Nazi Vengeance

Julian Glover almost makes watching Nazi Vengeance worthwhile
Julian Glover almost makes watching Nazi Vengeance worthwhile

Director: Tom Sands
Writers: Mick Sands, Mick Sands
Stars: Mark Drake, Sophie Barker, Rosie Akerman, Julian Glover

I would really like to give a positive review of Nazi Vengeance, after all it (a) doesn’t despite the title, feature yet more zombie nazis (zombezies), which is a good start and (b) it was filmed almost dead on my doorstep. Familiarity with locations isn’t, however, always a good thing: it’s actually rather jarring to see pubs you have frequented or villages you know well (Plumpton, Jevington) depicted on screen, especially when they’re supposed to be in the middle of nowhere and you know that in reality they’re a short walk to the nearest bus stop / train station / town. Of course, familiarity with locations isn’t the only problem that this film has, as it’s the rubbish script, the poor performances and the general slapdash nature of it all that really scuppers the project.

Nazi Vengeance, aka Backtrack
Nazi Vengeance, aka Backtrack

Ralph (Mark Drake) is plagued by bad dreams, so his annoyingly drippy friend Claudia (Rosie Akerman) suggests that she has a go at hypnotizing him and finding out if there’s a karmic reason for his current psychological turmoil. It proves surprisingly effective, but the news isn’t all that great: in a past-life he was a Nazi soldier, part of an advanced task-force charged with caused social unrest in the English countryside. So the two of them, along with their awful respective partners (Sophie Barker and Miles Jovian) go for a camping trip to the South Downs in order to discover more. Naturally the area is remote, the locals are weird and a deranged killer is prowling the area with intentions of torturing the whole bunch of them to death.

A 15 rated mixture of torture porn and psychological horror, this is nonsense of the highest order. The script is patched together from numerous previous films (and done so without any visible distinction or skill), the dialogue is risible and the whole thing is unforgivably boring. It’s directed in a strictly by-the-numbers fashion by former documentary film maker Tom Sands, and although you shouldn’t expect too much from a film that cost £125k it lacks the imagination and uniqueness which characterizes the better micro-budgeted British horror films. It’s always nice to see Julian Glover, of course, but unfortunately he only goes to put the other thespians to shame: Mark Drake (who was a ‘tortured slave’ in an episode of Game of Thrones) is okay, but Miles Jovian and Rosie Akerman make for possibly the most annoying couple depicted on screen in recent years.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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