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Eine Armee Gretchen
Fräuleins in Uniform
She Devils of the SS / Fraulein Without a Uniform
Switzerland 1973
produced by Erwin C. Dietrich for Elite
directed by Erwin C. Dietrich
starring Elisabeth Felchner, Karin Heske, Renate Kasché, Carl Möhner, Helmut Förnbacher, Alexander Allerson, Hasso Preiss, Birgit Bergen, Milan Beli, Anne Graf, Klaus Knuth, Elke Boltenhagen, Michel Jacot, Frank Krones, Elisabeth Fricker, Eduard Huber, Christiane Lanius, Walter Kraus, Olga Gebhard, Claudia Fielers, Gerhard Amann, Monica Marc, Zbiginiew Stok, Monika Rohde, Jürg Coray
screenplay by Erwin C. Dietrich (as Manfred Gregor), dialogue by Christine Lembach, based on the novel by Karl-Heinz Helms-Liesenhoff, music by Walter Baumgartner
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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There are quite a few theories why exactly the Germans have lost World
War II - and this movie comes up with a new one: Because no matter how
close to the battlefield they were, they shagged all the time. And that's
pretty much the basic plot of the movie, or in more detail: Female
volunteers are sent to the Russian front towards the end of the war to do
their duty as radio operators and the like - but pretty much all the do is
fuck the male recruits, and each other if no men are at hand. Ok, there
are a few narrative threads interwoven into this: Ulla (Renate Kasché) is
suffering from leukemia and has only a few more years to live - so she has
gone to the front instead of her twin sister, to live a little, and she
has sex with quite a few officers, but all of them break her heart, one by
cheating on her with her superior, another by handing her to one of his
men like a prostitute. Ulla's best friend Marga (Elisabeth Felchner) is
pretty much the only girl on the Russian front who doesn't do it like a
bunny rabbit, actually she's a bit appalled by her colleagues' superhorny
behaviour - but she is no angel either, she has a secret affair with a
partisan (Milan Beli). Then one day though the partisan is captured and
executed before her very eyes. Marga's sister Eva (Karin Heske) is raped
by an officer, then deserts her bataillon - but is picked up by some
soldiers eventually who were looking for a completely different deserter.
Their superior though is an understanding man, and he eventually sees to
it that the rapist is punished for raping her, not she for desertion. Marga
and Eva's dad Dr Kuhn (Carl Möhner) has a job examining female volunteers
to see if they're fit for front service - but he lets a few too many off
the hook, so he is sent to the Russian front himself by the Gestapo, where
he against all odds and expectations turns out to be a great officer.
Eventually, he volunteers to free a bunch of German girls from a church in
a village only recently taken by the Russians. He succeeds, too, but
without his knowledge, when his men blow up the church after succeeding in
their mission, they kill both his daughter Marga and Ulla. Interestingly,
all the girls were kept in the church stark naked, so the (fan-favourited)
finale has them running across a battlefield full of exploding shells in
the nude.
If you are looking for a serious film about World War II or about women
in the Nazi army ... don't even consider this one, Fräuleins in
Uniform is mainly made to show women in the nude, in period settings
(and Nazi Germany has always been an exploitation genre fave). However,
somehow this film is not your totally typical naziploitation movie,
basically because it isn't your typical parade of Nazi cruelties but
paints the Nazis (the footsoldiers, not the commanders) in an unexpectedly
differentiated light and does stay away from too much gore for gore's
sake. That's not to say that Fräuleins in Uniform as is a
differentiated let alone sensible portrayal of Nazi Germany, its main goal
despite everything is to show women in the nude and having (softcore) sex
(or even running over battlefields in the nude). As such of course the
film does exactly what's expected from it, and while it's not a great or
even good film by any standards, the lover of vintage erotica with a
tendency towards the campy will no doubt find one or the other reason to
enjoy the film nevertheless.
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