She Devils of the SS (1973)

Although this film is included in the genre of Nazi exploitation, there is very little, if any thing at all, that could be described as exploitative, unless you include a dozen or so beautiful young women taking their clothes off at various points during the film. There is not much of a story as it concerns a family who have displeased the Nazi regime and the two sisters who are drafted into the women's army to serve - and service - the brave German soldiers on the eastern front.For a film of dubious merit, the production values are good, with genuine and/or replica German military vehicles and uniforms, Russian tanks and the use of a steam locomotive with carriages. For a director who made his name with soft core films, the sex scenes here are laughable to say the least, as are some of the military action scenes. In one scene, a couple leave their radio listening post to have sex, the girl being totally naked while the male remains fully clothed, making guttural grunting noises. In a scene where the train is strafed by an aeroplane, all the occupants abandon the train by jumping off from one side only, presumably because that was the side where the camera was.Was there anything that interested this reviewer? For someone interested in military vehicles and steam engines, then these objects were indeed interesting. The motorcycle and sidecar combinations looked like the genuine article; and I also liked the steam engine - a bit more steam engine would have been welcome. What was interesting was the railway station, then later the village used for a battle scene. Looking at the dilapidated state of the buildings, the dirt roads and that one of the supposedly Russian soldiers spoke a couple of words in Polish, could this film have been made behind the Iron Curtain - Poland perhaps? For me, it raises the interesting question of how did, at the height of the Cold War, (1973) a not-very-good Swiss film maker manage to negotiate the film making rights for a Nazi-themed film? As the heading for this review says, this film, for me at least is interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Frauleins in Uniforms (AKA She Devils of the SS) features none of the mean-spirited nastiness and sexual degradation that is generally associated with the Nazisploitation genre; instead, it uses its German wartime setting as an excuse to get its more-than-willing frauleins out of their uniforms and onto their backs as often as possible, the lovely ladies doing whatever is necessary to assist with the Nazi war effort.Boasting a very attractive female cast (leads Elisabeth Felchner and Renate Kasché are particularly appealing), most of whom get buck naked, plus better than average production values (that allow for the occasional ambitious battle scene, complete with authentic looking weapons and tanks), this had the potential to be a fun slice of sleazy trash, but with flat direction from Erwin C. Dietrich and nary a plot to tie the unimaginative soft-core sex and fighting together, the whole sorry affair proves tedious in the extreme.2.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 3 for the hilarious rifle rubbing scene.

This film has been re-titled Frauliens in Uniform. There a really nice color print on the Roku. Not sure why some of the reviews said this is Nazi exploitation for Germans when the Nazi imagery isn't even allowed there.The color of the film really pops and the wardrobe looks custom made. Wonder what the budget was?This has everything you could possibly want out of a sleaze, exploitation grind-house film from the 70s. Only difference is the production values are superb.The nudity kicks in immediately following the credits and keeps pumping. Including some hot for the 70s lesbian sex. Don't miss it.

This film, Eine Armee Gretchen (1973) by the European trash/sleaze/soft porn _producer_ king Erwin C. Dietrich is among those very few grade Z films that really make feel angry for many reasons. Firstly, the whole sub-genre of exploitation, nazsploitation, is very repellent and something that should not be used as a theme in entertainment, I really think. It is so easy to exploit something that makes beasts curious, why else there would be pictures of real deaths, suicides and so on on the Internet, for example? From nature comes many dangerous instincts that are the more dangerous, the more the animal in question has "intelligence" and ability to calculate. The most notorious, perhaps, of all Nazi atrocity garbage films is Canadian Don Edmond's Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS from 1974 that includes graphic violence, torture and laughable cinema but also spawned many sequels and rip-offs that started to exploit the original exploitation. What makes especially Dietrich's piece of world's most boring 96 minutes of celluloid among the most unspeakably painful experiences in my life is that it doesn't even try to present the nazis as evil and destructive, it presenents them only to have another reason for a new sex scenes which the film is full of (surprisingly, the film is practically goreless unlike the other films of the genre, but that fits well to the career of its director). Naturally the film's status is so low that criticism like this is pretty useless: there's nothing in the film that the most untalented amateur group could not have made. Another thing is that no matter how tolerant I am towards trash and B cinema, this goes way under all the categories in its level of braindead. It has no plot or any dramatic moments to make it at least marginally interesting for a second, the acting is not acting, only reading lines in front of the camera, the scenes are ridiculous (the final battle in green grass with tanks must be seen if you thought your home video was bad) and the editing done in 2 seconds with garden scissors. All these make those 96 minutes feel like an eternal death alive, and since it underestimates the viewer so pathetically, this is among the exploitation (usually revenge themed) turkeys that are without any, absolutely, any merits. Not even a single frame is interesting, visually or dramatically. The Swiss DVD was released for some reason, think twice do you really want to pay many Euros for it (fortunately I got mine in trade for some junk!)