Kitty Exploitation: Countdown to Halloween (Day 5)

FRAULEIN DEVIL

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FRAULEIN KITTY

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CAPTIVE WOMEN 4

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ELSA: FRAULEIN SS

Fraulein Kitty is the sadistic overseer of a Third Reich "Pleasure Train" loaded with young women to serve Hitler's combat officers. The pitiless Kitty delights in torturing and killing suspected traitors to the Fuhrer. French partisans have vowed to stop this evil train at all costs. Kitty's ex-lover Franz is the train's interpreter. Franz falls in love with Liselotte, one of the train's hostesses who secretly works for the Resistance. The vengeful Kitty looses her fury on the lovers...but the train is about to be attacked by partisans who plan a battle to the death!

This cut of the film—the one Wizard Video purchased and distributed—is an American dubbed French film released in 1977 featuring mostly German speaking characters.  So it’s a strange one to get your head around, especially when you hear the soldiers marching in German while the mouths are moving in French and the regular dialog is English.

I figured I’d start the VHS viewing with this movie because it’s really the least Halloween adjacent.  In fact, as a Nazisploitation film, and I’m not sure it even comes close.

Oh sure, the horrors of war and all that, but this has less to do with war and more to do with the machinery of oppression.  I mean, it really implies more about the hatred the Nazis were pushing than anything else.  Hell, it’s set on a TRAIN.  And we all don’t need to get hit over the head with a hammer to get that implication.

FRAULEIN DEVIL begins with loads of actual footage of Hitler speechifying and WW2 war footage.  Altogether too much of it, but I gotta say it does set the time (near the end of the war) and place (German occupied France).  And what aids that quite a lot is the sets and costumes used in the opening scene featuring a Nazi headquarters and throughout the seemingly endless train scenes.

Unfortunately, the film is pretty bad—even for an exploitation film.  In fact, it’s very weak.  It’s almost as if the makers were going for a kinder, gentler soft core gore flick.  There’s virtually no gore and the soft core leaves one looking for more.  The one highlight is the scene where a German officer who looks like Dr. Evil is tortured…and that’s mildly entertaining because  it would’ve been funny had it actually been Mike Meyer’s villain… but alas, no.

One does get a train full of women forced into white slavery, an evil dominatrix who is quite a Nazi bitch (for which Malisa Longo deserves some praise), about a half dozen scenes of executions and gunplay and a wee bit of the French Resistance—viva la France!

Gotta go low, so low on this score that “B” isn’t even close…

FRAULEIN DEVIL

My Grade:  “F”

May this VHS sit upon the dash of an Oldsmobile ’88 and melt in the hot sun during the peak of the hottest Florida Summer.

Solemn Company: The Countdown to Halloween (Day 4)

Been a busy day here at The Goods, so let's have a quick post tonight.  A poem by the impossible to research Molly Capes (great name for a superhero tailor) from the excellent volume of short Halloween tales I told you about  entitled GHOSTS AND GOBLINS by Wilhelmina Harper.

HALLOWEEN

by Molly Capes

Bolt and bar the front door,

Draw the curtains tight,

Wise folk are in before

Moonrise tonight.

Halloween, Halloween,

Chestnuts to roast,

A gift for the fairy,

A prayer for the ghost.

Who will have their fate told

This night is known,

Whose hand is full of gold,

Who goes alone.

Halloween, Halloween,

Snapdragon blue,

A lover for me

And a fortune for you.

Stars shiver blue and green,

Moon’s wide and white;

There tattered clouds between

Witches take flight.

Halloween, Halloween,

Apples a-bob,

Elves at the keyhole 

And imps on the hob.

“Twelve” calls the deep bell

To the hollow night;

“Twelve” whisper steeple tops

Far out of sight.

Halloween, Halloween,

Fires burn high,

Who shall say certainly,

Who can tell truthfully

What solemn company

Pass through the sky?

Freaky Fact:

When snapdragons die, they look like skulls or screaming demon faces--check it out...

Snapdragon Skulls

I suppose that does it for tonight, kiddies...

and so I leave you with this image to get you through the day...

Monsters and Men: The Countdown to Halloween (Day 3)

Clive Barker’s NIGHTBREED is a primal thing.  His tale of a man who thinks himself a monster who becomes a monster to regain his humanity touches on themes of persecution and perception.  His director’s cut of the film which was released a few years ago after 20 years seems to provide that more animalistic view of the story than did the more tame theatrical release.

Way back when the film was being made, Morgan Creek ordered extensive reshoots and 45 minutes removed from Barker’s original film.  After years of searching, two VHS work prints were found.  These contained the missing footage, grainy and washed out though it was.  Put back together by archivists at Scream Factory and with Clive Barker’s direction, they reconstructed and restored his original vision for the film adaptation of his “Cabal” novella.  So, Barker’s tale of mankind as monsters and monsters as human exists again as it does on the page.

Fans of the X-Men comics can see the parallels, those with an eye toward racial and sexual bigotry known the themes.  But beyond those themes, this is probably as close as we’ll ever come to a full realization of one of Barker’s beautifully imagined worlds brought to life on film.  His vision is so well drawn via writing that it usually springs more to life than Hollywood can ever get.  Hell, a film company would really have to invest massive time and effort to try and fully illustrate the worlds of IMAGICA or THE GREAT AND SECRET SHOW and we all know those epic tales are nigh impossible tell via celluloid or digital.  No, they live best in the imagination.

So, beyond the original HELLRAISER films (just the first two), all we really have is NIGHTBREED as a major release featuring the imagination of one of the most talented fantasists of the last 30 years.

Sure we have Lord of Illusions, Candyman, Midnight Meat Train and even ol’ Rawhead Rex… among others.  And don’t get me wrong, CANDYMAN is one of my favorite horror movies of all time—better than the film about which I currently write, but it doesn’t build a world all it’s own.

So, if you get a chance, the Blu-Ray is out there and it’s out there on Netflix… go and visit the NIGHTBREED, play in the CABAL and meet the monsters of MIDIAN!

And don't forget, the NIGHTBREED comic book ran for over two years and twenty-five issues from Marvel's Epic line in the 1990s.  And Boom! had a twelve issue run upon the release of this very Director's Cut!