Six Films In Which Nazis 
Get Killed Real Good



By Matt Prigge 
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Aug. 18, 2009

Inglourious 
Basterds

Man Hunt (1941) : Superman eventually fought Hitler, but even in 1941 Hollywood remained neutral when portraying Nazis. The exception was Fritz Lang when Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of national film director. Lang left the country, as well as Thea von Harbou, his nationalistic wife/
co-writer. As war inflamed, Lang made this thriller, which begins with a British hunter (Walter Pidgeon) with Hitler in his crosshairs. He doesn’t kill him, nor any other Nazis, but it was one of the first movies to portray Nazis as dastardly villains. 


The Train (1964): The Nazi plunder of European art is a relatively minor casualty of WWII, but it’s enough to drive a French resistance fighter (a never steelier Burt Lancaster) to take up arms against a train holding the wares of Parisian museums and the effete, art-loving Nazi who put them there (Paul Scofield). 


Where Eagles Dare (1968): The climax of The Dirty Dozen finds the Dirty Dozen fucking up Nazis. This Alistair MacLean adaptation just does the climax. Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood—an inspired mispairing—play less characters than gun-wielding bodies, spending 158 minutes doing very little but gunning down Nazi after Nazi.


Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): Melting Nazis. Nice.


The Keep (1983): The black sheep of the Michael Mann brood (as opposed to Heat ), this studio-diced horror bomb centers on a Carpathian mountain citadel, where a detachment of Einsatzkommandos are picked off by a demon which resembles an aborted Jim Henson creation. If the Nazis didn’t have it that bad, they’re also joined by a rare bad Ian McKellen. Also, lasers!


Inglourious Basterds (2009):
 Basterds succeeds where the Valkyrie dudes failed miserably.■

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