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.
Devastatingly brilliant mockumentary that depicts an alternate history where the American South won the Civil War and slavery remains legal to this day
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
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
Superlative film that recreates an imagined world of 1930s retro sf filled with flyer heroes, giant robots and stunning Art Deco designs.
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.
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
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
Beautifully affecting animated film from Ari Folman in which the imaginary companion in Anne Frank’s diary comes to life in the present day
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
You might be inclined to dismiss on the basis of its title as some of lunatic fringe YouTube conspiracy video. But what we actually have is a strong and powerfully written alternate history mini-series based around the idea of Charles Lindbergh becoming US President in 1940 and the country’s subsequent slide into fascism
The alternate history has never fared well on film but this British mini-series is an excellent variant on the Nazis Win World War II scenario. As opposed to the similar but tedious The Man in the High Castle series, this is marvellously understated and written with superb tension
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
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?
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
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
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 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
Volker Schlondorff’s adaptation of Gunther Grass’s darkly funny book about a young boy in Nazi Germany who refuses to grow up
This has been conceived as the ultimate modern exploitation film featuring Nazi zombie piloting flying sharks. Think Iron Sky by way of Sharknado. The results are highly entertaining
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
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
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
Amiable British animated film set amongst the Allied Resistance during World War II, all cast with talking carrier pigeons
At age 80, Harrison Ford returns for what looks like being the last ever Indiana Jones film. It’s not perfect but when you compare to all the other contemporary franchises, this still has the good old adventure spirit
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
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
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
John Landis brings the werewolf film into the modern era with this revisionist work where a modern character is forced to confront it as real, while depicting the transformation with an arsenal of top-drawer effects.
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
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
Czech-made haunted house story that does not vary far from the traditional basics but generates a sparse but modest atmosphere
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
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
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
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
A gonzo parody of WWII heroics a la Inglourious Basterds with the addition of Nazi zombies, over-the-top splatter and some decidedly non-PC humour, this proves an enormously entertainingly comic-book of a film
A spinoff from Full Moon’s Puppetmaster film series, this stirs killer dolls, mad scientists, psychics and Nazi zombies together in an undeniably entertaining mix
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
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
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
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
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
Film about a penis-enlarging drug that creates zombies, this goes for an outrageous bad taste vein are rarely lets up
The Nazi zombies from Norway are back in a better film than the first that is far more polished, the black humour more outrageous and the splatter effects are at the top of their game
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
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
The Justice Society of American was the first comic-book superhero team, bringing together all the heroes at DC Comics of the day. This is an animated film devoted to them
The third and final part of the adaptation of DC Comics’ classic title Crisis on Infinite Earths featuring an epic battle to prevent the destruction of the multiverse
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
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
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
This is an enjoyable low-budget homage to the Indiana Jones film that comes with a number of knowing references to the genre and the addition of a clever time travel plot
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
The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original
A documentary that charts the lurid and frequently distasteful phenomenon of the Nazisploitation film that emerged as a mini-genre in the 1970s
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
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
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
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
Bizarrely uncategorisable film from Zack Snyder that seems a mix of Girl, Interrupted and Inception
Comedy about a shipwrecked crew that are rescued by a German U-boat that is carrying a vampire on board
Arch Oboler makes a film in which Claude Rains returns from a holiday to find a Nazi government has overtaken the USA
A team of house movers find they are working for infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who has an attic full of deformed mutations
An Austrian film shot entirely using a GoPro camera where a team investigating an abandoned farm uncover Nazi artifacts and an evil that seems to possess the lead character
Horror film in which a group of LARPers (live-action role-players) use a wartime bunker as a location and are trapped where the bunker appears to be haunted
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
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
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
A revival of the Nazi zombie fad, which essentially becomes a First Person Shooter film as someone wearing a GoPro camera runs through a bunker dispatching zombies
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
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
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.
Australian film set during World War II as a group of shipwreck survivors board a deserted Nazi ship only to then discover that it is inhabited by vampires
The seventh of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films made as a work of Wartime propaganda where Tarzan faces Nazis
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
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
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
Robert Zemeckis of Back to the Future and Forrest Gump fame makes a film of the true-life story of Mark Hogancamp who recovered from a brutal assault by building a fantasy village of dolls. The results are bizarre where Zemeckis seems more interested in making a Sucker Punch-like fantasy where the dolls come to life
A supernatural variant on Overlord where G.I.’s during WWII enter the Black Forest and encounter something supernatural
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 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
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
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
The third of the Robert the Doll films. Here Andrew Jones takes a few leaves from the Puppet Master films in creating an origin story set during the Nazi era
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
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
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
Amid the 2010s spate of multi-director horror anthologies a la The ABCs of Death, V/H/S etc, this is a trio of tales from all German directors, the most well known of which is Jörg Buttgereit of Nekromantik infamy
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to the J.J. Abrams’ produced Overlord concerning GIs on a mission behind enemy lines encountering Nazi mad science. Passably well made for the most part
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Timo Vuorensola’s follow-up to Iron Sky. It is hard to believe that a film with a premise that combines Nazis on the Moon with alien lizard people from the hollow core of the Earth could go wrong
The story of a young Nazi boy who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary companion gained awards acclaim but swings between Hogan’s Heroes slapstick and a tender story about overcoming racial prejudice
Full marks for one of the great deliberately ridiculous titles of all time. The film itself is an oddity that almost seems intended to confound your expectations of it