Considering the vast genre-linked differences between the ‘classics’ of the Nazisploitation genre, as well as the fantastic elements in the Nazi zombie films, can we even consider a film like The Boys from Brazil — with its award-winning cast and high production values — alongside Ilsa or Shock Waves? In other words, to what degree does The Boys from Brazil traffic in the iconography of Nazism to spur potentially lurid interest among viewers? The answer depends largely on how one defines Nazisploitation. If we view the ‘sploitation’ aspect of Nazisploitation exclusively in the context of transgressive sexuality ‘placed under the sign of Nazism’, as Susan Sontag terms it in her essay ‘Fascinating Fascism’, then entries from other genres (zombie movies, science fiction) have no place in the discussion.36 However, in the tradition of exploitation cinema, virtually any ‘fascinating’37 subject matter — sexual or otherwise — is exploitable through over-the-top sensationalism and
overstated advertising that appeals on a purely affective level. If we view The Boys from Brazil, and more specifically its trailer, through this lens, it becomes easier to examine the film in the context of Nazisploitation.
Indeed, in his history of exploitation cinema, Eric Schaefer argues that a large part of the ‘exploitation’ derives from over-the-top marketing practices that often misrepresent the content of films by emphasizing only their most sensational aspects.38
The most notable image in the Boys from Brazil trailer39 is the repetition of one particular moment from the relatively brief Doberman attack at the end of the film. This low-angle shot of a vicious dog, lunging with teeth prominently bared, appears six times during the two-minute trailer, at least twice in negative exposure, giving the dog an eerie, demonic appearance. Yet, despite this sixfold emphasis, the trailer does not explain what, if anything, the dog has to do with the film.
Other non sequiturs, such as a man rammed by a bull and a creepy jester puppet answering a phone, also figure in the trailer. It strongly emphasizes these inexplicable yet disturbing scenes from the film, but it also underscores other horror-inflected moments that pertain more directly to the plot. One sees, for instance, a backlit Mengele in a foreboding low-angle shot as he stands at the top of a darkened basement staircase and shuts the door. The trailer also features moments from several murders, unexplained flashlights piercing the darkness of a ransacked residence, and almost all startling ‘jump-out’
moments in the entire film. The voiceover declares ominously, ‘We cannot tell you who the boys from Brazil are, only that they are not science fiction’, and further, ‘the time is the present, the people exist, and the threat is real.’ Then as the trailer ends, the voice declares,
‘Look for the boys from Brazil before they look for you.’ Having seen this trailer, an otherwise uninformed viewer would know only that the film has something to do with Nazis in the present day, stars famous actors, and involves some combination of horror and science fiction (except that it is ‘not science fiction’ because, after all, ‘the threat is real’, whatever it may be).
Although many studios are guilty of showing only the most sensa-tional moments of a film in the trailer and in some cases misleading audiences as to a film’s nature or even genre, this is particularly true of exploitation cinema. This tendency is demonstrated in certain
‘fake trailers’ by famous cult directors, such as Rob Zombie, whose ad for the nonexistent Werewolf Women of the SS accompanies Quentin
Tarantino’s Grindhouse (2007) double feature. Indeed, these invented trailers only slightly exaggerate the style of the original previews to which they are indebted.40
Despite the misleading trailer to The Boys from Brazil, as a big-budget film with well-known stars and an award winning director, the film itself could never be mistaken for exploitation cinema. Yet at the dawn of the 1970s, prestige features began to lose money while genre-oriented and exploitation films far out-earned their budgets.41 Meanwhile, as the decade progressed, Hollywood became increasingly dominated by auteur directors like Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, 1972) and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976), who got their proverbial feet in the Hollywood door working for infamous exploitation producer/
director Roger Corman. Similarly, Steven Spielberg (Jaws, 1975; Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977) and William Friedkin (The Exorcist, 1973) got their start in the populist medium of television and would go on to reinvent genre cinema for the 1970s and beyond.42 In other words, the most lucrative filmmakers of the late 1970s came from
‘low-brow’ backgrounds and worked in popular idioms. Consequently, it made sense to try and cash in on this boom in genre and exploi-tation cinema, even with a ‘serious’ film. In any case, a film that asks,
‘What if they tried to clone Hitler?’ comes across as rather sensation-alist. Such is the case despite any air of contemporaneous realism that the trailer emphasizes alongside its overstated horror elements.
Popular reception of the film, as evidenced by a prominent 1978 review in Time, seems to have recognized the filmmakers’ motives.
Richard Schickel’s wittily titled assessment ‘Cloning Around’, suggests that the film takes itself far too seriously given the subject matter.43 Relating The Boys from Brazil to exploitation cinema, he notes: ‘[I]n the end the self-conscious importance of the film produces a rather queasy feeling, for really this story is no more than a crude exploitation — decked out with our latest scientific finery — of what amounts to a penny dreadful fantasy.’44 He then highlights an aspect common to all forms of Nazisploitation, both sexploitation and otherwise: namely that, in the 1970s as well as today, Nazis make the perfect cinema villains. Combined with the inherently theatrical elements of fascism, the over-the-top legacy of Nazis as perpetrators of some of the most extreme violence in history makes almost any cinematic fantasy about them seem on some level plausible. As Caroline Picart and David Frank sum up in Frames of Evil: The Holocaust as Horror in American Film,
‘Despite the variety of genres in which Holocaust and horror themes merge, the face of the monstrous after World War II, particularly for American audiences, is the face of the Nazi.’45
Another aspect of exploitation cinema implicit in Schickel’s reference to the common denominator of permissible hatred towards Nazis is the mass affective appeal of both fascism and exploitation cinema. As Susan Sontag pointed out in her discussion of Leni Riefenstahl’s films and photography, fascist aesthetics evoke a strong affective response.46 Ultimately, it is also the affective realm that is
‘exploited’ by exploitation cinema, a genre that utilizes sensationalism precisely to evoke a sensory experience of sexual excitement, fear, revulsion, wonder, horror, astonishment, or ideally some mix of these potent emotions, all of which register in very specific and undeniable bodily responses. Nazis, cinematic or real, have tended to evoke such strong reactions in viewers, and as such they make attractive cinematic subjects.