Ever since HG Lewis presented graphic carnage as entertainment in his 1963 classic Blood Feast, trash cinema has been sliding ever deeper into a squalid toilet of filth. There were splatter films, death films, women-in-prison films, home-invasion films, rape films... Any type of brutality and perversion was catered for. Sooner or later, exploitation film-makers had to overstep the mark. Sooner or later there had to be... Nazis!
Like most of the Naziploitation flicks that followed, RL Frost's seminal Love Camp 7 (1969) is based on a true story. Loosely. The film starts out like any wartime spy picture, but its true colours are soon exposed, as two female agents are sent undercover into a Nazi concentration camp - a sex camp, to be precise - to rescue Jewish scientist Marta Grossman, whose secrets could change the course of the war for good. The women of the camp serve only one purpose - to serve the officers of the Third Reich in any way they can.
Love Camp 7 establishes most of the tropes that run through the Naziploitation genre. Rough softcore sex where the male participants keep their trousers on. The obligatory butch Hitlerite lesbian - in this case a scarred doctor carrying out "internal examinations". The kindly camp guard whose place in the war is not his choice and who wishes to help the women in any way he can. There's girl-on-girl action, too. And although the tortures of subsequent Nazi flicks put it in the shade, Love Camp 7 is no wimp. Its most sadistic moment is 'The Seat of Honour', a sharp-ridged wooden horse upon which a dissident prisoner is forced to sit, legs akimbo, for the entire night.
Best of all, though, is the stereotypical camp Commandant (camp being the operative word), played by none other than the movie's producer, the eccentric Bob Cresse. He plays the snobby, slobby Commandant with obvious relish, occasionally slipping into screaming fits, crawling miserably to the General (played by HG Lewis's producer Dave Friedman) and speaking in nasal, vaguely effeminate tones as he orders the prisoners to lick his thigh-length boots.
Years later, and the relatively refined Gestapo's Last Orgy (Cesare Canevari, 1976) is a much more sombre affair. A blatant, albeit spiced-up, clone of Liliana Cavani's snore-inducing The Night Porter, it tells a brutal and uncompromising story of a sadistic Nazi trying to break the spirit of a seemingly emotionless Jewish girl who apparently has no fear of dying.
He continually tries, and fails, to oppress her with a variety of tortures (lowering her into a pit of rats, dipping her friend in quicklime etc) but eventually they become lovers. However, years later, when he escapes the wrath of the Nuremberg trials, she takes the revenge she has waited so long for.
Gestapo's Last Orgy is just a cheap exploitation film, yet still - perhaps because it is so much darker and less garish than the others - it seems to at least project some air of profundity. It does stay true to its grindhouse roots though, providing enough softcore sex and hardcore violence to satisfy and sleazeball. Highlights include a revolting S&M slideshow for Nazi soldiers and a cannibal banquet that will prick even the most jaded conscience.
At the other end of the spectrum is Ivan Katansky's (actually a pseudonym for Luigi Batzella) The Beast In Heat (1977), an orgy of unrestrained ludicrousness. Katansky had previously toyed with Nazism with his 1976 disaster Achtung! The Desert Tigers, but really went all out on this admittedly quite enjoyable atrocity. Like some absurd 60s monster movie, it features a drooling, slobbering monster, a fiendish Nazi creation whose only purpose is to shag Jewish women to death... and then eat their pubes! Needless to say, this wanton sleaze only serves to make the few scenes of brutal torture (castration, electrocution, fingernail-pulling etc) seem even more vulgar. One of its sickest moments, however, occurs outside the torture chamber, when a baby is thrown into the air and machine-gunned.
It should be no surprise that the previous three flicks made the Video Nasties list way back in the early 80s. They were joined there by Sergio Garrone's SS Experiment Camp (1976), the most notorious Naziploitation flick of all. Its advertising campaign, an image of a semi-naked woman hanging upside-down from a crucifix, was instrumental in attracting unwanted attention to the Nasties, although beyond that, its infamy is unwarranted.
SS Experiment Camp's only memorable moment comes with the utterance of the immortal line, "You bastard! What have you been doing with my balls?" This story of the illicit love between a prisoner and Helmut, a handsome, kindly guard, ends tragically with poor Helmut having his testicles stolen by the scheming, ruthless Colonel who needs a
pair of his own. If that sounds a little implausible, it's nothing compared to the fact that Helmut doesn't actually notice his nads are missing until a month later.
