Red Nights of the Gestapo (1977)

Naughty Nazis in for the win!

After Nazi Rudolph Hess “escapes” to the United Kingdom his right hand man, Colonel Werner von Uhland, is given a mission to redeem himself. The objective is to lure out sneaky dissidents for the glory of the Third Reich. The Colonel is eager to do right, especially since the Gestapo threatens to hurt him and his family should he not comply. He meets them and sets up an evening for plotting against Hitler. Uhland being the great SS officer that he is enlists the help of several women and a little girl to make sure it will be an unforgettable night of sexual debauchery.

What is the deal with paranoid Nazis? They just won’t trust anyone! The year before Tinto Brass unleashed his Naziploitation masterpiece Salon Kitty, which also dealt with the top brass using women trained in sexual perversions to lure out the secrets of their not-so-trusted soldiers. Bruno Mattei ripped off this the same year as Red Nights of the Gestapo with SS Girls. Red Nights of the Gestapo is somewhere in the middle of all this. It balances between cheap looking sets to some rather good looking ones. The dialogue is also better than most of its kind, even though there are certain moments that are likely to have you laughing; “I want to meet Hitler too! Tell papa I want to!” No, kid you really don’t! Or there is the scene when one of Uhland’s superiors is strutting his abilities to reflect; “The murder of Überstormfuhrer Tanner unfortunately is unexplainable. Though I shall endeavor to see if British espionage played a part in it. I’m inclined to think it’s homosexuality. The one subject on which our culture is not omnipotent.” Yes, homosexuality can be the only explanation for this!

Uhland uses the expertise of Professor Strauss when enlisting women for his big show. Strauss has experimented on the mentally insane and has found a way to make them compliant. The Colonel leaves with a sadist, a masochist and a nymphomaniac. He also acquires a young lactating woman for the traitor with the mommy issues and a young girl, Eva, for the pedophile in the group. It’s not a very uplifting that a bunch of sadists, masochists, pedophiles and other degenerates are the ones who actually want to stop Hitler. Will the world really be a better place if they run the show? My vote is NO. There really aren’t very many people to empathize with in this one. You hope that Eva somehow will manage to go through the ordeal unscathed, but this film isn’t about hope and happy endings.

Open for interpretation... 

Red Nights of the Gestapo doesn’t really add anything new to the genre, but is competently executed in most areas. One issue I do have is that several times scenes end too abruptly. It feels as if director Fabio De Agostini doesn’t know how to end a scene and therefore chooses to hack it off and move forward. The sleaze is actually rather tastefully done as far as Naziploitation flicks goes and there is variety in the cruelties on display. It was interesting to see one of the traitors gradually losing his calm as the sadist and the masochist go at it. Indulging himself in a little torture and murder was just what he needed to brighten the day. Agostini manages to create several wonderful scenes that show the insanity of it all. Power and corruption go hand in hand. The final shot of little Eva walking through a doorframe, gently pushing one of the traitors dangling in the air, and entering a room full of dead people is a heartbreakingly sad, yet ever so poignant shot.

Red Nights of the Gestapo is one of the better installments in the Naziploitation genre. It balances the ugly and tacky with some genuine talent and eye for more than mere exploitation. At 108 minutes it could easily have been a chore to sit through, but the film managed to keep my interest for the duration. It makes me wish Agostini had directed more films. 

6/10