Video Nasty #23 - Gestapo's Last Orgy

Gestapo's Last Orgy from 1977 holds the dubious honour of being the best of the Italian Nazi Exploitation films, far superior to fellow DPP detainees, the trashy Beast In Heat and the incredibly dull SS Experiment Camp. Having said that, any pretense that director Cesare Canevari's film is a serious Holocaust drama is quickly dispelled by the sheer amount of sleaze and decadence on show. Arriving towards the end of the short lived cycle of Nazi exploiters, audiences were demanding ever increasing amounts of depravity and they were not to be disappointed.


The story concerns a love affair between Starker, the commandant of a House of Dolls style concentration camp for Jewish women, and Lise a beautiful inmate Starker is drawn to, by her determination to die. Starker refuses to give in to her request and sets about brutalizing Lise with various forms of torture and sexual humiliation, but slowly his will breaks down and he falls in love with his captive. Some years following the war Starker rendezvous with Lise in the dilapidated ruins of the former camp to rekindle their love affair but Lise has some other ideas...

At times Gestapo's Last Orgy suffers something of an identity crisis - it's never quite sure if it wants to be a serious meditation on the nature of power and control, or a tow-the-line sexploitation shocker. Mostly it's the latter and beyond the accomplished photography, evocative score and decent performances, the film serves up enough sexual sadism to give even the most jaded sleaze fan pause for thought. At one point Lise is made fellate the barrel of Starker's pistol, while in another scene, a menstruating girl is savaged by a pack of Alsatian dogs wild with the smell of blood. Canevari doesn't skimp on the violence either - inmates are seen lowered into baths of caustic quicklime, and in one of the film's most tasteless moments, some elderly and pregnant women are seen writhing in the flames of a crematorium.

Gestapo's Last Orgy has a certain sophistication uncharacteristic of the films of the Nazi cycle, with Canevari riffing on two obvious films - The Night Porter (the director borrowing the framing device and the flashback structure from Liliana Cavani's film); and Saló, for its scenes of excess and perversion (like a scene where the camp officers are dining on the roasted flesh of an Jewish infant). Unlike Pasolini's film, Canevari has little to say about politics and history and the film is resigned to some well worn clichés of the genre, like a female gestapo dominatrix, and the kindly camp doctor who restores Lise's will to live, both indulging in a truly cringe worthy love scene (to the strains of the mawkish but strangely infectious theme song).

Exploitation Digital's DVD of Gestapo's Last Orgy (available as part of a triple set including The Beast in Heat and Red Nights of the Gestapo) is a mixed affair. The transfer is decent enough, but falls short of the stellar Beast In Heast image. Framed at 1.85, the picture is for the most part sharp and in fine condition however the last five minutes of the film has been culled from a very degraded VHS source. Still, the film is fully uncut. Audio is offered in English and Italian. The English track is good although there are some instances when it gets rather hissy, usually in the absence of dialogue or effects. The Italian track is much cleaner but inexplicably no English subs have been supplied. Extras consist of a gallery of promo materials and the film's Italian trailer under the L' Ultima Orgia del III Reich, and trailers for four other Exploitation Digital titles.