The Ghosts of Sodom (1988)
1/2 (out of 4)
The film starts off in 1943 where a group of Nazis are having an orgy when forces drop a bomb on them and kills them. Flash forward to current times when six teenagers get lost and end up at the place that was bomb (somehow it was undamaged). Soon the ghosts of the dead Nazis are seeking vengeance.
THE GHOSTS OF SODOM came from the later period of Fulci's career as well as the very end of the Italian horror boom. Both Fulci and the genre were pretty much dried up during this era and it sadly shows in this awful film. Some have argued that even the classic Fulci titles were mainly gore and perhaps that's true but they also had some energy, atmosphere and style. Those things are all missing from this picture.
The biggest problem is the fact that Fulci is working with very little money and there's just very little that you can actually do. The story itself should have made for a great film as you could have had one grisly death after another. The Naziploitation genre is full of these types of films so something could have been done. However, there's nothing but boring scenes of the teenagers talking about being lost and every once in a while you get some pretty girls taking their clothes off.
Being a Fulci film you'd expect some gore but you'll be disappointed because there is very little. Again, the lack of a budget meant not much could be done with the special effects so we're basically left with nothing. The death scenes are all rather bland and boring and the only saving grace is that the orgy sequence is so bad that you can laugh at it. THE GHOSTS OF SODOM should have been so much more but sadly it's just proof that the genre and director were at the end.
