"When the full moon rises, the war begins."
Werewolves of the Third Reich is a 2017 British Sci-Fi Horror war movie.
The Fearless Four are a group of soldiers being transported to prison for various offenses when the Nazis attack. They escape during the chaos, only to stumble upon a German base. While sneaking around it to escape, they uncover a terrible secret: Josef Mengele himself is making Reich soldiers into werewolves! Now, four disgraced criminals are all that stand between the free world and lycanthropic destruction!
This film contains examples of:
- Action Prologue: Mad Dog and Billy the Butcher getting into a shootout with some Nazis in a bar.
- All Germans Are Nazis: Averted, Mad Dog explicitly states that he only wants to kill Nazis, not Germans.
- Antagonist Title: The heroes must save the free world from the titular werewolves of the Third Reich.
- Artistic License – History: Josef Mengele and Ilse Koch were never married in real life. They probably never even met.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Ilse Koch becomes a werewolf near the end of the film.
- Big Bad: Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi Mad Scientist making Nazi werewolves.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Ilse Koch mentions that she loves her nickname "the Bitch of Buchenwald."
- Conscription: Private Kane deserted because he got drafted, and he's fundamentally opposed to war.
- Death by Adaptation: Ilse Koch is gunned down near the end of the film. In Real Life, she survived the war, only to be tried for her crimes and spend the last two decades of her life in prison.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The US military is shown to be super racist, given that the film is set in 1944. In fact, Reggie got arrested for beating up a staff sergeant who tried to make him give up his seat for a captured Nazi officer.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Mengele manages to escape to South America for 30 years like in Real Life, but Mad Dog hunts him down and murders him instead of the drowning that actually got him.
- Greater-Scope Villain: While Mengele operates the camp with autonomy, Adolf Hitler is funding it and gets regular updates.
- Historical Domain Character: Josef Mengele and Ilse Koch are both involved in the werewolf experiment. Adolf Hitler gets a cameo when Mengele updates him on the experiment's progress.
- Historical Villain Downgrade: Ilse Koch is the exact same torture-happy Nazi she was in real life, but is shown to genuinely care about her lover, while the real Koch manipulated everybody she ever met, including her son.
- Mad Artist: Ilse Koch makes art out of prisoners' bones. Mengele does not approve, because it's a waste of test subjects.
- Nazi Hunter: Mad Dog Murphy joined the Army to kill Nazis as opposed to any sense of patriotic duty. He and the rest of the Fearless Four keep up the trade after the war.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Mad Dog openly admits that he has absolutely no interest in helping his country, he just really hates Nazis and joined up to kill them.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: These are genetic chimeras made from human and wolf DNA. They're intended to be berserk super soldiers, but the experiments haven't gotten that far by the time of the film.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Mad Dog sees killing Nazis as a sort of retribution for their atrocities. You can't really blame him for that.
- Shout-Out:
- Twice in the movie, Mad Dog paraphrases Aldo Raine's Nazi killing speech from Inglourious Basterds.
- Private Kane's sergeant paraphrases the steers and queers speech from Full Metal Jacket while lecturing him for deserting.
- The Sociopath:
- Dr. Josef Mengele, who giddily experiments on humans and wolves to make werewolves for the Nazis to take over and only disapproves of other tortures because they're a waste of test subjects. He emotionally neglects his wife, only to order her adulterous lover become his first werewolf in a possessive rage. Despite all this, he abandons her to be blown to Hell with the base when it's made clear he'll lose.
- Officer Hess, a brutish thug who abuses the prisoners for his own amusement, and is introduced making a guy shoot himself under threat of killing his family, only to eliminate them the second his victim dies. He's a more low-functioning example, showing utter ignorance of all social mores down to the expectation of privacy when changing clothes.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Nazi werewolves, made by Mengele himself.
- Suicidal Sadistic Choice: Officer Hess is introduced by forcing a scientist who went turncoat to kill himself by dangling his family's lives over his head. He kills said family anyways.
- Super-Soldier: The werewolves are supposed to be the Nazis' last hope for winning the war.
- Unholy Matrimony: Josef Mengele and Ilse Koch are married, and involved in sadistic Nazi experiments. Their relationship is incredibly strained due to Mengele's focus on his work keeping him away from Koch, who is having an affair with one of the camp's SS officers.
- The X of Y: Werewolves of the Third Reich
