The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Nazis refer to members of the German National Socialist Party between the 1920s and 1945, which became the government of Germany in 1933 under Adolf Hitler who led the country into the events of World War II. The notoriety surrounding the Nazi party concerns its wholesale slaughter of six million Jewish people and other groups in concentration camps.
Nazis have become synonymous with ultimate evil. There have been a great many genre films featuring Nazi villains, super-villains and mad scientists and others that place Nazis alongside supernatural menaces like vampires and zombies. There is a sub-genre of these involving the resurrection of Hitler.
Also popular are a series of Alternate History Films based around what might have happened if the Nazis had won World War II. The 2000s have seen the rise of what might be called the Gonzo Nazi film in which Nazis are combined with madcap elements such as UFOs and moonbases.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Nazis in Fantastic Cinema.
In the fourth entry in Universal’s series of Invisible Man films, particularly in the effects department. here, made just after Pearl Harbor, The Invisible Man now becomes a spy fighting Nazi and Japanese villains
Comedy where the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys encounter Bela Lugosi running a Nazi fifth column operation from a haunted house, although the ghosts part eventually proves misleading
Film made during World War II about the locals of small English town dealing with a haunted mine and uncovering a Nazi infiltration plot
The seventh of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films made as a work of Wartime propaganda where Tarzan faces Nazis
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
One of the first Reds Under the Bed hysteria films of the 1950s where a man stumbles on a small town where a Communist fifth column are conducting biowarfare experiments as part of a planned invasion
One of the most bizarre of 1950s Communist Fear films in which humanity begins to receive radio message from God on Mars. The film’s politics are hysterical today.
A complete obscurity that has only been brought to public attention during the YouTube era – not that it has been obscure without justifiable reason. Don’t be hooked by the intriguing premise of Nazis building time machines, this is painfully dull in every regard
A true-bred exploitation film with castaways arriving on an island where they encounter a Nazi mad scientist breeding flesh eating slugs. This has been cited as the first gore film
One of the all-time classic bad movie titles, this is cheap and dreary on almost every level, although does offer mild amusement when it comes to the provision of the title concept near the end
This was the first film to depict an alternate history scenario. With stark and powerful effect, this shows in documentary-like fashion a 1960s England after it had been conquered by Nazis
The fifth of the theatrically released films based on tv’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. This is one of the more overtly comic films with an entertainingly madcap plot that has Napoleon Solo forced into a shotgun wedding and Jack Palance as a mad winemaker attempting to divert the Gulf Stream
Complex and often baffling film in which Michael Caine is on a Greek island where he placed at the centre of a series of enigmatic reality charades by Anthony Quinn
It’s anybody’s guess what possessed Veronica Lake, a great screen beauty of the 1940s, to return to screens playing a Nazi mad scientist having created flesh-eating maggots. A true Z film if there ever was
Obvious but likeable attempt by Disney to replicate the success of Mary Poppins with Angela Lansbury as a good witch taking a group of children on a series of nonsense adventures
The fairytale about a multiple wife murderer is given the lavish costume drama treatment. Featuring Richard Burton at the height of his Bad Actor period in a series of increasingly absurd softcore romps
Not entirely uninteresting but also not entirely satisfactory adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, flipping back and forward between the events of his own life
One of the most tasteless films ever made, a sado-sexual work set in a Nazi concentration camp with Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic commandant torturing and having sex with prisoners.
One of the notorious 1970s Nazisploitation films, this Italian-made entry is one work that crosses way over taboo lines and makes for extreme watching
Horror host John Stanley directs a film with an amusing premise where a famous horror actor known for playing a vampire turns out to be a vampire for real, causing problems when he turns up for a convention
The very first Nazi zombie film, a genre that proven surprisingly prolific since. A modestly effective film filled with great images of dead stormtroopers rising from the surf
Big-budget thrillers with Nazi villains were popular in the 70s. This pits acting legends Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck on opposite sides in a conceptually ingenious plot about the attempts to clone Hitler
Volker Schlondorff’s adaptation of Gunther Grass’s darkly funny book about a young boy in Nazi Germany who refuses to grow up
Film about a ghost ship haunted by Nazi atrocities. This gives the impression it was made to highlight a series of novelty deaths styled after the then-recent hit of The Omen
Dull big-budget thriller about Nazi fuel formulas and Big Oil conspiracies. This seems intended as a copy of The Boys from Brazil centred around George C. Scott and Marlon Brando trying to out over-act one another
Widely considered a bad film, this is a slapstick comedy starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher set around the dwarves during the making of The Wizard of Oz
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s homage to the adventure films of the 1940s was a huge hit in its day, spawning several sequels and many imitators. The film is pure action and adventure, delivered with enormous charm and wit
John Landis updates the werewolf film where a modern character is forced to confront it as real, while depicting the transformation with an arsenal of top-drawer effects.
