SS Camp: Women's Hell (1977)

Nazi experiments to create the ultimate "three-legged race"
contestant didn't go as well as anticipated

Like Bruno Mattei's twin Nazisploitation efforts SS Girls and Women's Camp 119, Sergio Garrone shot this one back-to-back with SS Experiment Love Camp. It recycles the same actors, sets, costumes etc, but unlike Mattei's films it doesn't try as hard to establish a different identity for each film. It's virtually the same fucking movie, save for one difference: this one isn't as squeamish about exploiting it's setting. The first film delicately avoided any topic that might be deemed too holocausty, but this one begins with real holocaust photographs of emaciated corpses being loaded into incinerators, shovelled into mass graves etc. Faaantastic.

Like all of these movies, it starts bunch of semi-attractive young women being herded into a camp and lectured by villainous SS officers, here Colonel Strasser (Giorgio Cerioni) and his female second-in-command (Patrizia Melega). Both of these actors are playing pretty much the same characters as in SS Experiment Love Camp, even down to Melega being an evil lesbian. There's also Magda (Paola Lelia), the madam of a local brothel, who has the authority to take her pick of the girls. She takes a particular interest in Alina (Rita Manna) and I can't really blame her since Alina's easily the most attractive of the bunch. Alina is apparently Jamaican even though she has a broad American accent, but I guess everybody in this film has a broad American accent so it's not a big deal.

Subsequently there's the obligatory shower scene (Magda leers over them creepily as she insists that they must "take perfect care of their bodies") and in preparation for a big party the girls are led into the brothel where they laugh and fight over dresses. All except one girl, who inexplicably stares at a sequined dress in confusion for the entire scene. Once they are all dolled up and led out to the guests, Colonel Strasser becomes infatuated with Alina. I don't know why, since she displays no emotion and peppers him with passive-aggressive insults, but if I've learnt anything from these Nazisploitation flicks it's that these SS guys were into some weird shit. Later, back at Strasser's private quarters, she starts fondling a plastic banana and then does a sexy nude dance with the banana dangling suggestively over her crotch. Like I said, weird shit.

Meanwhile, the girls rejected by the brothel are used as fodder to test an experimental burn ointment. They set fire to the girl's gams, sans anaesthetic of course, and then apply the ointment to the wound. Apparently they've killed over a thousand prisoners this way with no progress, which would suggest that the ointment is pretty useless, but the evil scientist demands more time and more test subjects. There is one scientist, Dr. Abraham (Attilio Dottesio, once again playing virtually the same character), who disagrees with the experiments and only works under the condition that his daughter Judith (Paola Corazzi) is spared from the gas chamber.

When Alina isn't busy boinking Strasser she helps some of the other girls to get employed at the brothel so they can execute a daring escape plan. One of the girls steals a bottle of poison from the infirmary by pretending to be sick and seducing the lesbian officer, who is for some reason treating injured prisoners instead of the doctors. Actually the infirmary is just a storage room with red crosses painted on some cardboard boxes and the her treatment for a head injury is a sensual boob massage, so it's not surprising the camp has had so many fatalities among it's test subjects.

After they get the poison they take it to the brothel and use it to kill the madam and all their clients. They sneak through some surprisingly lax security and try to escape through the crematorium, through the back of the ovens, which for some reason open out into freedom. Unfortunately the camp guards are waiting for them, and they lock them inside the ovens and burn them alive. I don't know why the guards didn't intervene earlier and save the lives of all the officers at the brothel, but I guess the irony of burning the escapees alive in their own escape tunnel was too much to resist.

As further punishment, the same bald sargeant from the first film (Serafino Profumo) and the evil lesbian gather up some random prisoners, strip them naked and try to torture some information out of them. One girl gets her fingernails pulled out with pliers and the old matches-under-the-fingernails trick. One girl has a metal strap tightened around her head until it crushes her skull. One girl is punched in the gut with a pair of spiked knuckle dusters until her flesh is torn to ribbons. Another girl has her tongue torn out with a pair of tongs. Wow, this is a pretty nasty scene actually.

