Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (TV) | | Cast : | Jim Goddard, Jose Ferrer, Bill Nighy, John Shea, David Warner | | Director : | John Shea, Jim Goddard | | Studio : | Westlake Ent. Group | | Format : | Color, Digital Sound, Original recording remastered, NTSC | | Released Date : | , 1985 | | DVD Released Date : | January 01, 1985 | | Language : | English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | November 20, 2005 | | Summary | Hitler's SS - Portrait in Evil | Content
 | The CD I received is an outrage! It contains only half of the original movie. The beginning storyline is completely omitted. The DVD itself advertises a runtime of 135 minutes and contains in actuality, only about 58 minutes. Please be careful when you order this movie as it is false advertisement!!! |
| Rating | | | Date | October 31, 2005 | | Summary | 2-hours of bad history | Content
| There are so many inaccuracies in this film that a history of the SS by the National Equirer would be closer to the truth. I would recommend this film as a comedy and not as a history. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 16, 2005 | | Summary | Worth your time -- and then some. | Content
| If you're old enough to remember the days of 3-channel TV (well, 5 if you included your one local channel and PBS) then you also remember when TV movies were a big deal. I still remember when this one came out, and it was interesting to watch it again after exactly 20 years. It was actually even better than I remember.
"Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil" chronicles the experiences of two brothers, Karl and Helmut Hoffmann, during the rise, tenure, and collapse of the Nazi regime in Germany. The brothers are both intelligent and fundamentally decent people, protoges of a Jewish professor named Rosenberg (the great Jose Ferrer), but quickly gravitate to the dynamic Nazi Party during the early 1930s. Karl (John Shea) is a headstrong idealist who joins the storm troops; the shrewd and cynical Helmut (Bill Nighy) eventually opts for the SS. Karl is assigned to the staff of SA General Josef Biegler (Paul Brooke), while Helmut ends up working for the head of SS intelligence, Reinhard Heydrich (wonderful David Warner, showing the full range of his villainy).
When internal tensions lead to violence between the SS and SA, Karl ends up in Dachau, watching his former comrades get shot by firing squads. Helmut manages to get him released, but from that point on Karl is a bitter enemy of the regime and especially of the SS, in which Helmut is fast rising. Nevertheless, the brothers stick by each other, and Helmut manages to get Karl into the army before his hotheaded antics get him thrown back in Dachau.
The Hoffmans share a lover, a nightclub singer named Mitzi Templer (Lucy Gutteridge, who also appeared with Warner in the excellent George C. Scott version of "A Christmas Carol"). Templer works for a politically incorrect comedian named Putzi (played by none other than Tony Randall), who is part of the anti-Hitler resistance. Together they tour the front, where they meet up with Karl, who is growing ever more hostile to the regime and now plans to desert. Meanwhile, Helmut finds himself sucked deeper and deeper into the murderous schemes of his superiors, even as the tide of the war swings irrevocably against Germany.
"Hitler's SS" is loaded with history, and gives a surprisingly accurate portrait of life in the Hitler state, as well as the relationship between the SA and SS. The actors who play Himmler (John Normington) and Rohm (Michael Elphick) look almost exactly like the real men in question, and the scene where Hitler (Colon Jeavons) and his henchmen roust out Rohm and the SA leadership from bed at gunpoint, only to find most of them shacking up with young boys, is extremely well done(whether it actually happened or not is another matter).
The acting in this film is generally very good, which is no suprise considering the cast. I found that relative unknown Bill Nighy's performance to be superb. It would have been easy to play Helmut as a cynical weakling, and in fact that is what Helmut is, but Nighy manages to layer the character with decency and conflict (in one scene he buys back books confiscated from the dispossessed Rosenberg and then returns them to the professor) as well as opportunism and moral cowardice. The writers deserve credit for not succumbing to the tendency to make everyone in the black uniform a heel-clicking abomination.
There is "Hitler's SS" in a nutshell. Not only is it a must-have to anyone interested in the period in question, it's also a pretty damn good piece of entertainment. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 02, 2005 | | Summary | Heaven's Burning | Content
| An Australian production, the film made barely a blip on the radar when released in the United States. "Heaven's Burning" is exceedingly violent in many scenes, some of which I believe could have been done with less emphasis on blood and pain.
However, the film is deceptively entrancing if you give it time to grow on you. Russell Crowe is Russell Crowe, always good in the Humphrey Bogart mien. The cute-as-a-button Japanese actress, Kenji Kusho, should have gotten recognition for her role, that of a mousy Japanese businessman's wife who learns to be free, even for so short a time. I suspect "Heaven's Burning" is an adaptation of an Akira Kurosawa film or screenplay, because it had his imprint all over it. Replace Russell Crowe's drifter character with a young samurai who runs away with the warlord's wife; replace the Japanese businessman character with that of a jealous, malevolent warlord landowner out to get revenge at the theft of his property (wife); and transpose Kenji Kusho into a bird-like landowner wife escapee, and you have the character plot. The incredibly tragic-romantic ending is straight out of a Kurosawa samurai script.
Also, music in one scene of the movie features the greatest cry-in-your-beer Country/Western song I had ever heard, comparable to Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces," John Connally's "Rose Colored Glasses" and others. I first saw the movie on FX Channel late one night, and at the end I couldn't read credits to see who recorded the song. I went nuts until I found it via Google. The song isn't from Nashville at all. In fact, the group who did it is a looooonnngg way away. The song is "Don't Forget To Remember." The singer is Barry Gibbs, and the group is the Bee Gees. It is just dynamite, and it blew me away because although I've been a huge Bee Gees fan for 20-plus years, I'd never heard it. The song was recorded on an album called "Cucumber Castle," and is included on a couple of Best of the Bee Gees CDs.
As a Texan I would rate the movie at 3.5 Jalapenos overall, but a 5-Jalapeno ending and music.
J.T. Chapin
Helotes, Texas
j.t. chapin@2fastmail.com |
| Rating | | | Date | February 06, 2005 | | Summary | Not the Complete Movie!! | Content
| The DVD I just purchased is an outrage. It cuts off most of the movie! The history of the brothers, as displayed on the box, is never shown. The movie starts at the invasion of Poland. If you want the history of the brothers, be careful before you purchase. |
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