One of the original Nazi zombie films. From cult director Jean Rollin, known for his arty vampire erotica
One of the original Nazi zombies films with zombies protecting an oasis that hides a gold treasure. This was made by prolific exploitation director Jess Franco meaning that much of the film’s potential is drowned in cheap production values and bad dubbing
Extremely cheap and impoverished variation on the Nazi zombie film, this is dull and has nothing to recommend it
Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller came together to make this homage to tv’s The Twilight Zone. The episodes are variable but the standout is Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Adaptation from a best-selling horror novel about Nazis battling an ancient evil. Michael Mann lavishes amazing visuals on the film but almost entirely sidelines the horror element
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
The final outing as James Bond for a visibly aging Roger Moore, the fourteenth Bond film all told. One of the more anonymous among the giant unserious cartoon shows the Moore Bond films became
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
Undeniably entertaining Filipino action film that tries to throw in everything including time travel, post-holocaust action, adventure quests, magical artifacts, lost worlds, Nazis and dwarves
One of the best films from Charles Band’s Empire Productions, a splendid homage to the GI film with a group of soldiers investigating a crashed UFO behind enemy lines
A low-budget spy/action film with entertainingly bizarre elements including a cryogenically frozen Hitler and the hero going into action accompanied by a baboon
Excellent film based on the real-life figure of Erik Jan Hanussen, a clairvoyant and hypnotist who found fame in Nazi Germany. Featuring a magnetic performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer
Third of the Indiana Jones films. This comes with all the breakneck action sequences and Sean Connery doing a fine comic turn as Indiana’s irascible father but also plays to a much greater slapstick emphasis
The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original
From Jörg Buttgereit, director of the notorious NEKRomantik, an anthology that depicts various scenes of death and suicide. Essentially the original version of The ABCs of Death
The third of Full Moon’s Puppet Master films, this is a prequel that explores Andre Toulon’s origins in Nazi Germany
A sequel to The Philadelphia Experiment where Brad Johnson is thrown into an alternate timeline where the Nazis have overtaken the USA
Disappointing film version of Robert Harris’s excellent novel depicting an alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. On screen, the book is watered down and given an upbeat happy ending
A bizarre film that features Adolf Hitler sitting around in the afterlife joined by Sigmund Freud and others as he reflects on his image
A conceptually ambitious anime that builds a complex metaphor out of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf in a story centred around the self-doubting member of an anti-terrorist squad
Early Bryan Singer film from a Stephen King novella about the friendship between a boy and an aging Nazi. While well acclaimed, the film never seems to get its relationship right or communicate the true nature of Nazism’s evils
A strong well-made French thriller that comes with the influence of Se7en involving murders on a mountainside glacier and a secretive boarding school with ties back to the Nazi era
Bryan Singer’s dynamic and exciting adaptation of the Marvel Comic title fairly much kicked off the massive fad for Marvel superheroes in the 00s/10s. This was also the film that mad Hugh Jackman into an international superstar.
This borrows a good deal of its essentials from The Keep in the tale of German soldiers during World War II being haunted as they take refuge in a bunker
Fourth of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan films, which performs a confusing continuity reset to recast the role with the younger Ben Affleck. The film’s release was delayed by 9/11, which makes the plot about nuclear terrorism on US soil seems absurdly tame in retrospect
Sequel to Timecop with more of an action emphasis as Jason Scott Lee replacing Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to stop a criminal who is erasing agents from the timeline.
Painfully derivative US-made attempt to jump aboard the popularity of Wu Xia following The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people involved who should have known better
Superlative film that recreates an imagined world of 1930s retro sf filled with flyer heroes, giant robots and stunning Art Deco designs.
Devastatingly brilliant mockumentary that depicts an alternate history where the American South won the Civil War and slavery remains legal to this day
Prequel to The Exorcist concerning the young Father Merrin. Production company Morgan Creek dumped Paul Schrader’s original version of the film and brought in the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin to make something scarier but Harlin’s pop-effects remain tepid
The first of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptations of Mike Mignola’s comic-book about a demon superhero. Not as good as the sequel, the film’s ace in the hole is Ron Perlman in the title role
Amiable British animated film set amongst the Allied Resistance during World War II, all cast with talking carrier pigeons
Paul Schrader’s original version of Exorcist: The Beginning that was junked by the producers. This is a far more subtle telling of the same story that eschews shock effect in favour of a moral struggle of the soul
Swedish film about vampires at a smalltown hospital and vampire pills thought to be party drugs that spread around the town. This is made with an uneven sense of black humour
Follow-up to the previous animated Marvel Comics film featuring The Avengers, this serves to introduce Black Panther to the screen for the first time
The first of several animated films based on Marvel Comics properties, this does a solid job in adapting Mark Millar’s The Ultimates, a retelling of The Avengers origin story
Above average revival of the Nazi zombie concept in a film that has spawned two sequels. The plot of soldiers venturing into an old bunker is conducted with tight, lean suspense and some undeniably gory dispatches
Francis Ford Coppola film that came out the same time as The Case of Benjamin Button where Tim Roth regains his youth after being hit by a lightning bolt
Xavier Gens delivers a French copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is largely by the numbers excepting for a gore level raised to what must be a maximum for the genre
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
A real head-scratcher. Legendary comic-book writer Frank Miller directs an adaptation of the famous Will Eisner comic-book. A completely madcap film that deserves to be rediscovered as a cult classic
Aaaaaaaargh the director I love to hate, Joel Schumacher, turns out a halfway reasonable film. An original menace where Schumacher displays a good grasp of the modern horror film
Czech-made haunted house story that does not vary far from the traditional basics but generates a sparse but modest atmosphere
Scriptwriter David S. Goyer takes the director’s choice to make a possession film. The one distinction here is that Goyer draws from Jewish mythology, otherwise this feels like another canned teen horror film
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
A revival of the Nazi zombie film that comes from Norway! A hugely gore-drenched effort from Tommy Wirkola that soon plants tongue very much in cheek.