The bald sargeant also develops the hots for Judith (between this and the previous film, I guess he's got a thing for blondes) and eventually rapes her while she's trapped in a jail cell. She gets pregnant, but when she goes to see her father he refuses to abort her rape-baby. Seriously? Now is probably not the time to come over all Pro Life. They've been executing prisoners by the truckload; do you really think they are going to think twice about sending her to the ovens, pregnant or not? In desperation she goes to the evil scientist, who agrees to perform the operation. When her dad walks in on them he flips out, throwing Dr Evil onto some electrical equipment, killing him. Daaang.

While lounging around with Colonel Strasser, Alina learns that the Russians are approaching and that orders have come in from Berlin to eliminate all the evidence (including the prisoners) and abandon the camp. While Strasser is talking to a couple of guards Alina uses the opportunity to steal a pistol from his desk. It's pretty weird because she is standing right in front of them and they don't even notice her until she shoots the guards and Strasser cops a gutful of their return fire. Alina tells Dr Abraham about their plans to exterminate all the prisoners, so they decide to kill a bunch of guards with a makeshift gas chamber, steal their guns, and make a last stand against their oppressors.

What do you say about a film like this? Debating it's quality (bad) seems beside the point, since a quick glance at the title is enough to tell you whether you are interested in seeing it or not. The threadbare production values and terrible acting may save it from being truly horrifying, but the lack of taste involved in a production like this is truly mind-boggling. It's pretty surreal having characters explain how Jewish prisoners are "processed", complete with real holocaust footage, juxtaposed against standard women-in-prison tropes like sexy shower-room catfights. Jesus, now I need a shower. Not recommended for the easily offended, arduously offended, or indeed anyone capable of being offended at all.

SS Experiment Love Camp (1976)

Whipped cream bikini contest!

This film is one of a couple of Nazisploitation films directed by Sergio Garrone. It gained notoriety when it was banned as a video nasty, mainly due to it's lurid cover art, but to be honest they needn't have bothered. It's in poor taste certainly, in fact the opening scene is a couple of naked women being electrocuted until they swear alliegance to the Führer, but it's far too ridiculous to take seriously. In fact coming off the heels of the thoroughly depressing Women's Camp 119, SS Experiment Love Camp is something of a relief.

One of the first things you notice is that none of the characters seems to be taking things very seriously. When the female prisoners first file into the camp they start giggling and joking in the shower room like it's a Porky's prequel. After an examination by the cruel Dr. Renke (Patrizia Melega) and the kindly Dr. Steiner (Attilio Dottesio), they are told they are going to be part of a grand experiment along with very best soldiers of the Third Reich. The great soldiers, meanwhile, sit around in the barracks ribbing eachother and laughing it up like they're in a high school locker room. One moustachioed guy wonders what they're doing at a death camp instead of at the Russian front, and gets a big laugh when he says "I hope it's a secret mission of a sexual nature!" Hahaha... genocide.

Turns out he's right though; the great experiment involves pairing up the soldiers with the female prisoners and doing lots of softcore fucking. To what effect it's unclear; I believe there's some vague reference to fertility research. Sometimes they fuck in a giant fish tank, I guess testing the effects of shrinkage on Teutonic dongs. The bald, oafish sargeant (Serafino Profumo) also uses the tank to punish a girl who is less than enthusiastic about her participation in the experiments. First they boil her alive and then freeze her to death, all within a couple of minutes. That's some pretty impressive temperature control on that tank, especially since it looks like the control box was constructed by a five year old. Those girls who do survive though, don't seem too unhappy with the arrangement. After being supplied with fresh marmalade one girl even says "If they keep treating us like this, they've got my vote!"

While her reaction might be a little too blasé, the girls in this experiment have it pretty lucky compared to some of the others. The uggos are used as test subjects in grisly experiments, such as uterus transplants and the testing of high pressure environments on human eardrums (conlusion: it's bad). The experimental failures are loaded up onto a cart and dumped into the furnaces, where they twitch and spasm behind some horribly unconvincing superimposed flame. Some of the girls are loaned out to a local brothel as entertainment for the troops. One timid girl isn't happy with her new employment, and after the sadistic bald sargeant forces her to dance for everyone's amusement, she waits until he's asleep and then stabs him with a fork. She tries to escape on foot, but she's shot and strung upside down in front of the prisoner's cabins as a warning to the others.

