THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY

(A.k.a. CALIGULA REINCARNATED AS HITLER; L'ULTIMA ORGIA DEL III REICH)

Sometime after the war, former Jewish concentration camp prisoner Lisa (Daniela Poggi) tracks down Commandant Conrad (Adriano Micantoni). It soon becomes apparent that they were lovers during the war and, following his evasion of Nazi war crime allegations, she has tracked him down to be with him once again.

Being a romantic bastard, Conrad immediately touches Lisa up in the back of his car and then takes her to have a look at the camp where they first met. It's now derelict, a shabby old building littered with graffiti and dead flowers once left there to commemorate those who died by the hands of Nazi sadism.

This is the point where the film adopts flashback mode, taking us back to a time when the camp was filled with the sights of German soldiers using the female prisoners for pleasure.

When the latest batch of unfortunate women arrive on camp, they're taken immediately to the resident doctor and checked gynacalogically for disease. This is where Lisa first caught Conrad's eye, while laid up with her legs spread and a mean-looking metallic implement stretching her vagina wide open.

So, the diseased - including a pregnant woman, no less - are thrown into the infamous ovens. The remaining are lined up naked in the corner of a room a short while later while Conrad shows a slideshow to his soldiers in front of the women. The stills depict Jewish women in all manner of humiliating poses (one even smearing shit all over herself) while Conrad's narration reinforces to his men that these women are scum: they are there to service the men's vilest sexual needs before they're sent back out into war. With that, a blood-soaked orgy ensues. Conrad watches in a state of arousal as Lisa takes her rape with considerable emotional detachment.

He finally falls for her when he observes her non-reaction to him and his cronies feasting on a freshly burned corpse. Yes, the romance never stops.

This being no conventional relationship, Conrad sets about wooing Lisa by trying to break her mentally. He wants to penetrate her tough exterior and see her beg for mercy. Hence, he has his pretty but sadistic assistant Alma (Maristella Greco) slice her open while hurling insults to her face - this makes Conrad spunk in his pants, incidentally; he later gives her naked frame a damned good whipping; when she still doesn't break, he dangles her naked and upside-down above a pit of hungry rats.

It's all uncannily similar to how I bagged my wife.

Anyway, as you can imagine, this all goes tits up and some point, especially when Lisa receives a little sympathy from the camp's slightly more human doctor...

A blatant cash-in on the tasteless prisoner-aggressor romance dynamics of THE NIGHT PORTER, Cesare Canevari's film - still banned in the UK and unlikely to be granted a certificate by the BBFC anytime soon - is more professionally made, shot, lit, edited and performed than most Nazisploitation films. It's actually well-made, technically.

It's also one of those films that gets more shocking as time goes by. The Nazis are portrayed as monstrous racists and sadistic sexual deviants; their Jewish prisoners are vilified both verbally and visually so unrelentingly that it's impossible to argue that this film is making a profound political stand. It's exploitation, pure and simple: everyone is shit, and everyone is going to get covered in it one way or another.

But because it's so over the top, and because it's so surprisingly adept in all artistic departments, THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY actually endures as a guilty pleasure; a film that never fails to entertain, and never truly offends because it's just that little bit too keen yet incompetent to do so.

Severin Films have given notorious video nasty THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY its latest release onto DVD under the wing of their subsidiary label, Intervision.

It's a region free disc and I'm pleased to say the film is fully uncensored. Even the brief moment of genital fogging that got fanboys sobbing when Extreme Digital's US DVD of a few years back came out is no longer an issue here.

The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions, which is more than can be said for the aforementioned ED release. In fact, that transfer was not only compromised by that single instance of fogging but also pretty crappy to boot. Here, the film looks largely very good. It still looks to have been sourced from various mediums (in a bid to provide the complete version, no doubt), so some scenes do look pretty horrendous in terms of ghosting and/or edge enhancement. But for the most part I can happily confirm this is the best I've ever seen ORGY look: clean, clear and sharp without too much manipulation. In fact, some scenes look little short of stunning.

English 2.0 audio is clean - a lot cleaner than on previous releases - and clear throughout.

The disc opens to a static main menu page. From there, a static scene selection menu allows access to the film via 12 chapters.

Bonus features begin with an excellent 36-minute featurette entitled "A Brief History of Sadiconazista". This sees author and historian Dr Marcus Stiglegger talking us through the ignoble sub-genre's genesis from early examples that first emerged in 1945, through the highly influential arthouse hit THE DAMNED, the likes of SALON KITTY and THE NIGHT PORTER, and then - naturally - the likes of ILSA: SHE-WOLF OF THE SS and SS EXPERIMENT CAMP. Clips, stills and segments of trailers are all most welcome along the way (even if most of what we get is VHS quality).

The film's original theatrical trailer runs for

THE GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY is a troublesome film that nevertheless entertains by virtue of its sheer relentlessness. It's hard to take it too seriously (some scenes are unintentionally hilarious). It holds up well as guilty entertainment and looks as good as I imagine it's ever likely to on this new DVD.

All in all, this is the best release yet for this controversial cult classic.

Review by Stuart Willis