Heinrich (Robert Masser), a young disillusioned soldier with a face so chiselled it looks like a natural rock formation, is rescued from being hanged for desertion by Elsa (Marie Hacke), a young local farmer with no sympathies for the Nazi party. Between Sisu and this, the fascists might want to look into alternative execution arrangements.
Meanwhile, the Nazis that failed to follow through with Heinrich's hanging arrive at the nearby village, looking for a cache of gold bars left behind by the only Jew family in town. They're not just Nazi soldiers - they're SS, Himmler's own Nazier-than-thou zealots, and you know they're especially dastardly because they're led by a sociopath in a phantom of the opera-style leather mask (Alexander Scheer).
While they search for the gold they take over the village inn as a center of operations, and send some soldiers to a nearby farm to look for supplies. Can you guess whose farm they go to raid?
Elsa manages to hide Heinrich from the plundering soldiers, but all bets are off when things get rapey. Soon Heinrich, Elsa and her brother have to leave behind a farm full of dead Nazis; And then Elsa's brother goes and gets himself captured, they need to go to the village to rescue him.
The backstory for the gold gets filled in, adding the complication that there's a group of people in town willing to murder for the money; and so the rest of the film ably spins these plates, weaving its characters between them in a series of confrontations and narrow escapes that always end up involving some gnarly violence.
It's a gleefully pulpy story with a relatively low body count but a few memorable demises; Add a soundtrack composed of oldie German numbers and Morricone-style spaghetti western music, a heavy debt to Quentin Tarantino, and a sense of humor but no overt jokes...
It's a gleefully pulpy story with a relatively low body count but a few memorable demises; Add a soundtrack composed of oldie German numbers and Morricone-style spaghetti western music, a heavy debt to Quentin Tarantino, and a sense of humor but no overt jokes...
Good fun, in other words. It's a brisk, well-made, entertaining film punctuated by blood-red gouts of gore and some exploitation... A bit sleazy, but never too much so. The script doesn't always deliver the goods in a satisfying way, but it's pretty lean and it throws a few fun left turns and unexpected details.
Director Peter Thorwarth does a good job with the action, keeping it varied and brutal, and manages suspense well in the scenes that need it. This is a huge improvement over his previous movie, Blood Red Skies (in case you were wondering). I doubt I'll remember much of this in a year's time but yeah, I enjoyed it.
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