Nazis at the Centre of the Earth. Yep, we’re doing this thing.
Basic Synopsis
As WWII is coming to an end, Josef Mengele is seen fleeing Germany on a plane with a “secret machine,” never to be seen from ever again. Skip to 2012, when a group of researchers in Antarctica start looking for two of their missing comrades. Our protagonist Lucas leads the group because one of the missing researchers is his girlfriend Paige, but honestly who cares. The group follows a trail into a cave and eventually wind up at the center of the Earth.
Following along? Cause we’re not even at the stupid part yet.
The group wanders into a trap where they are ambushed by waiting Nazi soldiers, whose leader is (ta-da!) Josef Mengele. It is then explained to us (at nauseum) that one of the researchers, Dr. Reistad, is a traitor and had made an arrangement to provide the bodies of his colleagues to the Nazis, who in turn use their body parts to prolong their lives, which also kind of explains how the Nazis are still around. Which also kind of makes them zombie-ish. Sigh.
So the researchers proceed to get butchered up and their parts get transplanted onto the decaying bodies of Nazi soldiers. This seems to be crux of the movie until we find out that the “secret machine” is actually a preserved, mechanized body of Adolf Hiltler, which is brought back to life using stem-cells from one of the pregnant researchers.
So the Nazis board their flying saucer ship (WTF?) and start flying around with plans on taking over the world. Fortunately for us, this never happens as the ship is sabotaged by Dr. Reistad’s pissed off girlfriend, who blows up the ship with an electronic, WWII style potato-masher grenade.
Mecha-Hitler attempts to kill our protagonist Lucas and Paige, but they manage to defeat him, and his robot-body sinks to the bottom of the Antarctic ocean, along with the Nazi ship. Lucas proposes to Paige, they laugh and kiss, then it’s curtains.
Content and Feel / Ambiance
Ok let’s try to evaluate this film for what it is: this is a low-rent movie that was filmed using less money and less time it takes to shop for groceries at Wal-Mart. You can’t go into this thing expecting Hollywood production.
That being said, I’m not really sure how to categorize this film because it can’t seem to decide what its own genre is going to be. From the very first few moments you get the feeling that the actors are hamming it up, like you would see in a teenage comedy, as though they are preparing the audience for a barrage of corny one-liners. Think Scary Movie type acting.
All that would be fine, except the movie actually gets pretty gruesome in a lot of the more violent scenes. The main villain is Mengele, and the guy playing him is dead serious the whole time, so he doesn’t fit in with the campy playfulness of the rest of the actors. It’s a pretty stark contrast, because he’s not acting at the same level, nor is his character written in a way that flows with the rest of the movie.
The result is that the audience is left wondering if we should actually care for the victims and protagonists, or if this is just a goofy film where we can just turn off our brains and enjoy some cheap horror gimmicks. I think the director must have been going for the second option, but by making the scenes of violence so eerie, and having such extreme villains, the movie fails to bring that element of “fun” which is necessary in a less serious horror flick.
Notable Awesomeness
I think everyone is aware of cheesy horror movies that are so bad they wind up being awesome. But I’ve never actually watched a movie where you can actually see the progression throughout. The first 45 minutes of this movie are just terrible. Ridiculous storyline, flat characters, and too many useless scenes of violence which don’t advance the plot. BUT - the moment Robo-Hitler comes around, it’s like the movie zeros-out its suck-o-meter and comes round full circle into being kind of entertaining again.
I’d even go so far as to say that had the villain of the movie been Robo-Hitler the whole way through, this would likely have been an awesome, low-budget campy horror. The fact that we have to wait until the movie is nearly two-thirds over is a waste of film.
Also Dr. Reistad is Jake Busey (remember Shasta McNasty and Starship Troopers?) That’s neat. Kind of.
Notable Lameness
Without sounding like a total wimp, I really take issue at watching people getting harmed if it doesn’t have anything to do with the story. Couple that with the fact that the main antagonist in this movie is Josef Mengele, it really takes a lot out of the movie.
If you’re going to put together a goofy, low-rate horror movie, I really think using Nazis, and one of the most appalling figures in history as your villain is a bad move. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s hard to suspend my disbelief and enjoy watching Nazis chop people up unless it serves to raise the stakes of a movie. Had the movie remained more intense throughout, I would have been more or less ok with that, because I would have cared enough for the victims that I would want the good guys to win. But when you have one foot in the horror door, the other in the comedy door, it completely sends the wrong message to the audience. You really don’t care who wins or what happens because it’s all so silly.
Verdict
I don’t dislike this movie because it was low-budget, and had correspondingly low production quality, special effects, and less-than-stellar acting. I don’t even dislike this movie because of it’s implausible storyline and characters.
I dislike this movie because it fails to commit to a genre. Either be a gritty, dark, disturbing indi-horror, or be a foolish, semi-comedic B rated slasher. By trying to be both, this movie comes off as the sour grapes of horror movies. You can almost sense the director saying “whatever, I wasn’t even trying.”
Low-budget movies are fine; there’s nothing wrong with slapping something together for pure entertainment purposes with lower-quality production. But that doesn’t give you carte-blanche to be sloppy in the story-telling. And it certainly isn’t a built-in excuse for putting together a shitty movie.
The Epitaph
Here lies Nazis at the Center of the Earth; das ist warum niemand mag Deutschland.
☠/10
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