SS Experiment Love Camp

SS Experiment Love Camp is a film that makes Love Camp 7 look downright lovable. And I don't mean that in a 'This isn't a film for wimps, while Love Camp 7 is' kind of way. I mean that relatively speaking, Love Camp 7 has a lot going for it and may engage or entertain you in its special fashion, but that SS Experiment Love Camp most certainly does not, and won't.

'Sex experiments in pursuit of a better tomorrow!' screams the tagline. Being carried out by various fools in a Nazi-run slave brothel during WWII, these experiments consist in the first place of observing how German soldiers couple with female prisoners in transparent waist- high water tanks, or on white-sheeted beds. Cue softcore sex scenes. The second kind of experiment involves no sex but lots of particularly idiotic violence. I'll admit that the cruelty of some of these scenes is affecting, but it's hard to get away from the pervading feeling of stupidity. For instance, can you really learn anything by sticking a tube in a woman's ear and then blasting her eardrum with several atmospheres of pressure? The folks playing the unflappable camp staff act as if they really think they can. Truly, it's not just for the purposes of sadism. 'What, she's dead? Get another one in, we'll try the experiment again.' They're also obsessed with perfecting the 'uterus transplant' procedure, a yucky effect you get to see at least three times. Unsurprisingly, these operations, which were clearly going nowhere, come to nothing. The film is for the most part a momentumless series of such softcore sex and shabbily portrayed torture scenes, further undercut by the silliest-looking dubbing I've seen in a film of this genre and the least convincing casting of a period film ever. The German troops look and act - and above all, sound - like American GIs.

Even for folks who want to watch them - like myself - these Nazi sexploitation films are acknowledged as being pretty hard to surpass in terms of bad taste, so when one is executed as dumbly as SS Experiment Love Camp, it sort of topples over into a zone where it could easily be viewed as a complete insult to humanity. You've got a film about Nazi experiments, but they're quite ridiculous. The film's hopeless in its period detail and everyone has a broad American accent. Jewishness isn't mentioned at all (not totally exceptional for this genre, but in this film, again, it somehow looks worse). There's almost no development, no suspense and no engagement value of any kind, except during the last twenty minutes, when they throw in the testicular transplant plot development which I haven't previously mentioned. The ball action and some unintended laughs are about the only things which stick out of this quite dull, dumb and thoroughly poor entry in the genre.

Sergio Garrone's grindhouse Nazi sex flick, shot back to back with the similarly dire SS WOMENS CAMP, is one of the most often cited "video nasties". In actuality it is totally ridiculous on every level, even relative to other genre entries. Owing more to SALON KITTY than ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS yet made with zero flair and a poor grasp of English, this movie would have been forgotten forever had it not been singled out for prosecution at the hands of the DPP. The "experiments" are simply ridiculous and are no more than an intangible excuse for embarrassed soft-core writhing between very Latin looking "SS soldiers" and the well-fed inmates (who throughout the film are treated more as if they are in a holiday camp rather than Auschwitz!).

As with all similar films, the only offensive thing about this movie is its total trivialisation of the Holocaust. It is pretty interesting to watch, however... if only to see just how far exploitation can sink.

Sergio Garrone's "SS Experiment Camp" is a total failure on every possible level.This film was banned in Britain as a video nasty,but it surely isn't as outrageous as many people claim.In fact it's pretty tame even by today's standards.There is some torture and humiliation and lots of nudity and soft-core sex.Some scenes are pretty mean-spirited for example one woman who refuses to go through the experiments is put into the tank.The temperature is first put up to almost boiling point and then the dial is turned the other way making it icy cold.Still the film is extremely dull,so fans of Italian exploitation may be disappointed.Avoid this one like the plague-watch "Beast in Heat" or "Gestapo's Last Orgy" instead!

SS Experiment Camp was one of the films to kick-start the video nasty furor in the UK. As a result, for the past 25 years or so, it has been considered a notorious film. However, like The Driller Killer, it primarily attained it's infamous status due to the crude cover art used on it's video box. Those people who actually watched the film discovered that it was nowhere near as shocking as it's reputation suggested. Furthermore, it is actually unintentionally hilarious on a number of occasions. SS Experiment Camp is a bit of an enigma.