The leader of the camp is the sadistic Colonel Von Kleiben (Giorgio Cerioni), a peroxide blonde with 70s hair and big ol' sideburns, like a Nazi Doc Savage. He also has a terrible secret. You see, Hitler may have only had one ball, but he still had one up on the Colonel, who had both of his bitten off by a would-be rape victim back on the Russian front. Kind of a stupid move really, putting your family jewels in the mouth of an unwilling woman. Von Kleiben discovers that Dr. Steiner is actually Jewish, and uses this information to blackmail the doctor into performing a testicular transplant. But who will be the unlucky donor?

Well, luckily one of the German soldiers, Helmut (Mircha Carven), has fallen in love with one of the prisoners, Mirelle (Paola Corazzi). Even though they've never spoken and their interactions have been limited to exchanging cigarettes and fucking in a room full of clipboard-hugging scientists, theirs is a love that is eternal, destined to be etc. Since Helmut is due back on the Russian front in a few days, Von Kleiben offers to extend his post if he participates in some "experimental surgery". Helmut agrees immediately and in a graphic surgery scene that should have most of the male audience crossing their legs and wincing, Operation Lollybag is completed successfully. Really successfully actually; it seems they are both fully recovered within a day.

Apparently Helmut doesn't even realise his plums are missing until he goes to boink Mirelle that night. He's unable to perform, and one of the most overly dramatic sequences ever committed to film he starts tearing at his hair, clenching his fists and generally acting completely insane. Despite Mirelle's gentle reassurance that "it happens sometimes", he runs naked and screaming into the night. After learning the true nature of the procedure from Dr. Steiner (who commits suicide out of guilt) he heads to the brothel, where Von Klieber is giving his new boys a thorough test run. In the best line in the film, Helmut confronts him and shouts "You bastard! How have you been doing with MY BALLS?" Helmut then goes on a mad rampage, shooting up the joint and attempting to rescue Mirelle and escape the camp. It doesn't go too well.

It's really this whole testicle sub-plot that saves the movie from being a complete bore. All of the elements are there - there is a fair amount of blood, near-constant nudity, and plentiful sex scenes - but it's all treated in such a matter-of-fact manner that it's kind of dull. Maybe the seriousness of the subject matter kept Garrone from making things too lurid and sleazy. I mean, in an interview of the DVD Garrone even says that these movies can help people learn about the holocaust. Really? Ain't nobody picking up SS Experiment Love Camp to get a history lesson, especially one that is riddled with such unconvincing sets, inauthentic costumes and bad dubbing. Besides, it's not like people are going to look at your holocaust porn and say "oh, at least it wasn't TOO sleazy". If you're going to exploit one of the greatest tragedies in human history, you might as go for broke. That's what my mother always said.

Women's Camp 119 (1977)

On laundry day there was only one machine that didn't make
an annoying rattle. Sometimes things got ugly.

Bruno Mattei wasn't above much, certainly not using the sets, actors and costumes from one film to punch out another film on the cheap. He did this many times during his career (e.g. Violence in a Women's Prison versus Women's Prison Massacre, Caligula and Messalina versus Caligula Reincarnated as Nero) but if nothing else he was pretty good at giving each film a different tone and feel. This is particularly evident in his two Nazisploitation films, SS Girls and Women's Camp 119. While they were shot back-to-back with many of the same actors and costumes, the two films couldn't be any more different: SS Girls is bright, colourful and campy; Women's Camp 119 is harsh, grimy and miserable. Not the kind of film to take home to grandma. Or anyone, for that matter. This is the kind of film you watch by yourself in the middle of the night on a flickery old CRT television.

The film begins with a bunch of female prisoners rolling up to Rosenhaus concentration camp. Oberleutnant Otto Ohlendorff (Gabriele Carrara) tells them that "You'll wipe the asses of every one of us until you turn purple with fatigue". What, like 24-hour, round-the-clock asswiping? Maybe you should lay off the Mexican food. He also says that "our dogs are Corporals" and that the prisoners must salute them. Does this mean that lower-ranking enlisted men have to salute the dogs as well? Unfortunately the issue of canine NCOs is never brought up again. After a demonstration where three women are stripped naked and beaten, all the uggos are sent off to the gas chambers. Only hotties allowed in Hitler's Third Reich.

