Naziploitation

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Naziploitation , also known as Nazisploitation in English-speaking countries , is a subgenre of the exploitation film . This name is a suitcase word from the words Nazi or National Socialism and Exploitation .

The genre is also known as Sadiconazista . This term is actually intended for a subset of the subgenre and includes Italian films from the 1960s and 1970s. These are films in which the attempt is made to connect National Socialism with sadism in sexuality and, to a certain extent, to bring about an equation between the two. The term originally comes from dime-book novels and pulp literature in Italy. Such a print genre also existed in Israel in the 1960s .

history

The Nazi propaganda films can be viewed as a continuation of films by the Allies of World War II that were directed against the Nazi regime. These productions also included spy films, for example, but also films that combine an espionage story with love plots and place the battle of good against evil at the center of the plot.

After the end of the Second World War, the Nazis were portrayed increasingly malicious and brutal and thus increasingly inhuman. Orgies, pedophilia, incest and transvestism were used for characterization. The Italian director Roberto Rossellini shot a so-called "fascist trilogy" during the war. In the 1970s there was a mixture with the core elements of the women's prison films . These were characterized by brutal female guards, naked female prisoners and mostly played in concentration camps. Murders, torture and rape were both implicitly and explicitly represented. The Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS , produced in 1974, can be seen as a representative for this .

This US-American-German production formed the model for a large number of other Naziploitation films for decades and can be seen as standard-setting for the genre. The content and motifs shown in the film, such as the sadistic officers of the Nazis who are also portrayed as perverse in sexual terms, medical experiments in concentration camps and the prisoners' uprisings, are the representatives of the "standard tropes, settings and narrative conceits" of the Nazi propaganda genre . In addition, the film embodies the "technical sloppiness" as well as the lack of artistic quality of the entire genre with its portrayed tastelessness, numerous continuity errors and real-historical inadequacies.

The heyday of the genre in relation to North America and western Europe can be dated after 1968 and the late 1970s.

The 1975 film The Black Gestapo also made a crossover to the Blaxploitation film.

Another cross-genre link was brought about by Nazi zombie films, previously borrowed from horror films. Occult motifs were used here, with which the National Socialists can also be associated in reality. An early example of the connection to the horror film is Revenge of the Zombies , in which a scientist tries to create an army of zombies for the Nazis. Later examples of these developments are Shock Waves (1977) and Swamp of the Living Dead (1981). Jess Franco shot a strip with Oasis of the Zombies in which there is also a Nazi among the zombies shown there. The wave of these films ebbed in the early 1990s, but experienced a revival in the 2000s. All in all, the genre has never died out completely.

In recent times it has become increasingly possible to purchase earlier 'underground' productions as extensively equipped DVD releases. A high point in the resurrection of the genre can be noted with the in many ways great cinema success of Inglourious Basterds from 2008. Likewise, the comic book adaptation Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) can be rated as an expression of this development. The literary film adaptation of The Reader from 2008 is also part of this further development of the genre, because central motifs of the genre are processed in this film. The story of the strip can be read as a reminiscence of the Nazi propaganda films. In this respect, the genre is now also being served by large Hollywood production studios with a significantly higher budget than was the case in the 1970s.

European avant-garde cinema has also produced films that can be attributed to the Nazi propaganda genre and above all to the Sadiconazista. The best known are The Night Portier (1974) by Liliana Cavani and The 120 Days of Sodom (1975) by Pier Paolo Pasolini .

The 2006 Horror of War was re-released as Nazi Zombies . 2008, directed by Steve Parker Nazi zombie movie was released Outpost , which a few years later with Outpost: Black Sun underwent a sequel. A better known example of this is the fictional trailer made by Rob Zombie for a film called Werewolf Women of the SS . This is occupied by prominent actors such as Nicolas Cage , but also popular genre actors such as Udo Kier .

With the Norwegian Dead Snow (2009) the subgenre was finally brought into close connection with the splatter film. Uwe Boll made the horror film Bloodrayne: The Third Reich in 2010 , which also combines a wide variety of motifs, including longer sex sequences. Here Hitler appears as a vampire, which in turn covers an old horror film topic. With Blubberella , he also made a direct parody of his own film.

In Iron Sky (2011), elements of science fiction films were finally taken and mixed with those of comedy. In 2012 The Asylum had Nazi Sky - The Return of Evil film . The latter, in turn, follows on from the so-called torture porn film wave of the 2000s.

The symbols and images of the genre have found use and application in other media over the course of time. For example, Nazi zombies appear in the first-person shooter Call of Duty : World of War from 2008, and the Wolfenstein computer game series is even better known for this .

Socio-cultural context

Nazi propaganda films were and are made in different nations. There were mainly Italian, but also US and German productions.

According to Stiglegger , around 80% of the Italian genre of Sadiconazista films could not be seen in the Federal Republic of Germany, regardless of which medium is viewed. He comes to the conclusion that these productions “probably most drastically promoted and promoted the stereotyping of images of National Socialism and the Holocaust.”

Motifs

Sadism, torture, sex and violence in different intensities and different dimensions form the core elements of this subgenre.

In the presentation of the genre, all people of German origin are Nazis, all Nazis are members of the SS and as such are war criminals, sadists and interested in medical experiments.

In the course of its development, the genre always bears more resemblance to slasher films than, for example, to hardcore productions of pornography.

