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| Images courtesy of 88 Films |
At the risk of sounding racist, leave it to the Italians for
having created two of the most reprehensible subgenres of exploitation cinema of
the 1970s which started with Nazisploitation and ended with the Cannibal
film. Usually chock full of sexual
violence committed against innocent looking female cast members to be disrobed
and defiled for our shock and titillation, both Nazisploitation and the
Cannibal film represented something of an artistic nadir and moral septic field
largely aimed at a viewership seeking a cheap thrill. While some of it indeed mixed art with transgression
ala Luchino Visconti’s The Damned or Pier Paolo Pasolni’s Salo, or
the 120 Days of Sodom, for the most part the aim of these Nazisploitation
films was to fetishize and eroticize Nazi iconography with male rape fantasies entwined
within the fabric of the film. Moreover,
many of the scenarios aired under the veil of historical authenticity or truth
were just making things up for the filmmakers and the spectators to get off on
the proceedings.
As vile as this all sounds, you need to know just what exact
kind of evil Grindhouse cinema you’re being dealt. If it were up to me I’d prefer not to give
attention to this, but alas my job as a reviewer is to take on whatever’s
thrown at me so here we go with 88 Films’ deluxe limited collector’s edition of
Django the Bastard director Sergio Garrone’s SS Experiment Love Camp from
1976. Ordinarily a purveyor of the
spaghetti western film before moving into horror with Klaus Kinski in 1974’s The
Hand That Feeds the Dead, Garrone did two Nazisploitation films back-to-back
starting with this one and followed by SS Lager 5 a year later. Made on the heels of such Nazisploitation
shockers as Salon Kitty and the infamous Love Camp 7, SS Experiment
Love Camp is like it sounds: a mixture of Nazism, torture, soft pornography
and some occasionally absurdist camp including an orgy with the defiling of a
virgin girl set to oddly cheerful music by Vasili Kojucharov and Roberto Pregadio. While not as gruesome or tawdry as its poster
and reputation led viewers to believe, it was nevertheless banned in many
territories and to this day stirs controversy anywhere it has appeared.
Vulgar, decadent and plainly eroticizing sexual assault
committed by both genders against women who lay around in their prison garments
often flaunting their nudity underneath, SS Experiment Love Camp doesn’t
have much of a plot beyond a Grindhousey subplot involving a “good” SS officer
who falls in love with one of the victims and they plot an ambush and escape
together. Mostly the film wallows in
surgical experiments on naked women, drug and booze filled orgies, sex in a hot
tub with voyeuristic guards looking on and at one point a testicular transplant
to amplify an SS guard’s libido. While
not quite as outlandish or as strangely compulsively watchable as something
like, say, Mad Foxes, it still for good or for ill (largely the latter)
intends to eroticize Nazism and torture as a tawdry form of softcore porn
horror and an excuse to get a bunch of women naked before the camera. Tinto Brass may have started the
Nazisploitation subgenre before carrying on with gazing at the female behind
endlessly, but where Brass’ work was strangely life-affirming and feminist
things like SS Experiment Love Camp feel like a purely male driven
sexual fantasy mixed with the sleaziest form of historical exploitation.
Curiously, the film was at the forefront of the Video Nasty censorial
movement in the United Kingdom but for all of its wretchedness it mostly is
just a skin flick with some occasional tortures and murders. Whatever you think of these movies, it goes
without saying 88 Films have given this slice of radioactive Nazisploitation
the 4K UHD limited edition treatment replete with a slipcase and reversible
sleeve art. It also comes housed with a
booklet of essays which properly contextualize the short-lived Grindhouse
movement. The disc comes with a fair
amount of extras all things considered including director Sergio Garrone, editor
Eugenio Alabiso and the film’s cinematographer.
It also comes with the original Italian language track as well as the
opening and closing credits. Basically
lipstick on a pig, 88 Films’ release might be their grossest, most foul pickup
since their 4K UHD of Hell of the Living Dead. For some this is a beer-and-pizza oddity but
for others like myself it makes me wonder sometimes about my job as a film
critic dealing with things like these.
--Andrew Kotwicki