The camp is run by Commander Wieker (Ivano Staccioli), who is using the prisoners to conduct bizarre medical experiments aiming to increase the fertility of the master race. He likes to quote from Mein Kampf and blame his experimental failures on the "impurity" of his test subjects. A real asshole. Like in every one of these films his experiments are "the Fuhrer's top priority", so he enlists the help of one of the prisoners, a former doctor named Maria Black (Lorraine De Salle from Cannibal Ferox). She is forced to assist him in his experiments, though she tries to make it easy for her patients whenever she can.

You know, I don't know about the scientific validity of some of these experiments. For instance, in one experiment a man is frozen solid and then revived by the body heat of a hooker. A Polish priest is used as a test subject because his faith in god would be similar to a Luftwaffe pilot's faith in the Fuhrer. It's all very scientific. They try two Dutch hookers but that doesn't work so they have to bring out their secret weapon, some sort of French super-hooker they found in Versailles. It works, so I guess I don't know as much about science as I thought.

In another experiment they're trying to "cure" a couple of gay guys who just sit in a tastefully decorated room all day, knitting and sighing dramatically. Their treatment involves forcing them to view and eventually have sex with some naked female prostitutes. Apparently naked titties are to gay guys what crucifixes are to vampires because they freak out, covering their eyes and begging and pleading for mercy. The experiment was a failure for the Third Reich but a success at making me laugh.

Mattei treats everything with deadly seriousness, which might be funny if most of the other experiments were as ridiculous as these ones, but they aren't. There's all sorts of nasty vivisections, including a bloody uterus transplant and prisoners used to test the spread of infection in a wound. They aren't filmed with the campy grand guignol of a typical exploitation movie either, which makes them even more uncomfortable. In one scene Wieker's men find some poison bullets, so Wieker immediately loads them into his gun (handling them with his bare hands I might add) and shoots a prisoner in the leg, timing how long it takes her to die as she writhes around in agony. This isn't really a fun time at the movies.

Gabriele Carrara is the shining light of camp in what is generally a very grim and serious film, exhibiting the same crazy overacting here that he did in SS Girls. When Ohlendorff forces a girl to lick his boots Carrera makes sure you know he really, really likes it. The other campy touch is Ohlendorff's "pet", a bald, monobrowed simpleton named Kurt (Giovanni Attanasio). Ohlendorff uses Krazy Kurt to rape unruly prisoners but luckily he's a dedicated breast man, so usually he just roughly rubs and massages their boobs like he's kneading pizza dough. When Kurt's not on duty I guess he's free to roam the facility, because he attacks a girl named Cristina (Sonia Viviani) while she is inexplicably washing her hair in what appears to be a damp sewer. Luckily Cristina is saved by the requisite lesbian warden Marta (Ria De Simone). You can probably guess what Marta demands for repayment.

Most of this movie is just a bunch of unconnected scenes of women being tortured, raped etc, but somewhere about the 70 minute mark Mattei remembers that a movie is supposed to have a plot. Cristina, Maria and a doctor she is working with formulate an escape plan and execute it during an Allied bombing run. Despite a healthy head start the Nazis catch up to them, probably because Maria and the doctor decided to waste time by hiding in a cave and fucking. Soon after Cristina gets caught when she stupidly tries to steal some sausages from a platoon of Nazi soldiers in broad daylight, so the soldiers strip her naked and provide her with all the German sausage that she can handle (rape joke).

So, you'd expect Maria and the doctor to run away, the camp to get bombed out of existence and the movie to end, right? Wrong! Maria and the doctor get captured by Wieker, brought back to the camp and hanged. During the execution the rest of the assembled prisoners start singing in unison, so Wieker orders the prison guards to shoot them, which they do. Then Ohlendorff shoots the guards. Then Marta shoots Ohlendorff. Then Wieker shoots Marta. Wieker escapes the camp but is taken out several months later by a suicide bomber in a weird, abrupt epilogue. This is followed by some title cards telling us about a bunch of Nazi war criminals (who aren't in the movie) that were still roaming free back in '77. Way to bum us out, Mattei.