Forerunner in the print sector

The Israeli documentary Pornography and Holocaust by director Ari Libsker deals with a special phenomenon of the early 1960s, in the context of the trial of Adolf Eichmann . "Stalag 13" (Stalag as an abbreviation for main camp ) was a booklet series depicting fictional experiences of an Allied pilot who was shot down over Germany in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. The prisoner falls into the clutches of mostly blonde and busty SS guards , who engage in sadomasochistic scenes with him, but can ultimately take revenge on them and successfully escape. The mixture of war report and pornography in the sense of a Nazi floitation was a commercial hit that was particularly well received by Israeli young people and created a real genre. The Groschenhefte ( Hebrew סטאלגים Stalagim ) became, alongside the Eichmann trial, the first source of information for many Israeli young people about the Holocaust , which was a very taboo subject in the early days of the State of Israel. In the same period of time, similar trivial literature is also documented for Italy.

According to Laura Constanze Heilmann, the juxtaposition of love and Nazi symbols is one of the reasons for the success of the Stalagim. and is also occasionally addressed in the German view of the Holocaust, according to Dagmar Herzog . It also played a role in Yehiel Feiner's literary work . His book The House of Dolls , published under the pseudonym Ka-tzetnik 135633 , is sometimes regarded as the literary model of the Stalagim.

Naziploitation films (selection)

  • 1969: Love Camp 7
  • 1974: Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
  • 1974: The night porter (Il portiere di notte)
  • 1975: Black Gestapo (The Black Gestapo)
  • 1975: The 120 days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma)
  • 1976: Camp SSadis Kastrat command station
  • 1976: Dear camp
  • 1976: L'ultima orgia del terzo Reich
  • 1976: Salon Kitty (Salon Kitty)
  • 1977: Casa privata per le SS
  • 1977: La bestia in calore
  • 1977: La svastica nel ventre
  • 1977: KZ 9 lager di sterminio
  • 1977: SS Camp 5 - L'inferno delle donne
  • 1977: Desert foxes have no mercy (Kaput Lager - Gli ultimi giorni delle)
  • 1978: Le deportate della sezione speciale SS
  • 1978: Le lunghe notti della gestapo
  • 2012: Nazi Sky - The Return of Evil ( Nazis at the Center of the Earth )
  • 2012: The 25th Reich

literature

  • MAERZ (Axel Estein): Corpse incinerator - KZ 9 - Di Sterminio camp / Women's Camp 119. In: Splatting Immage. No. 6, March 1991.
  • Florian Evers: Picture puzzles of the Holocaust. An attempt at historical trauma in popular culture (= popular culture and media. 4). Lit, Berlin a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-3-643-11190-6 .
  • Michael Faun: SS Death Simulation. Dynatox Ministries, sl 2015.
  • Salem Kapsaski: Nazi Sniper. Sleazy Viking Press, sl 2015.
  • Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22-27.
  • Daniel H. Magilow, Elizabeth Bridges, Kristin T. Vander Lugt (Eds.): Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture. Continuum, New York, NY, etc. a. 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-1060-2 .
  • Jonathan Moon: Nazi Hunter. Dynatox Ministries, sl 2015.
  • Marcus Stiglegger : Sadiconazista. Fascism and sexuality in film (= series of publications "Film Studies". 10). Gardez! -Verlag, St. Augustin 1999, ISBN 3-89796-009-5 (also: Mainz, University, dissertation, 1999).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Post on filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de
  2. ↑ a b Marcus Stiglegger with a lecture on the subject, January 2001 , accessed on August 23, 2012
  3. ↑ Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22–27, here p. 22.
  4. ↑ Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22–27, here p. 25.
  5. ↑ Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here p. 1.
  6. ^ A b c Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here 2.
  7. ↑ Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here p. 2.
  8. ↑ Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22-27, here pp. 26 f.
  9. ↑ a b c d Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here p. 5.
  10. ↑ Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here p. 7 f.
  11. ↑ Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22–27, here p. 27.
  12. ↑ Christoph N. Kellerbach: Heil Exploitation. In: X Rated. No. 65, June / July 2012, pp. 22–27, here pp. 27 f.
  13. ↑ Michael Fuchs: Of Blitzkriege and Hardcore BDSM. Revisiting Nazi Sexploitation Camps. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 279-294.
  14. ↑ Marcus Stiglegger with a lecture on the subject, January 2001 , accessed on August 23, 2012.
  15. ↑ Daniel H. Magilow: Introduction. In: Magilow et al .: Naziploitation! 2012, pp. 1–18, here p. 4.
  16. ^ Christian Buß : Cinema documentary "Pornography & Holocaust": Pulp with sharp Nazi brides . In: Spiegel Online , December 30, 2010.
  17. ↑ a b Isabel Kershner: Israel's Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial . In: New York Times , September 6, 2007. Retrieved February 20, 2011. 
  18. ↑ Peter Praschl: Israel's post-traumatic pornography syndrome. Sexualization of horror: The film "Pornography and Holocaust" explains the career of the bizarre "Stalags" comics in Israel. In: Die Welt , December 10, 2010.
  19. ↑ Laura Constanze Heilmann: On the reception of German history and culture in Israeli visual art (= art studies. 21). Herbert Utz, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-8316-4092-8 .
  20. ↑ Dagmar Herzog : Sex After Fascism. Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ u. a. 2005, ISBN 0-691-11702-0 .