re-edited into Savage Island in the US with inserts featuring Linda Blair) vow to break Lise's will but she remains unintimidated by the further tortures she witnesses and undergoes. When she withdraws psychologically, von Starker orders the sympathetic camp doctor (Killing of the Flesh's Fulvio Ricciardi) to heal her. In discovering the reasons behind Lise's death wish, he restores her passion for life; but will that actually limit her chances for survival as Alma grows jealous of von Starker's obsession with Lise and the commander becomes more frustrated at serving as a "governess at a girls' school". One of the better made of the short-lived Nazisploitation subgenre, Gestapo's Last Orgy has the usual array of sexualized torture methods inflicted upon women but it is actually at its most disturbing on the level of dialogue – quite a feat given the scripting and dubbing of the English dialogue – which casts its villains not only as vilely anti-Semitic but even Sadeian in their outlook. The Night Porter-esque framing story reveals right away that both have survived the war; however, as the script strips away the ambiguity of their relationship with successive flashbacks, the initially scuttled element of suspense is transposed to the contemporary scenes as we start to ponder the outcome of their reunion and just what of the torments von Starker inflicted upon Lise or her cellmates might have motivated it. The titular last orgy seems to occur early on, and seems a small-scale, less operatic version of a similar sequence in Salon Kitty. There is plenty of nudity, but it is pretty anti-erotic. Statuesque Poggi is required to be emotionally-deadened throughout but she is able to garner sympathy with a few conflicted facial expressions, and Greco gives a deliciously showy performance – all the more entertaining as she's dubbed by Carolyn de Fonseca, who you may have heard dubbing the mother in Burial Ground, catty Olga in Suspiria, and the reporter love interest in Deep Red). Micantoni seems to relish his vile character and is better in the flashbacks than in the contemporary sequences. Director Cesare Canevari filmography did not specialize in any particularly subgenre. His scant filmography includes the first "Emmanuelle" adaptation A Man For Emmanuelle, the arty western Matalo!, the politically-, racially-, and (trans)sexually- charged The Nude Princess with Ajita Wilson, and the sleazy, little-seen giallo Delitto Carnale (unfortunately the last screen credit for actor Marc Porel who died young at age 34). The scoring of Alberto Baldan Bembo is nowhere near as adventurous as his work on Nude for Satan or Emanuelle in Egypt, but the theme song "Lise" is absolutely painful – sung by Myriam del Mare with spoken vocals by Ingeborg Jordy – especially when heard in its entirety over a narcotizing sequence of nude rolling about between Lise and the doctor.
Video
Gestapo's Last Orgy arrived stateside on tape by Video City Productions as "Last Orgy of the Third Reich" with a cover that painted underwear over the nude female and male bodies in the production stills. One of the notorious Video Nasties in Britain, it had two banned VHS releases (both of which were incomplete at 80 minutes). Media Blasters released the film on DVD as part of their "Exploitation Digital" line in a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer. We have not seen the earlier disc but Intervision's subsequent anamorphic widescreen DVD did not look too hot. 88 Films' region free American Blu-ray (distributed by MVD Visual) comes from a new 2K scan of the original 35mm camera negative is a definite improvement over the Intervision disc with the deliberately destylized photography boasting vibrant greens in the landscape shots, chilly blues and grays, and some reds in the set decoration, wardrobe, and bloodshed that pop against antiseptic settings (the whites looking as dingy as the settings require but no longer leaning towards the yellow-green).
Audio
English and Italian LPCM 2.0 mono tracks are included along with optional English subtitles. Both tracks are clean with familiar dubbing voices, canned sound effects, and only the score really having much presence. The English subtitles do reveal some interesting but minor differences between the two audio tracks.
Extras
The only extra the Intervision disc offered up was "A Brief History of 'Sadiconazista'" by German film studies professor Dr. Marcus Stiglegger (author of "Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture"). 88 Films, however, goes all out, starting with a pair of newly-recorded audio commentaries. First up is an audio commentary by critic and author Samm Deighan of the Daughters of Darkness podcast who traces the origins of Italian Nazisploitation past the "mainstream" of Visconti and Brass, beyond the subplot of Roberto Rossellini's Rome: Open City, to the pulp stalag fiction consumed by Israeli teenagers around the time that the Nazi trial started up in the sixties with embellished tales of sexual slavery and female sadists, some of which morbidly drew from true accounts. The second audio commentary by Italian movie specialists Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson notes the film's heavy debt to Salon Kitty and make the case that the film is "not poorly made" and that the drabness is stylistically appropriate. They give an overview of the Italian Nazisploitation genre as well as the wider context that includes Lee Frost's Love Camp 7, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, and even Hogan's Heroes. "Remembering Albeto Baldan Bembo" (24:29) is a 2021 interview with Pierpaolo De Sanctis of Four Flies Records who discusses Bembo's beginnings in lounge and jazz, writing for singer Mina, working on some scores with Augusto Martelli (The Snake God), and his collaborations with director Mauro Ivaldi (Emanuelle's Silver Tongue) and his muse wife Carmen Villani (with Bembo also collaborating in her singing career). In "One Thing on His Mind" (17:57), filmmaker Luigi Cozzi (The Killer Must Kill Again) recalls that Canevari had interest in a production studio in Milan, and that attempts to launch one of his own films ended up unsuccessful but he and writing partner Daniele Del Giudice worked on a number of projects for the director, including The Diary Of A Poor Young Man which was based on a melodramatic novel sexed up by Canevari (who Cozzi notes seemed motivated to projects by the possibilities for sexual scenarios). The disc also includes the film's alternate Italian ending (5:10) which extends the final scene to different effect and also includes the original background intended for the opening credits as well (the English credits unfold on black but the spacing suggests it was meant to be overlayed on this background), as well as an English-language theatrical trailer (3:49).
Packaging
The release comes with a reversible cover while the first pressing only includes a double-sided foldout Italian poster, a slipcover, and a 19-page booklet featuring the essay "Taking on the Censors: Italian Excess" by Barry Forshaw.
Overall
Refused classification uncut in the UK, 88 Films goes stateside for their Blu-ray of the Nazisploitation pic Gestapo's Last Orgy.
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