Hitler's SS : Portrait In Evil (1985)

Not even bad in a good way

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Judging from the theme, the sensational title ("Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil"), and the time of its appearance (seven years after the award-winning "Holocaust"), I didn't expect much. And it IS a made-for-television movie after all. Instead, I found it was surprisingly well written, directed, and in some cases nicely acted.The story of a German family before and during World War II takes us from the rise of Hitler in the early 30s to the end of the war. Some of the material is familiar. We see the persecution of Jewish friends, the heaps of naked, pale corpses, the gloom of Stalingrad, the growing disillusion with Hitler, and some interpolated combat footage. But there are extraordinary glimpses of incidents we seldom see on screen. The assassination of Heydrich, for instance, and the rich detail surrounding Hitler's justification for an invasion of Poland.I said it was "informative" and that's the sort of thing that makes it so: Hitler's elimination of Roehm's rival Brown Shirts, the set up for Poland, the suppression of unions, the incredibly young age of some of the Volkssturm. And, oh, how we need that information.In more than one anonymous on-line chat, I read a post claiming that the current administration in Washington was the same as Hitler's because they were both "socialists." I made a polite query in each case, along the lines of, "Are you insane?" The replies were filled with an incandescent anger, accusing me of being stupid, because I didn't know that Hitler led "the National SOCIALIST party," capitals included. Most Americans have a general idea of what Hitler thought and did, but some of us are appallingly ignorant of what used to be a shared data base.Even if this two-and-a-half hour film weren't as nicely executed as it is, it would still be worth watching for some of us. And, probably for MOST of us, we'd still learn something we didn't know. Most documentaries, for example, show Hitler invading Poland in the course of a few seconds of rolling tanks and of troops pushing aside a road barrier. That's fine, as far as it goes.But Hitler went to astonishing lengths to justify that invasion. It had to be convincing, and it was. The official story was that Poland had been persecuting its German-speaking population and had raided a German radio station near the border, leaving some German corpses behind. The fresh cadavers were supplied by the Germans simply killing some prisoners in one of their camps and strewing the bodies about, near the radio station. No one ever starts a war. It must always be the other guy's fault if you want the war to have popular support. That's taken for granted. It's why the US Secretary of War became the Secretary of Defense in 1949.I don't want to get too far off track, so let me mention that, in addition to the professional direction of Lukas Heller, there is a fine performance by David Warner as Heydrich. Tony Randall, barely recognizable under his Joel Grey make up, is a convincing and pitiful figure as the harmless homosexual nightclub comedian beaten to death by the SS. John Normington as Himmler doesn't have much screen time but makes the most of it in a subdued and nuanced performance. The most difficult role is that of Helmut Hoffman, the "mean" son, as opposed to Michael Shea's "idealistic" son. Hoffman does "neurosis" really well, and he looks the part, resembling both in appearance and demeanor Peter O'Toole's Lawrence of Arabia.It ought to be shown in every high school or college class in political science or history.

Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil tells the story of this para-military force. the personal enforcement arm of Adolph Hitler in the Nazi movement and the Hoffman brothers and their connections.Bill Nighy is the cleverer of the two brothers, recognizing the Nazi Party as the coming force in Germany in 1931 and decides to join this elite group. His brother John Shea likes a good time which includes a brawl every now and then. The SA under Ernest Roehm seems like his place in the Nazi movement.Well we all know what happened to Roehm as his ambitions began to exceed even Hitler's. Shea gets himself tossed into Dachau for a little Nazi style rehabilitation. During the Thirties before the war, places like Dachau were not yet the systematic slaughter camps they later became. Shea eventually is released and is drafted into the army.In the meantime Nighy becomes an upwardly mobile guy in the S.S. and a special favorite of Reinhard Heydrich, very chillingly played by David Warner. Through all this Carroll Baker their mother worries about her boys. She's never been crazy about the Nazi movement, she sees what it's doing to Germany and her family. She's most of all concerned with her youngest son who is played by three different juvenile actors who is an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth.What becomes of the Hoffman family is a tale tragically told many times over in Germany of that period. In this most British cast film, Tony Randall as a German comedian with trenchant observations of the time and Jose Ferrer as a Jewish professor have two excellent cameo roles.No new ground is broken here, but this is a story that deserves retelling thousands of times over.

Welcome to a world of lunacy where the horror is the transparent normalcy of those who buy into the nightmare. Hitler's SS: Portrait in Evil tracks the lives of two brothers Karl Hoffmann and Helmut Hoffmann who take opposing views on the new idea of National Socialism sweeping the country; one is violently opposed; the other believes Germany can harness the energy but that the extremes and excesses can be controlled by people of character from within.The main story line in Hitler's SS is nicely complemented by an excellent performance by Tony Randall as the stand-up comedian a left-over from freer Weimar days. He may be too lost in the bottle to tell the difference but he does his bit for The Fatherland in the equivalent of USO tours on the frigid Eastern Front.Yet his sense of humour and timing are always impeccable as he reminds the other Deutchers drowning their sorrows in the bottle during an Allied bombing raid of Hermann Goerings' pledge in 1940 that the Luftwaffe would intercept Any Allied Bombers, "Meyer, Meyer my name is Meyer." A pity the Gestapo did not share the sense of humor.

Must be one of the most underrated British movies for decades.It charts the rise to power of the SS from 1931 up to its downfall in Berlin in 1945.The only historically wrong scene of any consequence was the assassination of Heydrich.It shows him to be attacked in the country on the way in to Prague,when in fact the killing took place in the centre of Prague,more or less.Other than that it is well documented and absorbing to watch.John Shea, Michael Elphick were both excellent in the roles they played.I recommend anyone with a passing interest in the SS or the last war to certainly watch this movie.It was a pleasure to see a war movie that did not depict the Americans winning it and showed the German side all the way through,with only a fleeting glimpse of two allied soldiers.I would say it was 70% political war and 30% wartime relationships.Super stuff.