BAD MOVIE PAGE: CURSE OF A TEENAGE NAZI (1948)

Well, folks, I updated my Bad Movie page with yet another review of an under-the-radar cinematic turkey. This one is a sci-fi/ exploitation hybrid that features plotting and counter-plotting by German and Japanese officers and scientists as World War Two draws to a close. Don’t miss any of the campy fun. For more bad movie reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

CURSE OF A TEENAGE NAZI (1948) – No, this isn’t an educational short about menstruation aimed at teenaged National Socialist girls in 1940s Germany. (Thank you! I’m here all week!) The movie was also released under the titles When Men are Beasts and Women in the Night. The wonderfully campy b-movie premise of this flick is that the Nazis have developed a “cosmic death ray formula” which is “a thousand times more powerful than the atom bomb”.

Since Germany has already surrendered and their Japanese allies are about to, officers and scientists of both Axis Powers are trying to use the cosmic death ray strictly for their own people, subjugating their former allies along with the rest of the world when they use it to launch World War III. Enter our heroines, all young (ish) women from many nations, seized by the Japanese army earlier in the war and now stolen away by the fugitive Nazis to their hideaway in Shanghai.

The ladies had been serving as captive enemy aliens at a university hospital but are now to be used as “comfort women” by the German and Japanese officers while their “cosmic death ray” intrigue unfolds. The plotting and counter-plotting between the Nazis and the Japanese becomes secondary – the REAL novelty of this film lies in its cultural kitsch value since it is like the prototype of two future exploitation movie sub-genres:

SUB-GENRE 1- The 1950s Juvenile Delinquents flicks, specifically the ones that deal with troubled teens in reform schools. Noteworthy examples – Reform School Girl, Delinquents Behind Bars and especially Untamed Youth, the Mamie Van Doren film where JD’s are used as slave labor on a farm in the Deep South.

SUB-GENRE 2 – The sleazy Women In Prison films of the 70s with their tawdry depictions of prisoners being bullied by their prison matrons. Noteworthy examples – The Big Doll House, Black Mama, White Mama, The Big Bird Cage, etc.

Other things to love in this odd mishmash include: a) the “Reading IS Fundamental” opening which bombards the viewer with written script and then confidential file fragments for several long minutes before we hear our first word of dialogue

b) the movie’s attempt to convince us that its lurid subject matter is being presented in the interests of history and education, even though its production company is called Exploitation Film Company

c) the bullying Nazi prison matron who winds up getting hers in a way that would be repeated ad nauseum in 1970s WIP films

d) the comical way the actors in this film literally sink to the floor following the slightest physical contact in the fight scenes

e) the way the American OSS agent impersonating a Nazi officer doesn’t even bother putting on the Hogan’s Heroes level German accent that the other actors do

and f) the way you could make a drinking game from the number of times the imprisoned women slap each other.

Look for Virginia Christine (the Folgers Coffee lady), Benson Fong, William Henry and Philip Ahn as Professor Kunioshi.

In the end the Axis officers are defeated and the cosmic death ray formula goes up in flames with their headquarters, thus saving the world from being conquered by either the Nazis or the Japanese. And we’re all left wondering who the hell the Teenage Nazi was supposed to be.

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