FRAULEINS IN UNIFORM (1973) ** ½

It’s Recruitment Day at the SS.  Young girls are lining up in droves to join Hitler’s army.  Dr. Kuhn (Carl Mohner) gives them a cursory look-see and deems many unfit for duty.  As a consequence, he is thrown into active service and his daughters Marga (Elisabeth Felchner) and Eva (Karin Heske) are forced to join the army.  They join the SS girls and board a train on their way to the front where horny German soldiers are only too eager to take them to the bathroom for a quickie.  The girls then decide they like serving officers and ask Himmler for permission to keep the German end up, so to speak.  They then spend most their time jumping on Jerry’s jimmy.  

Director Erwin C. Dietrich, the legendary sleaze merchant who produced many Jess Franco movies, gives Frauleins in Uniform a light touch.  I know a Naziploitation flick with a “light touch” is sort of an oxymoron, but it makes sense since it was a German production.  To them, this must’ve seemed just like an ordinary army sex comedy.

I mean, you still get some of the usual Nazi movie clichés.  There are shower scenes, forced lesbianism, not-so forced lesbianism, balling on the battlefield, and rape.  Naturally, all this Nazi nastiness leads to an outbreak of VD throughout camp.  It’s not quite as outlandish and depraved as your typical Third Reich raunch-fest, which may disappoint some viewers.

The examination scene early in the film where the girls are forced to strip is a classic though.  One of the recruits refuses to take off her garter, and the matron asks her if she’s wearing a chastity belt.  She replies, “Yes!  I’m saving myself for the Fuhrer!”

Ultimately, most of this is just too all over the place to work.  The scenes of rampant Nazi sex are sometimes interrupted with an inexplicable bout of seriousness (like the leukemia subplot) that runs against the grain of the silliness.  For every dramatic scene, there’s at least two or three moments of sheer stupidity (like the scene where the Frauleins get it on with some Nazi officers and rub their guns suggestively until they symbolically fire in the air).  I mean it’s hard not to like any movie in which Nazi schoolgirls turn their headquarters into a brothel.  

At a hundred minutes, it’s probably about ten minutes too long.  The fractured plot spins its wheels a bit too much in the second half too.  It particularly falls apart whenever it tries to become a serious war movie late in the game, and the ending is abrupt.  

The best line comes when a Nazi phone operator gets all hot and bothered while looking at dirty pictures and her co-worker chastises her by saying, “You’re going to strain an ovary!”

AKA:  She Devils of the SS.  AKA:  Frauleins Without Uniform.  AKA:  SS Cutthroats.  AKA:  The Cutthroats.