Animated film directed by Rob Zombie that feels like an episode of Ren & Stimpy made by someone with an unhealthy obsession with horror and exploitation movies and stripper bars
Strong and dramatically absorbing Swedish thriller featuring one of the most original and provocative heroines on screen in some time. A word of mouth hit that later underwent a lesser English-language remake
Film about a penis-enlarging drug that creates zombies, this goes for an outrageous bad taste vein are rarely lets up
Martin Scorsese and an impressive A-list cast make a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller about a sinister asylum that soon starts into a series of major reality bending turns
A puppet film about a satiric Nazi invasion of England in World War II. Imagine It Happened Here by way of Team America. This has its amusements but is uneven
Bizarrely uncategorisable film from Zack Snyder that seems a mix of Girl, Interrupted and Inception
Billed as the world’s first interactive film, although it falls well short of what one expected. his involves film noir homage, mad scientists and sinister rejuvenation institutes but lacks any real narrative, just feels like a series of random information pop-ups and flickering MTV graphics
New Zealand-made WWII horror film with a set-up – Nazis encountered occult forces in a bunker – that draws heavily on The Keep. Modestly effective and gore-drenched
David Fincher’s English-language remake of the Swedish film is capably made but a lesser shadow of something that worked perfectly the first time. In particular, Rooney Mara is no substitute for Noomi Rapace
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film is a genre filled with gore, madcap combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
In the same vein as Grindhouse, four filmmakers have come together to make an anthology of spoof horror films that homage the drive-in tradition. Good taste is left well behind and the results are both outrageous and funny
One of the more disappointing of the Marvel Comics adaptations. Despite all the elements assembled, this never comes to life in director Joe Johnston’s hands and takes forever to get into action
The Nazi zombie film has enjoyed a revival in recent years, this is one entry in the genre from Finland made with a reasonable grit and realism
An X-Men origin story that serves as the occasion to recast the series with younger actors. This works far better than the previous two films, integrating the characters in a strong story, although is quiet at the superheroic action
Uwe Boll sets out to offend everybody in a film founded on making constant insults about its’ plus-size heroine’s weight and bad jokes about the Holocaust, including the Boll playing a comic Hitler
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
Time travel, Nazis in UFOs and a Nazi-ruled alternate timeline, giant robot spiders – ok, I’m sold. A surprisingly good little film where the fact that this is also made on a low budget and with a good deal of conceptual constraint makes it all the more creative an effort
Hands down the best film ever produced by The Asylum. How could one not like an entertainingly madcap concoction that features mad scientists, zombie stormtroopers, Nazi UFOs and Adolf Hitler preserved as a head in a jar attached to a robot body?
Unique anthology that offers 26 episodes from different directors, each ending with a death. The episodes vary wildly in quality but a sufficient number ignore all good taste and/or travel waaaay across taboo lines
Outpost was a solid and reasonably effective rehashing of the Nazi zombie theme; this was the first of two sequels. The first had a formula that seems difficult to mess up but this does – it’s over half the film before we get zombies after which we get Just the Same As Before and little more
Finnish filmmaker Timo Vuorensola makes a conceptually wild film about invasion by Nazi flying saucers from the Moon. Stunning quality effects on a minuscule budget that rival the work of professional houses
Outpost was a modestly effective Nazi zombie film. This was the second of two sequels, a prequel that goes back to depict the original Nazi experiments
Narrated by Death, this story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany comes with the self-importance of awards consideration bait. One of the great crimes of modern history (The Holocaust) is reduced to picture postcard sentiments
One has difficulty with the notion of a Found Footage Frankenstein film, although the film does credibly justify this. That said, the film offers up a series of genuinely phantasmagoric and out of this world creations
Bill Zebub is possibly the most offensive filmmaker at work today. This largely plotless film features topless Nazi women fighting cannibal tribes, giant bugs and a Bigfoot
TV mini-series biopic of James Bond creator Ian Fleming that substantially embellishes details of Fleming’s biography to create its own story. Dominic Cooper is absurdly miscast as Fleming, playing the part with a boyish smirk