Arguably the most evil man in human history is very attractive fodder for fiction. It’s hard for the brain to even wrap itself around the idea of Adolf Hitler, the architect of the Holocaust and very near conqueror of the world. Movies have been grappling with portrayals of the Fuhrer nearly since he stepped into power, with Taika Waititi’s new Jojo Rabbit – where a young German boy has him as a bumbling imaginary friend – the latest. As that movie hits wide release, we wanted to dive through cinema history to present the best and weirdest renditions of Hitler through the ages.
Downfall
The movie that launched a thousand memes, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall stars Bruno Ganz as the Nazi dictator, portrayed during the tail end of the war as he hides out in his Berlin bunker as the allies shell the city. Hitler’s final days were marked by amphetamine-fueled derangement, and Ganz perfectly captures a man willing to sacrifice everything, even the lives of every German citizen. It’s a stellar performance that was criticized by some because it made Hitler seem entirely too human. Gamz did research for four months to prepare for it, obsessively poring over contemporaneous newsreels and other films to capture the man’s mannerisms.
Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino’s gleefully lowbrow World War II film has a lot of different plot threads to follow, but they all converge in one place: the death of Adolf Hitler, as both the titular Basterds and an orphaned Jewish girl go to the ends of the Earth to put a stop to his insanity. It all happens at a premiere for a Nazi propaganda film called Stolz der Nation, attended by many of the Third Reich’s top brass. As the theater is barricaded and set on fire, two members of the Basterds storm Hitler’s box and murder him, then spray the crowd with machine gun fire just to finish the job.
Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn
Japanese media has a very complex relationship with Hitler, as their role in the Axis during World War II presents a great deal of social shame. Nevertheless, he does pop up from time to time, most notably in 1995’s Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn. When the barrier between life and death is breached, Hitler (referred to here as “The Dictator”) leads an army of zombie Nazis against our heroes. Gotenks takes care of him pretty easily with the Super Ghost Kamikaze attack. Even though the swastikas on his hat and uniform were replaced with Xs, the scenes with Hitler in them were excised from the film in the German, French and Hebrew dubs of the movie.
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
Stories of bizarre Nazi super-science proliferated after World War II, and inspired some pretty kooky concepts. 1968 cheapie They Saved Hitler’s Brain was actually cobbled together from bits of an earlier movie, The Madman Of Mandoras, as well as a half hour of footage shot by UCLA students. After the end of the war, a team of researchers managed to keep Hitler’s severed head alive in a tube and relocated the Fuhrer to South America. He doesn’t show up for a while, but the movie’s climax is an all-timer as a stray Molotov cocktail melts the dictator to goo.
Max
Tales of young Hitler are few and far between, but 2002 drama Max uses the dictator’s failed painting career as a lens to establish how he developed his twisted views of the world. John Cusack stars as art dealer Max Rothman, who is approached by Adolf after the end of the First World War. Modernism has made Hitler’s style obsolete, but Max quickly realizes that his new friend has a flair for the dramatic and some seriously anti-Semitic views. The film ends with Rothman being savagely beaten by a gang of youth inspired by Hitler’s speeches, scuppering his nascent art career.
Look Who’s Back
David Wnendt’s oddball 2014 satire transports Adolf Hitler to the modern era, as he unexpectedly awakens in a Berlin park where his suicide bunker once was and has to adapt to the 21st century. When a documentary filmmaker hooks up with him, the duo travel the country as the former Fuhrer tries to rebuild his political base with less than enthusiastic citizens. Hitler then becomes a viral video hit, gets his own television show, publishes a memoir, and then plays himself in the movie version of his life. It’s a dark, weird spoof that uses the villain to get at some uncomfortable truths deep in the hearts of each of us.
Moloch
Alexander Sokurov’s unusual 1999 film depicts a different side of Hitler than we’d seen previously. As played by Leonid Mozgovoy, Hitler travels to his Berghof Retreat in the Bavarian Alps to spend time with paramour Eva Braun. Instead of humanizing him, the film indulges in an oddly toned satire, with Braun’s humanity contrasting with Hitler’s distracted ravings. The title comes from the theory that some has floated that the biblical demon of the same name had possessed the German dictator, but there are no supernatural elements on display here, just a portrait of a man being torn apart by his own horrific actions.
Flesh Feast
The last film of legendary screen siren Veronica Lake has one of the all-time weirdest Hitler appearances ever. Lake plays Dr. Elaine Frederick, a plastic surgeon who is working on a project to breed maggots that prefer living human flesh over necrotic tissue. This whole mess is being bankrolled by a mysterious client named Max Bauer, who wants to use the larvae to eat away his aged flesh so he can have plastic surgery and take on a new identity. Bauer is, of course, Adolf Hitler, and Dr. Frederick is only helping him so she can, at the film’s absolutely insane climax, throw the ravenous maggots in his face as revenge for her mother’s death in a concentration camp. It’s a totally nutty slice of sleaze that has to be seen to be believed.
The Empty Mirror
Quite a few of these films take inspiration from Hitler’s final days in his Berlin bunker, knowing that the war is lost but furiously holding out hope that the Nazis could still prevail. This odd movie stars Norman Rodway as the dictator, trapped in an unidentified underground location as Hitler tries to come to terms with his past. Blending archival footage with modern material, it’s a deeply interesting psychological portrait of a mind that nearly tore the world apart, as hallucinations of Sigmund Freud try to delve into Hitler’s mind and figure out what makes him tick.
Kung Fury
For a little less serious take on the man, 2015’s brilliantly weird Kung Fury reimagines Adolf Hitler as a time-traveling martial arts master known as the Kung Fuhrer, who meddles with the timeline in order to conquer the world from the past. Detective Kung Fury, empowered to superhuman ass-kicking skills by being struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra at the same time, must travel to the past to whip Hitler’s butt before he causes any more chaos. As played by the Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone, Hitler is a vicious combatant with tons of secret weapons and robots to do his bidding.
Valkyrie
Bryan Singer’s 2008 thriller is based upon the real Operation Valkyrie, an emergency plan to retake the government after Hitler’s assassination. In the flick, a coalition of Germans beginning to doubt their country’s future hatch a scheme to murder both Hitler, played by David Bamber, as well as SS head Heinrich Himmler. Unfortunately for everybody concerned, their attempt to detonate a bomb at the Wolf’s Lair doesn’t kill the dictator, and the resistance members are quickly identified and hunted down. It’s a fascinating true story that reminds you that not all Germans were on board with Hitler’s demented plans.
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