The Raspberry Reich

THE RASPBERRY REICH (2004)
Director: Bruce LaBruce
Starring: Susanne Sachsse, Daniel Batscher, Andreas Rupprecht, Dean Stathis, Anton Z. Risan

THE RASPBERRY REICH is a film that’s not for everyone. Like anything directed by Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce (OTTO; OR UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE), it’s an acquired taste and the epitome of porn with plot.

If you’re looking for a sweet gay movie where you can gush over cute boys falling in love, steer clear. But if you’re in the mood for something rougher and with a good dollop of anarchy, check this one out.

History buffs will be familiar with the Red Army Faction – a radical left-wing terrorist group founded in the 1960s in West Germany, a group responsible for multiple kidnappings, assassinations and bombings – which was the basis for the 2008 film THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX starring Moritz Bleibtreu.

THE RASPBERRY REICH basically takes that same idea and gives it a very gay and very pornotastic spin with tongue firmly in cheek.

Susanne Sachsse stars as Gudrun, the leader of the otherwise all-male gang. Gudrun is a fag hag and dominatrix who believes heterosexuality to be a social construct and a tool of the oppressor. When she’s not barking out orders and communist slogans in mad Hitler style, she’s forcing her men to go gay for the cause.

Not that the guys seem to need much encouragement.

In fact, practically every time Gudrun so much as turns her back on the gang for a moment, they’re immediately going at it like rabbits and often while wearing nothing but their ski masks. Hot!

There is a lot of sex in this film. And it’s of the porn variety. In other words, expect insert shots.

For example, Gudrun has sex with her boyfriend Holger (Daniel Batscher), a marathon of grunting and humping that takes them out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, into the hallway and into an elevator shared by an old woman and her husband with Gudrun and Holger never missing a desperate thrust.

That’s the extent of the heterosexual sex in the film.

Meanwhile, Andreas (Dean Stathis a.k.a. Chaos Men porn model Dean Monroe), is next door dressed in a Che Guevera t-shirt and socks as he stands in front of a full-length mirror, admiring himself as he slowly and seductively runs the barrel of a shotgun back and forth between his bare ass cheeks.

Later he sits on his bed, legs spread wide, and performs fellatio on a smaller gun before getting so worked up over the scenario that he takes matters into his own hands and sprays his seed into the air.

Yep. Cum shots.

Much of the film’s plot revolves around the gang kidnapping Patrick (Andreas Rupprecht), the adult son of a wealthy capitalist. Little does Gudrun know that Clyde (Anton Z. Risan), one of the men in her gang, is the boyfriend of their victim and, when Clyde accidentally handcuffs himself to Patrick, the two end up in the trunk of the getaway car together where they proceed to have sex.

While, in real life, kidnapping victim Patricia Hearst was forced by the Symbionese Liberation Army to rob banks, Patrick is forced to star in a gang bang of a porn movie to be sent to his father as blackmail.

This reminded me of the John Waters film CECIL B. DEMENTED in which Stephen Dorff and his crew kidnap movie star Melanie Griffith and force her to appear in their latest underground film, and any of Gregg Araki’s early films such as THE DOOM GENERATION in that walls were often splashed with Che Guevera or other iconic imagery that played up/against the scenes on hand.

If you’re a fan of Bruce LaBruce like I am, you’ll get a kick out of this movie. If you’re a stranger to his work, this is probably your best bet as an introduction as it’s the most accessible of his films.