There was a time in the early ’80s when porn wasn’t afraid to get political. Or at least wrap itself in a Nazi flag and throw a few explosions in for effect. Case in point: Bob Chinn’s glorious, depraved Prisoner of Paradise, a tropical Nazisploitation epic with enough sand, sex, and swastikas to offend an entire generation of history teachers. Naturally, we love it.

Shot like a half-remembered WWII fever dream on a budget that probably could’ve funded a small coup in Panama, Prisoner of Paradise drops John Holmes—that swinging scepter of sleaze—into the role of a stranded American G.I. who washes up on the wrong goddamn island. This ain’t Gilligan’s Island, baby. This is a remote Nazi outpost where jackboots stomp coconuts and discipline is administered in full fetish gear.

Holmes, whose acting style ranges from “stoned” to “stoned but trying,” plays Private Mathews, a man determined to rescue the one glimmer of decency in this tropical hell: a captured American nurse played by a fresh-faced, still-blonde Seka in one of her first major roles. She’s all wide eyes and trembling lips and perfectly plucked 1940s bush. The type of girl you’d take home to mother—if your mother wasn’t already chained in a basement by Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

Enter the real star of the show: Jade Wong, as a sadistic yet sensual Japanese-Nazi commandant, dripping with menace and sweat. Picture Anna May Wong crossed with Ilsa, fed through a stack of skin mags, and armed with a riding crop. She steals every scene she struts through, whether she’s barking orders in broken English or breaking down a recruit’s will with a handjob and a glare.

What makes Prisoner of Paradise so goddamn memorable isn’t just the novelty of watching Holmes storm a Nazi compound with his cock—it’s that Bob Chinn actually gives a shit. The film has structure, pace, even tension. There’s a real “mission” here, even if it’s to get blown and blow shit up in equal measure. It’s not Casablanca, but it sure ain’t Loop 28: Suck-a-thon either.

And like all great dirty films of the golden age, it leaves you asking important historical questions, such as:

• Were all Nazi uniforms custom-tailored to show off cleavage?
• Could World War II have ended sooner if John Holmes had been deployed?
• Why aren’t more sex scenes scored to jungle drums and machine gun fire?

Prisoner of Paradise is that rare breed of X-rated cinema that aims high and still hits all the right low notes. It’s offensive, exotic, stupidly entertaining, and completely unrepeatable in today’s pornscape of blank walls and bad lighting. It’s also, in retrospect, one of Bob Chinn’s crowning achievements—a reminder that porn didn’t always look like it was filmed in a Pasadena Airbnb with someone’s stepsister.

Go watch it. Raise your flag. Just don’t salute too hard—you’ll poke an eye out.

SCREW gave Prisoner of Paradise a rock-hard 4.5 out of 5 on the PeterMeter — then and now — points deducted only because we had to pause halfway through to salute the flag and jerk off.

Watch it here.

—P.

Phil Italiano

Publisher, Visionary, Provocateur

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