I got this film in the Grindhouse Experience boxed set, and the transfer is just terrible, obviously ripped from a VHS tape with burned-in Dutch subtitles. That's okay though, this isn't the kind of film that needs a Criterion Edition. If anything the grainy, washed-out picture quality adds to the experience. In all seriousness, I think this is one of Mattei's best attempts at making a "real" film. He takes everything very seriously (even a sexy naked catfight is shot and scored like it's Schindler's List), it's filmed well if criminally underlit, with great location shooting (wouldn't be surprised if it was a real concentration camp), very little stock footage and a moody, fittingly-depressing score by Alessandro Alessandroni. I'm put in a weird position here because I feel like I can't really recommend it to anybody in good conscience, even though I think it's one of Mattei's best. Oh well. One of Mattei's best. Do not watch.

Emanuelle in Prison (1983)

Oh come on, Laura, this film isn't that bad.

Oh Emanuelle, you mischievous minx, what saucy adventures are you getting up to this time? If you've never heard of Emanuelle before (shame on you), here is a brief run-down. In 1974, a French film named Emmanuelle was released, with Dutch beauty Sylvia Kristel as the titular character. The plot isn't worth mentioning but it did feature lots of sex, nudity and a woman inserting cigarettes into her vag, so naturally it became the most popular French film of all time. A bunch of sequels followed with other actors stepping into the role and various ripoffs began to crop up, with different spelling permutations used to distance themselves from the original. The name Emmanelle became synonymous with softcore titillation. If you see an Emanuelle film (or an Emanuelle film or an Emmannuelle film or an Emmmannnuellle film), you are guaranteed to see at least one boob, but usually two or more.

One such ripoff is the Black Emanuelle series, so named because of star Laura Gemser's slightly darker skin, but mostly to avoid copyright infringement. Complicating things are a bunch of unrelated films starring Gemser that changed her name to Emanuelle in the English dub to tie them to the series. Bruno Mattei's Emanuelle in Prison (aka Emanuelle Escapes From Hell aka Women's Prison Massacre aka Blade Violent) is one of those movies.

The movie starts, strangely enough, with Emanuelle and her two cellmates performing a bizarre performance art piece where they soliloquise about how much their lives suck. At first I thought they were going to burst into song like in Chicago, but when one of them starts babbling on and on about how much of a slut she is, I started thinking of that old screen-writing mantra "Show, Don't Tell". What does it take to get a naked shower-room knife fight around here? Luckily one of the prisoners in the audience manages to voice exactly what we were all thinking, and pretty soon our three would-be actors are being splattered with tomatoes and lettuce leaves. The head warden (Lorraine De Selle, from Cannibal Ferox) then takes Emanuelle to task for her inflammatory theater production, claiming it's full of gratuitous sex and violence (I think she must have got a copy of this film's script by mistake). My first thought was "Where did the prisoners get all the vegetables?" but my second thought was "I hope this film isn't going to be about a playwright's struggles against a corrupt system to bring her vision to the stage".

Luckily the whole incident with the play is just a setup for an old-fashioned prison cafeteria confrontation. Top dog Albina (Ursula Flores, and I'm sure you can guess why her character is called "Albina") goads Emanuelle into an arm wrestle by calling her a "haughty hot'n'tot" and threatening to bite another prisoner's nipples off. Emanuelle is winning until one of the screws breaks it up by hysterically shouting "Haven't you had enough violence?!" Not really, lady. The wardens aren't happy about Emanuelle's victory since she has been falsely imprisoned on drug charges by the corrupt DA and he has ordered them to be extra tough on her. Consequently, they set up a continuation to the Albina-vs-Emanuelle grudge match in the shower room, where Emanuelle kicks Albina's ass again and pulls off her bad blonde wig to boot. Despite the fact that Albina is about as adept at fighting as a three-legged guinea pig, the wardens figure third time must be the charm, and set up another fight in the exercise yard. This time they arm Albina with a knife, which Emanuelle subsequently acquires and stabs Albina in the thigh.