These four Nazi Nasties are just the tip of the iceberg though. Filmed back-to-back with SS Experiment Camp, Garrone's SS Camp 5: Women's Hell (1977) is where the real brutality lies. What actually begins as a Women's Heaven, where the inmates giggle girlishly while wrestling over new lingerie and basking in luxurious, hot showers, becomes a real Hades after potential escapees are burned alive in a gas oven. A short bout of tongue-pulling and head-crushing follows, before the climax - an escape scene, which is quite exciting for this type of feature.
SS Camp 5 is a laughably inept film, but Garrone really manages to disturb with a callous, cheap attempt to add credibility to his nauseating little film - his use of genuine Holocaust footage. The film also contains one of the genre's most enduring characters, the kindly Jewish doctor forced against his will to perform ghoulish experiments on his brethren. This particular one takes time out from human vivisection to deliver a heartfelt soliloquy about the cruelty of abortion. Very thought-provoking.
There are two Jewish doctors (the male of whom looks as if he has been dragged puking from the gutter outside an AA meeting) in Bruno Mattei's downbeat Women's Camp 119 (1977), no doubt the grubbiest film in this genre. Much better than his boring Salon Kitty rip-off SS Girls (also 1977), the various tortures, humiliations and medical experiments take second place to the movie's most controversial theme: the search for a cure for homosexuality. Women's Camp 119's depictions of mincing queens knitting and shrinking at the sight of naked women must have seemed a little retarded even back in the 70s. Mattei doesn't stop his tirade against simple decency until the very end: the rogues' gallery of genuine Nazi war criminals set against the closing credits is a pathetically hypocritical attempt to give an air of meaningfulness to a cinematic atrocity.
The Holocaust didn't escape the notice of the hardcore industry. Stalag 69, directed by one 'Selrahc Detrevrep' (read it backwards) in 1975, is just one example, featuring scenes of torture and degradation, all lovingly decorated with penetration and cum-shots. Other titles out there include Hitler's Harlots and the fabulously monikered Hitler Sucks! The idea of Nazi atrocities presented as entertainment disturbs many people - but it seems positively genteel compared to the idea of some perve jacking off over them.
Of course, one should always save the best till last. Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS (Don Edmunds, 1974) is the definitive Naziploitation flick, spawning two official sequels (Harem Keeper Of The Oil Sheiks and Tigress Of Siberia) and one unofficial one (The Wicked Warden), as well as numerous clones. Dyanne Thorne is the fraülein bitch of the title, ruling Medical Camp Nine with an iron hand and a firm pair of tits, using the women as guinea pigs for her devilish experiments and the men for her personal satisfaction. Only Wolfe (Gregory Knoph) can satisfy her with his amazing ball control, and turn her into his personal sex-slave.
Ilsa may be the classiest Naziploitation picture, but it is also one of the grossest, earning a reputation as one of the most tasteless and offensive movies ever made. A woman pukes up huge globs of thick red blood as she dies painfully in a decompression chamber. Another's skin burns and peels as she is boiled alive in a tub. Others are left to rot away from syphilis and gangrene introduced to them by the greasy, bronchial camp doctor. One of the most offensive scenes is when the black-toothed General comes to visit - his special treat is a huge banquet where the main attraction is a nude woman stood on an ice-block, the rope around her neck tightening slowly as the ice melts away. Later on, the General receives a golden-shower treat from Ilsa herself.
However, where Ilsa really differs from the rest is its sick sense of humour. Thorne, as the iron mistress, ever teetering on the brink of orgasm and Knoph, as the cool gigolo, really ham it up, delivering cheesy lines like, "Call yourselves men? I see no manhood between your legs!" and "I will satisfy you until you beg me to stop!" with gusto. Ilsa proves that anything goes, no matter how twisted, as long as your tongue is firmly in cheek.
By 1980, the Naziploitation film had disappeared for good, swastikas and jackboots being discarded as the death-camp pictures moved to warmer climes - contemporary, South American settings became de rigueur. As far as brutality and sadism goes, these pictures are just the same, if not worse, than their Nazi predecessors.
Still, the fact remains that nothing is quite so unsavoury as the image of four or five people fucking beneath a swastika.
Anchor Bay have released Ilsa, She Wolf Of The SS on Region 1 DVD. For the rest, you probably have to know someone
MORE ENTERTAINMENT
