"Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69" review

Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69 (2008)

Director: Keith J. Crocker
Writers: Keith J. Crocker Keith Matturro

Tatyana Kot ... Natasha
Steve Montague ... Wolfgang
Wayne Chang ... Gen. Yugosami
Minerva Borack ... Mrs. Schultz
Jonathan Brown ... Berkenholtz
Brandon Slagle ... Russian Prisoner #1 / Nikolai
Russ Russo ... Russian Prisoner #2 / Sergei
Brenda Cooney ... Lucille
Christina Zuber Crocker ... Fritz
Tammy Dalton ... Candice
Charles Esser ... Helmut Schultz
Heather Leonard ... Israeli Soldier #1

I was sent this DVD. Actually, I received a whole B-movie care package from the filmmakers of "Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69". PR award of the year goes to Wild Eye for sending not only "Blitzkrieg", but "Gothkill" and "The Bloody Ape" as well. There were also some theater cards promoting various double features they ran in NYC along with some buttons. My friend's are proudly wearing those buttons now. And to top it all off the official barf bag for "Blitzkreig" was sent to me too. Now that's my kind of salesmanship. It makes me wish the old 42nd street was still around so I could have watched this triple feature the way nature intended. Surrounded by drunken degenerates who could cut my throat at any second is the only way to go.

Well, the old 42nd street is gone but the B-movie triple feature lives on! I can't go to Times Square to watch these films so I did the next best thing. I drove to Pasadena and basked in the glory that is the mighty shire. So with the help of two friends, (not quite drunken degenerates but close), we settled in to watch the triple feature. It was "Gothkill" followed by "The Bloody Ape" and then "Blitzkreig".

The Nazi's are at it again. They're running a sadistic prisoner of war camp where torture and murder are everyday occurrences. A redheaded Russian fighter gets brought to the camp and is beaten to within an inch of her life. She becomes the focal point of the commanders obsession but she won't give in to his cruel abuse. The Nazi's have to call in their Japanese allies to break her as only an imperial soldier can. The rest of the prisoners plot an escape while the Nazi's talk and talk and talk so much that their inane dialogue makes the camp run riot.

We saved "Blitzkrieg" for the finale because it looked like it was going to deliver an over the top sleaze fest. At this point in the B-movie marathon we were expecting great things. We even took a dinner break after the first two movies so that we could be ready for the carnage that was about to be unleashed.

But "Blitzkrieg" surprises you by not going for the blood and guts jugular. And when I say surprises you, I mean disappoints you. Talk about a missed opportunity. "Blitzkreig" wastes a lot of time having banal conversations when it should have been showing us what the head female prison guard can do with a knife, handcuffs and some time to kill.

When jumping into the Naziploitation genre, (surely the lowest exploitation genre there is), certain elements have to manifest themselves in the film. Torture, sex, blood, guts, and other visceral fun must be presented in the sleaziest way possible. "Blitzkreig" is actually under the illusion it's a real movie about a prisoner of war camp. In one of the interviews on the DVD, the director states that he could have made the whole movie a catalog of violent scenes but he didn't want to do that. Why the heck not? Why make a movie like this at all if you weren't prepared to at least try to outsleaze "Ilsa" or "SS Hell Camp"?

Even though the movie fails to be a successful addition to the nasty Nazi genre, it does manage to have a few exploitation scenes that are worth checking out. The redheaded Russian girl, (Tatyana Kot), deserves special mention as she takes the most punishment while carrying the exploitation load for the movie. There is a great scene where she relieves a soldier of his weapon (a la "I Spit on your Grave"), and then runs through the woods naked while blasting soldiers with a machine gun. When the Nazi's finally catch her, they put her through various maniacal tortures that keep her screaming for the rest of the movie.

But "Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69" disappointed me and the rest of the B-movie marathon attendees. We had high hopes going into it but the movie was too long and boring to give us the blood soaked finale we were hoping for. Oh well. We'll just move on until the next B-movie triple feature.

SCORE: 1.5 out of 4 screaming Tatyanas