To be honest I've never really found girl-fights in films to be all that exciting. It's not like they pick the actors for their fighting skills, so they tend to be clumsy, awkward and entirely unconvincing. There's always the hope that the fight will end up with a wardrobe malfunction (sure enough Bruno manages to sneak in a panty shot here and there, he knows why we're here) but it's a long, hard slog in a film that has no shortage of tits anyway. Thankfully, the continued antagonism between Albina and Emanuelle is just the B-story, it's here that the actual plot kicks in.

Victor Brain, a half-Native-American murderer/rapist who is ironically pretty stupid. Blade Von Bauer, an overacting murderer who uses razor blades to cut up his victims. O'Hara, a violent criminal whose worst offense is his terrible Irish accent. Worst of all is Crazy Boy, a murderer/rapist/thief who murdered half a dozen cops during his last escape and figures to do the same again here. Until their sentencing is finalised, the authorities figure they should house these four worst-of-the-worst in the local women's prison. This may seem like a pretty sketchy idea at first, but from the looks of things the women's prison is severely underutilized, with maybe a half a dozen prisoners on-screen at any one time. They need to get some use out of those empty cells. Despite an attempted hijacking en route that leaves two officers dead, the remaining cop manages to get the four prisoners to their destination all by himself. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Blade Von Bauer has a reputation for hiding razor blades on his body, they didn't think to check in his mouth. Soon the head guard (Franca Stoppi from The Other Hell) has her throat cut, the head warden is held hostage and the cop is lying on the floor with a shoulder full of buckshot.

What follows is an orgy of violence, rape and debauchery that hasn't been seen since Bruno Mattei's last film. Crazy Boy, jonesing for some morphine, wanders in on the still-recovering Albina and starts rummaging around in a rickety glass cabinet full of medical supplies, which you'd really think they'd keep locked up. He makes some smooth remarks and soon they are having one of those softcore sex scenes where two naked people lie motionless on top of one another and pretend they are having sex. Albina must be totally into it because her stab wound doesn't bother her at all. Crazy Boy then knocks her unconscious with chloroform, something about not letting anyone else have her. I don't know, I really don't think these guys would let something trivial like consciousness get in their way of a good time.

Meanwhile, Blade Von Bauer gets molested by some horny inmates before he humiliates Emanuelle's two buddies Laura and Irene by forcing them to dance with Laura's blow-up doll, Bobby. Bauer then slashes him with a razor blade and I must admit I got a little teary as Bobby slowly deflated in Laura's arms. When she then stuffs a stolen razor blade into a cork and the cork into... well, you can probably guess where, it's only a matter of time before Blade Von Bauer receives the ironic punishment of a lifetime. While that is happening, Emanuelle and Albina are forced into a Deer Hunter style game of Russian Roulette that leaves Crazy Boy cursing out Albina for splattering him with gobs of her brain matter. He had his mouth open too, I bet he was tasting that for weeks!

Eventually they decide to make a break for it, taking Emanuelle and the injured cop as hostages. Crazy Boy pushes their crappy getaway car too hard and it breaks down, leaving the injured cop chasing down an injured Crazy Boy, and let me tell you, nothing is more exciting than a low-speed footchase between two near-death invalids. Nothing! A brief and unsatisfying fight that follows takes down Crazy Boy for good. The film abruptly ends with the cop chatting to a still-imprisoned Emanuelle, saying he had re-opened her case and set things up so that "even an idiot would find [her] innocent". It won't happen today though, since the credits roll with Emanuelle being led back into her cell. What a bummer!

This is a Bruno Mattei film, so there's probably no point in discussing the quality of the film, but special mention must be made of the worse-than-usual monotonous synthesizer score. All that aside, if this film has one fatal flaw (and it doesn't, it's got plenty more) it's the disappointing lack of nudity from Laura Gemser. If there is one guarantee with a Black Emanuelle film, it's that Laura Gemser will get her kit off at some point. I know this film isn't technically part of the series, but I think my point is still valid. Despite this oversight, it's got enough nudity and sex from the rest of the cast to make up for it, and more prison-violence that you can shake a shiv at. If you can't get enough of Emanuelle taking on the Women-In-Prison genre, you might want to check out Violence in a Women's Prison. Not only did Bruno Mattei shoot it back-to-back with Emanuelle In Prison, he reused the same cast, crew and most of the plot. Huzzah!