Nazis at the Center of the Earth


Nazis at the Center of the Earth is a direct-to-video Naziploitation sci-fi film produced by The Asylum that stars Dominique Swain and Jake Busey. It was released on April 24, 2012 on Blu-ray Disc and DVD. The United Kingdom release was called Bloodstorm. The Lexikon des internationalen Films considers the film a rip-off aimed at exploiting the "hype" surrounding the film Iron Sky.

Plot

On May 10, 1945, in a secret airport near Wurtzberg, Germany, Nazi scientist Dr. Josef Mengele, along with fellow doctors and soldiers, prepare to depart to an unknown location with a mysterious package in their possession. They are soon ambushed by the Allied forces, but successfully escape.
In present day, a group of researchers in Antarctica, Dr. Paige Morgan among them, are abducted by a platoon of gas-masked soldiers wearing swastika armbands and dragged into a hidden environment in the center of the Earth. There, they discover that Dr. Josef Mengele and a group of surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of the surface of the Earth to create a Fourth Reich.

Cast

Lawson received the directorial assignment after reading the script and pitching himself as director in the fall of 2011. The film took less than four months to make. On Asylum, Lawson said "They are a low-budget film studio, I knew pretty much going in that this was going to be a B movie. We had a 12-day shoot and a budget well south of $200,000."
The entire movie was storyboarded by the director shot for shot before production began in November 2011.
Locations for the film included Willow Studios in Los Angeles, Blue Cloud Ranch in Santa Clarita, and the Asylum Studios.
The film features one of the highest visual effects shot counts in an Asylum film, 379, and the effects were completed in just four weeks.
In his commentary, director Joseph J. Lawson cites as his visual influences Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, John Carpenter, John Landis, David Lean, J. J. Abrams and Robert Rodriguez.

Reception

Critical and audience reaction to the film has been mixed with everything from "absolute garbage" to "the Citizen Kane of Asylum films".