I’m sure that when you think of porn, your mind immediately goes to an epic war movie, a struggle to survive on a deserted island in the South Pacific and a very small crew of off-the-grid horny Nazis.

No? Well, too bad, because that’s what Prisoner of Paradise is all about.

The direction is co-credited to Bob Chinn and Gail Palmer, although by now many have mentioned that Palmer wasn’t really directing the films she got credit for, and was basically a front for her boyfriend.

The star of the movie is John Holmes, in one his many fruitful collaborations with Chinn. Holmes plays an American soldier during World War II, whose ship sinks and he gets stranded on a deserted island. There are a couple of odd montages of Holmes bathing/surviving/exploring the island, with accompanying music that makes you realize just how big a star Holmes was in 1980. Not many men would get their own solo scenes back then; not even during the most cinematic examples of the golden age of porn. We also see some flashbacks of Holmes’ ex-girlfriend, a very nondescript Asian girl (seriously, there are Chinese, Japanese and Korean references around her) who died during an attack.

One day while exploring the island, he notices two German blondes (one of them the also legendary Seka) bathing by the river, and follows them back to their camp. As it turns out, the girls are Nazi soldiers who for some mysterious stupid reason are stationed on an island in the middle of nowhere, with just one crazy guy in charge and a small Japanese girl as their only guard. They have two American nurses as war prisoners, who are there primarily for entertainment.

The Nazi girls hold the American ones and go down on them forcefully, while making them say they love the Führer — a method of torture rarely heard of. “The Führer is giving you pleasure,” the Nazi girl says. “You love it; the Führer loves you.”

The Nazis speak English among themselves. Subtitling this would have been hard to sell, I guess. But that also makes our hero understand everything they say at all times, which works in his favor during his mission to save the girls. I gotta say, it seems awfully convenient that out of all the war camps in the middle of the Pacific, John Holmes ended up in this one, but let’s all play along, because fuck it.

Stock footage is used during the battle scenes, and — while it’s fairly obvious — it really helps the movie look more expensive than it is. The direction and cinematography are strong and valiant efforts, because it’s an ambitious project for an adult movie; and sure, the story seems far-fetched, but the image is not all that bad, especially for their budget.

The library music is nice and would suit the style of the film in 1980, but the fact that this was supposed to be during WWII feels a little weird.

Because I’m really into historical accuracy — and yes, I do realize this is porn — some things feel extremely wrong and out of place, but you need to put that behind you in order to enjoy it. It’s not an amazing movie by any means, but one that utilized its resources very well.