The J.J. Abrams–produced Overlord, which centers on mutated Nazi soldiers meant to build Hitler’s army to defeat the Allied forces, is just the latest entry in a mini-wave of mutant Nazi horror movies that have arrived this year. Three makes a trend, and the Bad Robot production rounds out a trio of pictures, including Trench 11 and Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, that are all actually pretty entertaining, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you think we’re being sarcastic when we say “that sort of thing†— as if historical-fiction horror movies about genetically altered and enhanced Nazis aren’t a certified subgenre — then, boy, have you been missing out. Standout entries in that canon include Dead Snow, Outpost, and Frankenstein’s Army — but for today’s exercise, we’ll focus on the 2018 releases. Let’s determine which of these twisted pictures will fit best in your weird Friday night with friends — or, honestly, an even weirder one if you’re alone.
Overlord
How messed up is this one?
Listen, the whole point of a mutant Nazis movie is to take this already extremely fucked-up thing, Nazis, and match the external presentation of the soldiers with the abhorrent ideals of Hitler and his plans for a final solution. So, none of these movies will be right for someone with more delicate sensibilities, but as this is a Bad Robot movie, Overlord is still the most studio-friendly option of the bunch.
So who is this for?
People who developed those dirty crushes on Pilou Asbaek (Asbaekistans?) when he showed up as Euron Greyjoy on Game of Thrones, people who are ready to have a crush on Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt, and people who enjoy the Horrors of War movies.
What’s it about?
Overlord opens on a plane filled with paratroopers who are about to drop behind enemy lines on the day of the Normandy invasion. It’s their mission to take out a nearby Nazi outpost, which will clear the way for air support to cover the soldiers storming the beach. But just a few minutes into the movie, everything falls apart, and the transport planes get pretty much obliterated by anti-aircraft fire. (It’s actually shocking how stressful this opening scene gets, so bear down.) Naturally, this whittles the American forces down to just four men who have to invade the German base and blow up a communications tower.
But, wow, do they find more than they bargained for. Below the base is a lab (gotta have a lab) containing truly upsetting human experiments — people in incubation sacks, dead bodies everywhere, a genuinely startling thing that involves an exposed spinal column, and all manner of oddities a veteran consumer of mutant-Nazi horror movies would probably describe as “pretty standard.â€
Asbaek plays the presiding SS officer, and the one who tells the American soldiers that “a sousand-year Reich needs sousand-year soldiers†in his best bad-guy German accent, and Wyatt Russell (pulling off the insane double threat of looking just like his dad in those shaggy young days while having his mom’s blue eyes) is a brooding, violent, seen-too-much explosives specialist who leads the Americans and beats the hell out of Nazis. If your World War II–movie appetite is insatiable and you’ve been longing for a mutant-Nazis flick that has that big-money gloss to really make those gruesome practical effects pop, Overlord is the ride you will want to take.
Trench 11
How messed up is this one?
We won’t lie. It’s pretty messed up, but that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The practical effects in Trench are some of the best this year, calling to mind the gritty, glorious 1980s when you knew that if extremely gross tapewormlike creatures started jutting out of someone’s nose, it was because some proud FX master made them by hand — just as God intended. That also means Trench is built for your more dedicated genre fans. It’s a crowd pleaser for sure, but just a smaller viable crowd.
So who is this for?
People who will take any opportunity to tell you that the ’80s were the best decade for horror, people who recreationally look up the head-crab scene from The Thing, and people who maybe thought Overlord was too safe.
What’s it about?
Okay, time to come clean. Trench 11 isn’t technically a mutant-Nazi movie because it’s actually set during World War I, but it has a blatantly pre-Nazi German officer who is bent on seeing science used to inhumanely manufacture super soldiers, and sets up the end of WWI as a springboard for the whole “eugenics, master race, mad Nazi scientist†foundation of the Third Reich. Therefore, we are comfortably grouping it with other mutant-Nazi movies.
Trench follows a group of Allied soldiers infiltrating a subterranean German bunker. (Just once, I’d like to see a German bunker set up in something like a fortified tree house instead of underground.) The extra-scary thing about the horrors contained within the facility is that even the Germans were like, “Let’s bail on this thing!†— the results of their bioweapons experiments were turning people into uncontrollable rage monsters. And if something is too scary for future Nazis, then you know it’s really bad news. The Allies end up fighting off not only the rage monsters, but the German soldiers sent to finally destroy the site, and it turns into a full-blown escape-the-contagion-murder action film. The special effects done on the infected are truly outstanding, and the general gore makeup — blood, guts, gunshots — are also top-notch. If you want the artful version of a mutant splatter film, Trench 11 is the movie for you.
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
How messed up is this one?
Since Littlest Reich isn’t designed to be harrowing, it’s just a different kind of messed-up than Trench 11 or Overlord. It’s not a war picture, and is likely the most niche option on this list — a deeper cut for horror fans who like well-executed B-movies. It’s absurd. It’s occasionally offensive. Its mild boobs-and-blood sensibility is sophomoric at times, but that’s also the point. If you’re knowingly going in for the 13th movie in a franchise about possessed puppets, you’re already a little bent. So you might as well lean in to this one.
So who is this for?
People who like splatter films, people who love ’80s horror movies, Udo Kier stans, everyone who is happy to see the resurgence of Barbara Crampton in 2018, and people who enjoy well-executed trash.
What’s it about?
A divorcée played by Thomas Lennon moves home to get his life together, and after finding an old doll among his deceased brother’s possessions, decides to sell it for a quick buck at a nearby convention recognizing the 30th anniversary of the Toulon Murders, a detail that harkens back to the original Puppet Master movie from 1989. The conflict arises when all the convention-goers stay at the same hotel and a mysterious force animates the dolls that people have traveled with to buy and sell.
The original puppet master, Andre Toulon (Kier), was a Nazi, you see, and made his little toy soldiers into a covert Nazi battalion. When they come to life in the hotel, it basically becomes a kill box, where people get mutilated in all manner of ways. But honestly, the story, which was written by Bone Tomahawk director S. Craig Zahler, is irrelevant. Watching Littlest Reich is all about seeing how many ways puppets can kill a person, and the movie doesn’t try to be anything more than that. Thank goodness. The New York Times called it, “An operatic aria of sleaze and slaughter,†and that is really a perfect summary. If you’re worn out on conventional mutant Nazi narratives that take place in disavowed bunkers amid the theater of war, stick with this tongue-in-cheek killer-toy romp.