Camp érotique

I recently watched Love Camp (1977) on a free trial of the Full Moon app on Prime. The storyline revolves around a country in the midst of a revolution, where the government decides that the best way to support the troops is by setting up a concubine camp filled with prostitutes. The women are forcibly recruited from local villages, and those who resist are brutally decapitated. The plot follows the captives as they attempt to escape their grim fate or resign themselves to a life of forced prostitution until the war ends.

Directed by Jesús Franco (Revenge of the Alligator Ladies), Love Camp stars Nanda van Bergen (Wicked Women), Ada Tayler (Voodoo Passion), Monica Swinn (Barbed Wire Dolls), and Roman Huber.

This film is typical of the exploitation genre, packed with as much nudity as possible. The women are undeniably beautiful, and the film features classic tropes like shower scenes, torture sequences, and awkward sex scenes. The topless security guards were amusing but also added to the film's over-the-top nature. While the concept is straightforward and doesn't break any new ground in the exploitation genre, I appreciated the movie for what it was.

In conclusion, Love Camp is a classic prison camp drama filled with beautiful women and copious nudity. I'd rate it a 5.5/10 and recommend it only to those who know what they're getting into.

Jess Franco has made some odd exploitation movies in his long and prolific career, and 'Love Camp' is one of his nuttiest. Never one to shy from jumping on a bandwagon, the title of this seems to deliberately evoke the legendary nazisploitation sleazefest 'Love Camp 7', and the plot in some ways is reminiscent of 'Salo', but with a twist. The twist being, that we aren't talking nazis here but revolutionaries. A group of young and beautiful women are kidnapped, taken into the jungle (what country? who knows) , and forced to be sex slaves for "the revolution". The female warden (who I assume is Nanda Van Bergen) is a sadistic lesbian and generally acts throughout like a poor man's Ilsa, another series of movies this tries to pattern itself on. 'Love Camp' isn't as explicitly violent as most of the aforementioned movies, and Franco seems more interested in showing lots of flesh rather than torture and gore. The girls spend most of their on screen time naked, and there are a few shower scenes and the like, so Franco sleaze buffs will not be disappointed on that score. However this is by no means near his best work, and you feel his heart wasn't really in it. Watchable but ultimately unsatisfying, I can only recommend it to complete Francophiles. Others less familiar with his work best steer clear of this one. He can do so much better than this mediocre effort!

Somewhere in South America women are kidnapped and marched to a concentration camp to serve as sex slaves to Marxist revolutionaries. To keep them in line the leader of the guerrilla forces by the name of "Chino de Guera" (Wal Davis) appoints a subordinate by the name of "Isla" (Nanda Van Bergen) to be the camp warden. Unfortunately for the female prisoners she is much more sadistic than Chino realizes and soon women are being tortured or killed to suit her pleasure. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this turned out to a rather pathetic entry into the women-in-prison (WIP) genre. Although it featured plenty of nudity there was very little eroticism and only a couple of the women, most notably Monika Kalin (as "Tona") and the aforementioned Nanda Van Bergen, were all that attractive. Likewise, having been originally filmed in German the movie was then dubbed into English which left much to be desired. Additionally, the acting was also quite bad as well. In short, this was a pretty bad movie experience and I have rated it accordingly.

In an unspecified South American hellhole, various women from different walks in life are aggressively kidnapped to serve as sex slaves for the male members of a guerrilla army. A new bride named Angela (Ada Tauler) becomes the focal point as she finds herself drawn to a dude named Chino (Wal Davis). The "commander" who watches over the gals is Isla (Nanda Van Bergen), and she decapitates prisoners who don't get with the program.

Obviously drawing some inspiration from the "Ilsa" series - right down to the name of the Van Bergen character - this variation on the "women in prison" picture from celebrated Eurotrash director Jess Franco is okay, but you sense that he's mostly going through the motions. Fans of his 70s sleaze will still be fairly satisfied, considering the amount of nudity (female *and* male), loving close-ups of crotches, and sex (lesbian and straight) on display. There is also a dose of torture, but these scenes are not very graphic, and again, you feel as if most of the participants involved don't really have their heart in this.

The dubbing is poor, the on-screen performances adequate (Van Bergen does seem to be enjoying herself), and the English dialogue is sometimes pretty funny.

Die hard Francophiles may find some value in this, although ultimately it's rather mild stuff in terms of all-out nastiness.

Six out of 10.

Love Camp (1977)

*** (out of 4)

No one does the WIP genre better than Jess Franco and once again he delivers the sleaze and nudity. A group of women are kidnapped and taken to a remote jungle where they are forced to sleep with soldiers who are fighting the "revolution". No only must they put themselves out they also have to deal with a sadistic lesbian warden (Nanda Van Bergen). When you go to watch these Euro WIP films it's best not to expect an Ingmar Bergman type drama. What you can expect is a lot of naked women, wacky dialogue and stupid torture scenes and that's exactly what Franco delivers here. All of the women are watchable and the film's 74-minute running time flies by. The torture sequences here are quite tame and laughable compared to other Franco WIP films.