The story involves a group of women who are delivered to the aforementioned SS Experiment Camp. While there they are subjected to some inexplicable experiments, which often seem to involve forced copulation with a group of Nazi studs (who it has to be said all look strangely Italian). The purpose of the experiments is to find the best stud from this Aryan select and transfer his balls onto the camp commandant who, as we discover, lost his when a Russian woman he was raping bit his off.

Now, the above synopsis may well make the film sound deeply depraved and offensive. Well, it is sleazy and in highly dubious taste but the execution of the film is so amateurish and unrealistic that it really sounds a lot worse than it actually is. The depiction of the camp is more Butlins than Belsen at times. The inmates seem relatively unconcerned for the most part and the Nazi baddies are often hilariously unconvincing. That said, there are some nasty moments, particularly the treatment meted out to the young girl at the orgy; she ends up hanging naked upside down in a shot that recalls the aforementioned distasteful cover shot. But, generally speaking, sequences that achieve such offense are uncommon here. The scenes showing the experiments, while certainly tasteless, are often more strange than anything else. The copulation in a tank of water idea being an example where it is too bizarre to take altogether seriously.

The film does, however, have two uproariously funny sequences. In neither case is the humour intentional...

Funny scene #1: In the first scene we have one of the Nazi studs returning to the dorm and saying how much he is looking forward to banging some hot women in the next experiment. The good Nazi, Helmut, takes offense at this and says, "I think every time you open your mouth you talk sh*t", to which the bad Nazi replies, after a long pregnant pause, "Hey, I don't like that last remark you made....about sh*t". Cue a silly fight.

Funny scene #2: The second hilarious scene begins when Helmut discovers, just as he is about to have sex, that he has no balls. He then runs naked through the camp in search of the commandant. Once he finally confronts him, he delivers the truly immortal line, "OK you bastard...what have you done to my balls?".

Both of the above scenes make the film worth enduring in a comedy sense.

It's very sleazy. There's acres of full-frontal naked female flesh. It's occasionally gratuitously violent. But above all, the notorious SS Experiment Camp is, in the final analysis, a rather silly film.

Maybe one of the saddest things a human being can do is to watch a movie like "SS Experiment Love Camp" and criticize it. It's like what did you expect? I understand it when people analyze and discuss compelling works of film like "Apocalypse, Now", but the fact that you with your own will sit through a nazisploitation piece of litter such as this, and have the balls to talk crap on top of it? Oh man, that's ridiculous. And the fact that I'm making an effort to write about this 1976 video nasty, proves that I'm one of these freaks.

As one might suspect, the title gives away everything you possibly need to know. It's exactly what it says. Some people might confuse this to an actual porn feature in whatever weird store that holds this thing in their shelves, but it's a lot lower than that. There are many many naked chicks and almost every scene introduces a pair of genuine POW tits, but the sex/orgy scenes deliver nothing more than the usual sleazy scrubbing that goes on just so they can reach a full feature length.

There's basically four sections to this film: soft-core eroticism, surgical scenes to show some gory guts, female torture scenes, and pointless dialogue about the cunning plans of the Nazis. It's like these ingredients were put in a blender to produce an extra sloppy script. And yes, there is a romance between one of the Nazis and a prisoner. Who would have thought?

Many people find "SS Experiment Love Camp" boring, and that's because it is boring. Even the most deviant scenes aren't much anything to behold. Everything relies merely on naked breasts and screaming. Fans of gore will be disappointed and bored to death, while woman haters get what they want. God forbid if a feminist ever gets near this thing. That's also the beauty of exploitation cinema; most of the stuff that was produced in the 70s alone would never get into a theater these days.

This movie is bad. Watch it if you're a weird exploitation buff like me who just can't keep away from this crap. Also mandatory for video nasty perfectionists, all sorts of psychos, and SSadists. If some mistake this to a cheesy "so-bad-it's-good" flick, they have made a mistake that will probably just leave a bad taste in their mouths.