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Elsa: Fraulein SS (1977)

Dir: Patrice Rhomm

As the war turns against them the Nazis set up an officer exclusive ‘pleasure train’ moving brothel (with damn big compartments I might add) under the command of the sadistic (bull well stacked) Colonel Elsa Ackerman (Malisa Longo, “Cat in the Brain”), which is more than just a knocking shop. Oh yes…it’s also a “Salon Kitty” style monitoring set-up that high command is using to spy on, and ruthlessly root out, any would-be traitors and defeatists.

As this train of treachery trundles it’s way thorough the war torn French countryside Elsa has numerous problems to deal with.
She’s stuck with an ex-lover named Frantz (Olivier Mathot “Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg” a drunken Nazi who happens to dislike the Nazis, lurking Resistance chap and a possible spy in her sexy ranks…..

 

Welcome to the world of Eurociné!
In a European exploitation industry where cheap and crude cash-ins made by cheap and crude companies where the norm, Eurociné managed, even when in such company, to stand out from the pack as the cheapest and crudest producers of them all.
If many (though certainly not all) horror/exploitation flicks of this time were low-end rehashes of the current American cinematic trend…Eurociné were making rehashes of those rehashes!
A good time was not had by all.

“Elsa” opens with upbeat classic music playing over stock footage of Hitler shouting a lot and his armies goose-stepping merrily along.
After this extended credits sequence we are thrown into even more cheap padding footage taken from newsreels of various battles (although in bad shape some of this footage is quite good though actually) before the movie jerks into the film proper where all authenticity vanishes as we see a handful of bored, skinny, extras in baggy (and rather dubious looking) German uniforms shuffling down the road as some even more inauthentic looking armour rumbles past.
Despite this sometimes ‘pantomime’ aesthetic to the uniforms and hardware though there is at least quite a lot of extras and vehicles on display that help with the film’s scope.

Almost all the extras in this are awful though. They either stand there slouching and looking bored (not good when dressed as a soldier) or staring at the camera with a look that says “how long till the lunch break”.
There is some very brief but lovely location filming in a wonderful looking old village though that’s a real picture postcard of a place. After this we’re pretty much just on a badly sized train set and a few boring looking fields for the rest of the film.
Thankfully the look and production design of the film improves a bit after the opening as we enter a chaotic Nazi headquarters in a mansion which is of course complete with multiple swastika flags, Hitler photos and a smug git (with a gloriously theatrical twitch) in a groovy looking Black and silver SS uniform (I’ll say it once again…say what you want about those damn Nazis, but the bastards sure knew how to dress) who sets the plot up about the surveillance train.
So if nothing else we at least have some essential iconography on display.

After this scene setting sequence we have the ever essential ‘medical check-up sequence’ to pick the prostitutes which is being run by some very un-1940’s looking guy with a shaggy blonde perm and a big porn moustache.
The luckiest actor in the film? The guy who plays the examiner who spends his time opening the women’s legs (as they lie down naked on his table) and getting right in there with his beady little eyes to check that all Nazi vagina’s are up to snuff. Or sniff.
So far so trashily good.

As we move onto the train all the delightful Naziploitation cliché components are here, from much groping in stiff uniforms, sexual humiliation (only mild though here), preening Nazis, shifty spies, theatrical fanaticism and a spot of Dietrich like singing involving piano perching, see-through lingerie and a big feathery boa.
But then unlike the train, the film loses steam as we watch numerous extras get bloodlessly shot in the head for saying nasty things about Adolf with their trousers down.
The dead direction, amateur staging, laboured dubbing and repetitiveness of it all starts to make the mind wander.
One major problem (and plot hole) with this plan though seems to be that so many men are publicly carted off the train and shot you have to wonder why any of those remaining on there ever open their mouths (well, at least to speak anyway) and surely word would spread so no more men would get on the train either.

Thankfully Elsa’s rather magnificent breasts (Longo is no Dyanne Thorne but she looks damn hot and is willing to let it all hang out, and get zoomed in on, for the cause) bring our minds back to the movie when she starts to silently writhe around on a nervous looking young man, with much funny belly thrusting to be seen (and with Hitler looking on from his picture frame above the bed, dirty old National Socialist that he is), as Hammond organ lounge music tweedles away on the soundtrack.

It’s not long though before we’re back to a slow crawl again and get hit with blatant padding when we get to spend time with wimpy Frantz (dubbed over by someone doing an impression of James Mason. But even at his lowest career ebb I don’t remember James Mason licking the boots of a sadistic Nazi bitch with no knickers on! No matter how damn fine bit of crotch worship by the camera it may be).
Frantz suddenly decides to have a black and white flashback to the Eastern Front for no good reason which just involves him looking out from behind a tree at lots of worn out old newsreel footage that supposedly represents what he is looking at despite the fact it takes in multiple events, in multiple locations, from multiple angles.

Sadly we have now come to the conclusion that, despite the high camp value and genuine ‘so bad their good’ moments, the film (like most damn ‘Eurociné’ creations) is often very slow, lacking energy and mired in too many flat dialogue scenes (often just Elsa and Frantz endlessly insulting each other).
In fact fanny Frantz is a big drain on the film’s (already depleted) energy full stop with his endless angst, plodding Resistance sub-plot involvement and various ‘staring off into the distance contemplating the futile existence of man’ interludes.

We do have a few dialogue gems though.
Some choice stuff comes when Elsa reveals she has been listening in on Frantz and a prostitute;
Frantz: “Elsa, you bitch”!
Elsa: "Yes, but with a modern system”.
Damn right! If you’re going to be a bitch, be an up to date bitch!
And one of my faves;
Frantz: “To spy while making love! Disgusting! But no one compels you to have orgasms”!

We do have a little bit of violence to liven things up slightly that comes in the form of some rather mild torture (a bald old guy who gets punched and has lit sticks put under his finger nails, in a scene that looks like the flames got a bit too close to the poor ‘hand stand-in‘ guy) and a brief bit of naked woman flogging.
The various shootings are ridiculously bloodless though (even when a man shoots himself in the mouth in close-up) and the weapons mostly sound like cap guns.
And boy! The action scenes are bad.
Those bored looking extras I mentioned just stand around in the open pointing guns in a confused manner while a few more occasionally jog about pretending to find cover before pointing their cap guns and going ‘pop’ at a few bushes where other extras, playing the Resistance, are hiding who then take their turn to go ‘pop‘, ‘pop‘, ‘pop‘.
Then occasionally one of them will clutch their chest and slowly and carefully fall to the ground in what passes as the horrors of war.

The lack of any real bloodshed, inventive torture (I know, I know, but we are talking Naziploitation here) or general sadism (I know, I know, but we are talking Naziploitation here) in “Elsa: Fraulein SS” is a let down as far as good old fashioned cheap thrills go and we only have the frequent nudity (and its lovely collection 70’s pubic bushes) to keep our interest up , away from the more unintentional joys of course at the sheer wonderful badness of it all.

And as for the end, well, what can one say except…Heh?
Worst stock footage explosion ever leads into a bizarre open-ended finale that seems to hint at a damn sequel! As if! Talk about wishful thinking.
Definitely one for Naziploitation completists (and fur lovers) only.

Recently released on the Dutch ‘Nazi Cult Classics’ box set, the DVD transfer looks rather lovely with a clear, clean picture and strong colours, we so get some picture wobble at the end though.