Nazisploitation!: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture

337 Pages·2011·1.59 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Bridges, Kristin T. Vander Lugt, Daniel H. Magilow

Nazisploitation!

Nazisploitation!
The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture
Edited by
Daniel H. Magilow, elizabetH briDges anD
Kristin t. VanDer lugt
The Continuum International Publishing Group
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
www.continuumbooks.com
© Daniel H. Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges and Kristin T. Vander Lugt, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nazisploitation!: the Nazi image in low-brow cinema and culture/ edited by Daniel H.
Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges, and Kristin T. Vander Lugt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Includes filmography
ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-8359-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4411-8359-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-1060-2 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4411-1060-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Nazis in motion pictures. 2. National
socialism in motion pictures. 3. World War, 1939–1945--Motion pictures and the war.
I. Magillow, Daniel H., 1973– II. Bridges, Elizabeth, 1972– III. Vander Lugt, Kristen T.
PN1995.9.N36N39 2011
791.43’658--dc23
2011025047
ISBN: 978-1-4411-9965-2
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction: Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in
Low-Brow Cinema and Culture by Daniel H. Magilow 1
I Origins, Histories and Genealogies
1 l Cinema beyond Good and Evil? Nazi Exploitation in the
Cinema of the 1970s and its Heritage by Marcus Stiglegger 21
2 l Sexual Deviance and the Naked Body in Cinematic
Representations of Nazis by Michael D. Richardson 38
3 l Ilsa and Elsa: Nazisploitation, Mainstream Film and
Cinematic Transference by Alicia Kozma 55
4 l Reproducing the Fourth Reich: Cloning, Nazisploitation
and Revival of the Repressed by Elizabeth Bridges 72
5 l Utterly without Redeeming Social Value? ‘Nazi Science’
Beyond Exploitation Cinema by James J. Ward 92
II Bitches, Whores and Dominatrices
6 l The Third Reich as Bordello and Pigsty: Between
Neodecadence and Sexploitation in Tinto Brass’s Salon
Kitty by Robert von Dassanowsky 115
vi Contents
7 l Revisiting the Cruel Apparatus: Disability, Queerness and
Taste in In a Glass Cage by David Church 134
8 l Eine Armee Gretchen: Nazisploitation Made in Switzerland by
Benedikt Eppenberger 155
9 l Meshes of Power: The Concentration Camp as Pulp or
Art House in Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter by Elissa
Mailänder 175
III Heroes, Villains and the Undead
10 l Digital Nazis: Genre, History and the Displacement of Evil
in First-Person Shooters by Jeff Hayton 199
11 l Captain America Lives Again and So Do the Nazis:
Nazisploitation in Comics after 9/11 by Craig This 219
12 l A Past that Refuses to Die: Nazi Zombie Film and the
Legacy of Occupation by Sven Jüngerkes and Christiane
Wienand 238
13 l Messing Up World War II-Exploitation: The Challenges
of Role-Play in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds by
Mimmi Woisnitza 258
14 l Of Blitzkriege and Hardcore BDSM: Revisiting Nazi
Sexploitation Camps by Michael Fuchs 279
Bibliography 295
Selected Filmography 315
Notes on Contributors 321
Index 325
List of Figures
Figure 1 Poster for Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974) 3
Figure 5.1 T he concrete ship Sapona off the Bimini Island
group, used to excellent effect in Shock Waves
(1977) 98
Figure 5.2 A poster for the now abandoned Worst Case Scenario
film project, to have been directed by Richard
Raaphorst 107
Figure 7.1 K laus (Günter Meisner), a former Nazi death camp
doctor now confined to an iron lung after a suicide
attempt in Agustín Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage
(1986) 138
Figure 7.2 K laus’s androgynous daughter Rena (Gisèle
Echevarría) straddles the iron lung containing Angelo
(David Sust) at the conclusion of Augustín Villaronga’s
In a Glass Cage (1986) 138
Figure 8.1 M arketing posters for Erwin C. Dietrich’s Eine
Armee Gretchen (1972) in German-speaking
countries 168
Figure 8.2 M arketing posters for Erwin C. Dietrich’s Eine
Armee Gretchen (1972) in non-German speaking
countries 169
Figure 9 A flashback from Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter
(1974) in which Max Altdorfer (Dirk Bogarde)
doctors Lucia Atherton (Charlotte Rampling) as
female prisoners observe. Here Cavani visualizes
the eros of power and terror, as well as their
voyeuristic appeal 179
Figure 14.1 A typical whipping scene from Mood Pictures’s
Dr. Mengele (2005) 282
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the many friends and colleagues whose
assistance made this volume possible. Special thanks are due to Robert
von Dassanowsky for his advice about publication, to David Barker
and Katie Gallof at Continuum for their work in bringing the project
to fruition, Lisa Silverman and Susan Magilow for their detailed input
on the introduction, and to Chase Richards and Jennifer Rodgers for
their help with translations.
Introduction
Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in
Low-Brow Cinema and Culture
DANieL H. MAgiLow
when Vincent canby of The New York Times reviewed Ilsa, She Wolf of the
SS (1974) on November 30, 1975, he posed a question to his
readers and future historians. ‘If it’s possible to reconstruct the
interests, attitudes and values of a lost society from its garbage,’ Canby
wrote, ‘then perhaps we should take a closer look at some of the junk
that’s passing through our movie theaters these days. Would you want
a future historian speculating about your life on the basis of a mossy
old print of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS?’1
The essays in the volume before you might have surprised Vincent
Canby. On the basis of Ilsa and similar films, they carry out the wishes
of the person who might have answered ‘yes’ to his rhetorical question.
To the extent that one can speak of ‘canonical’ Nazi exploitation or
‘Nazisploitation’ films, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a standard-bearer. The
story centers on Ilsa, a well-endowed, sexually voracious commandante
of a prisoner-of-war camp. Ilsa presides over sadistic medical experi-
ments, and every night she rapes and executes the male prisoners
who cannot satisfy her insatiable sexual appetites. During the opening
credits, the film feebly attempts to shield itself from accusations that
it exploits the memory of World War II and concentration camps by
claiming an authentic basis in the true but fundamentally unrelated
story of the war criminal Ilse Koch. The alleged crimes of Ilse Koch,
the wife of Buchenwald commandant Karl Koch who was dubbed