Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > Exploitation > Sexpolitation > Nazis > Red Nights Of The Gestapo (1977/Exploitation)

Red Nights Of The Gestapo (1977/Exploitation)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: C

 

 

Though Fabio De Agostini’s Red Nights Of The Gestapo (1977) wants to pretend to be about the events leading to the The Schloss Grunewalde Massacre of 1941 as (or which led to) Hitler invaded Russia, it is yet another in the cycle of exploitation/sexploitation Nazi films that are beyond politically incorrect and make the German Nazi elites out to be nothing but a bunch of sick, S&M-loving Fascists.  Of course, they are favorites of regular S&M types and/or those who love celebrated uglinesses.

 

I have now seen a few of these and this is not quite as bad as some of the films made, though still bad.  However, it has some amusing moments and I realized this time that these films sometimes owe something to the screen space of Spaghetti Westerns, though similarities quickly end there.  These are a phenomenon of the counterculture and also come out of the early violent exploitation of the first such Horror (and quasi-snuff works) of the 1960s.  Women are objectified in the worst ways, though the violence can be phony.

 

Implication is how these work in part, but the mostly no-name casts (unless they are a semi-known name out of exploitation films) are used to make us feel as if we were watching something like a documentary.  Of course, it looks phonier and cheaper than ever, but this sense of populism still plays as such and keeps interest in such works.  If you have to see one of them, this is one of the better places to start by default.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image (not 1.85 X 1 as the case says) looks as poor as something shot in Techniscope, with weak color and definition as if it were not dye-transferred color of any type.  Technicolor is credited for the color, though.  The print is not in bad shape, though part of this might be something from the PAL format going into NTSC.  Note the classic type of cinematography trying to make this look elegant and classier than it really is.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 English Mono is typical of Italian films of the time, where al the audio is dubbed, even in Italian.  The combination is passable.  Except for stills, trailers for this and four other such films, that is all you get.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com