To give you an idea of how seriously this film takes itself. This is the kind of movie that randomly decides to smash cut to our entire antagonist group in FULL SS death squad uniforms mid rally on a tennis court, having had almost NO Nazi ideology up to that point. It’s literally just rumbling along and then BOOM. Black Nazi death squads…I laughed for a solid 2 minutes.

I’m generally not one for Nazisploitation, I find that more often than not they’re just an excuse to make a faux torture and snuff film with a veil of historical ‘classiness’ for lack of a better term…But I love Blaxsploitation cinema deeply. So combining the two…I had my doubts.

But! I’m pleased to say ‘The Black Gestapo’ while…a *tad* misleading, is a VERY campy and over the top gritty romp, that I was actually very pleasently surprised by!

The plot? A city is being overrun by pimps, drug dealers and ‘protection’ rackets who’re making the streets unsafe and putting people in the hospital. A local black power quasi military group are supporting on the ground to try and get help to people who need it and support in any way they can to keep the community going, but they’re generally pacifist by nature and believe that the crime waves should be handled by the LAPD.

Well…except for one of the soldiers, who thinks they need to get tough, bring in 20 strong men, teach them combat and take the action to the streets to get results…but he’s talked down.

That is until the leader of this movements partner gets assaulted and then later raped. Its at this point he grants the squad 6 men to train, on the grounds they’re used SOLELY to keep the peace…which…almost IMMEDIATELY doenst happen as they go after the key dealers who’ve been attacking people and racketeering.

However; once the main gangs have all been dealt with, our group splinters. With the ‘Violence first’ group essentially filling the void thats left by the pimps and pushers leading to an even BIGGER surge in violence on the streets and drug issues.

anyway…they skip a couple steps and suddenly, they’re also nazis…and I’ve gotta say they’re the most casual nazis i’ve ever seen, I had a good chuckle watching them just casually strolling in full SS uniform…But I digress…its down to the pacifist faction to take up arms and put the new neo-nazi faction down before the whole thing escalates into a city wide warzone.

And what I will say is, for blaxsploitation? this isnt a terribly well made production. But for Nazisploitation? its a diamond.

The script is basic, but effective. its a gritty urban exploitation film at its core that seems pretty preoccupied by a lot of the ‘Black Power’ movement beliefs of the time. With the key battle lines being drawn between ‘violence gets results’ and ‘talking gets results’. Its pretty clear though which line THIS film falls on…and the spoiler here is, its not the side that portrays the violent ones as LITERAL nazis. While the truth and reality lies somewhere in the middle of these two points. This isnt the film to be having that conversation. It’s too goofy for that.

Its got a solid 3 act structure. it knows what it is, it knows what its trying to be and it nails the tone and pacing near perfectly. Leaving me personally not really wanting more. But fully satisfied with what i’d had.

The characters are *just* about complex enough to be interesting without getting too deep or being too shallow. and it ends pretty satisfyingly too.

I enjoyed the plot progression, I found the characters worked well in the scenarios set. If I was going to be critical, i’d say that the actual ‘Nazi’ element isnt really utilized very well…the opening titles and end credits are basically filled with old WW2 footage or audio of hitler…and theres one scene about an hour in where they show WW2 stock footage too…

But theres no build up to them becoming Nazis…like, the lead character never once expresses any inclination to liking the Nazis or wanting to BE a nazi. he wears normal clothes and a standard uniform for most of the films runtime and then out of nowhere BAM. NAZI. It wouldnt have maybe been nice to see it build a little, maybe show him as being interested in WW2 history and then GRADUALLY tease out of him that he has Nazi aspirations.

Instead; because they ‘crash the nazi’ it just makes it jump from a fairly decent, but a little slow blaxploitation flick into an ultra goofy production that took me by surprise.

The direction and cine are decent we have solid compositional choices, the print quality looks great with nice use of depth of field. the styalisation here is a little forced if im being honest, but I think it handles sequence building pretty well. the scenes largely keep a good pace, it maybe could have been 5-10 minutes tighter to really get maximum value out of it (theres a few scenes that feel like they repeat a bit that could have been trimmed out) but…on the whole? this is proabably one of the better Blaxsploitation offerings and absolutely one of the better Nazisploitation ones…

The performances are the big selling point here, all the leading cast members are campy, over the top and very VERY sweaty. some of their line deliveries are just delightful and im about 99% sure that this film influenced Quentin Tarantino’s writing for Samuel L. Jackson. theres just this perfect level of ‘badassery’ going on with highly animated and VERY physical performances. I loved it.

The scoring was a little generic all things considered. I didnt dislike it, but honestly; it wasnt memorable enough for me to have a strong opinion either way. It did its job, it wasnt overly intrusive…I cant complain.

All in all, this one really surprised me, the quality of the production married up to a tonally strange script that simultaniously manages to be totally Daffy Duck…While at the same time raising genuine arguements and comments about culture, war, society and violence. Was something I really got on with.

HIGHLY recommended if you like Blaxsploitation cinema, or are looking to get into the genre. I think Nazisploitation fans may be a little underwhelmed by this one. But I’ll absolutely be checking this one out again!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-black-gestapo/