A Camp For Girls you probably do not want to visit!

Day thirteen of the September Exploitation Challenge:

SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL (1977)
D. Sergio Garrone
Media Blasters/ Exploitation Digital
1.85

This late entry in the Nazisploitation sub-genre is fairly tame when compared to some of it’s brethren like THE BEAST IN HEAT or even the first ILSA film. In fact the first hour or so of SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL is actually kind of dull despite the fact it is chocked full of shower scenes and naked ladies. The pacing is just kind of lackluster and languid, never really bothering to grab a forward motion. All the elements are there, the Lesbian warden, the shower scenes, the Nazi experimentation. But the film just is too staid and lush to really have the nerve it needs to be truly aggressive.

"Apparently it was all dancing on the table and fun during WWII."

This in spite of the fact that it opens with a really tasteless succession of photos of real holocaust images with the credits super imposed. So the first images we see are piles of human bodies being pushed into pits or ovens reminding us this is a reality based thing. then next we meet a group of women played by actresses all way to healthy to actually be prisoners of war in an actual concentration camp. These gals are being hauled it to be trained to be prostitutes for the Third Reich including a feisty black gal who will become the hero of the story. We also meet a trio of scientists, including one Aryan soldier/doctor who will take a shine to the Black gal, one die hard German scientist and a Jew who is there as a prisoner with his beautiful Daughter (who looks a lot like Anna Paquin). The typical stuff happens. several girls plot an escape attempt that you just know is going to go wrong when they mention the escape route is through one of the ovens that has a crack on the other side. 

"This gal made for an impressive hero by the end of the movie. Even if she did do a seductive dance with a banana."

The Black gal seduces said Aryan Scientist with a Booga Booga Jungle dance with a banana tied to her nude waist and he is instantly in love (no I am not making this shit up!). They talk racial politics before and after they have sex, explaining how he feels his Aryan pride because he feels like he is owning her until he will have to kill her  on “Victory Day”! Eventually the really angry Soldier (who looks like a cross between Kojack and Vic Diaz from those Filipino movies) tortures a bunch of girls who he thinks helped mastermind the escape attempt. This scene is especially nasty and brutal and really turns the movie around from what was basically a slow going and silly sexploitation movie to a really crunchy, ugly exploitation flick. Heads are crushed, a gal is gutted with ninja claws, fingernails are pulled out and the last girl has her tongue pulled clean out of her head after being whipped! Suddenly we are in the land of no return as This dude starts tearing through the cast, raping/impregnating the Jewish daughter, and causing general mischief. 

"This guy is not going to make it very long for crossing this boundary! You can kill thousands

of Jews, and commit genocide, but perform Abortions and your days are numbered!"

Then suddenly the movie takes a shard right turn into Right To Life land as the daughter wants an abortion and her Daddy tries to talk her out of it with a speech about spreading the blood of the righteous to everyone in the world (that doesn’t sound all that different than the propaganda the Nazi’s were selling pops!). When he walks in on her getting an abortion he goes apeshit and tries to kill the doctor! Whoa, I think I know where he goes to church at!

 "Suddenly Max Hardcore takes over the directing of the movie."

It all boils to a head with a revolution and the Russians invading, and we get a bit of a history lesson AND a big gunfight too. 

 "I think this is actually a shot from my friend's basement..."

So all in all, though it starts off rocky, SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL gains it’s footing in the second half and is worth taking a look at for the fans of this low on the totem pole sub-genre. It is not the best of the bunch by any stretch, but one could do worse too. The disc from Media Blasters certainly looks nice, and has an fun interview and some other Nazisploitation trailers. 

Review © Andy Copp

At a time of War, it is time to get busy!

Slaves of the SS (1975) **
This double disc release from POP cinema’s After Hours imprint is most notable for starring “Victor Alexnader” aka Jerry Delony who most cult film fans will recognize as the Sheik in the classick Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (who is NOT Spalding Gray who many, I included, have always claimed played the Sheik). Here he plays one Dr. Cockluv a doctor of the 3rd Reich who is doing sexual experiments on various nubile American and Jewish babes. The movie opens with him screwing some lab equipment in a very sparse lab decorated with flashing lights and cardboard computers. His assistant Franz interrupts him. Franz is played by a woman in glasses and an ill fitting fake mustache. He gives a speech about how he bent over Hitler himself thus the name Cockluv will be remembered! Soon they have captured three female American tourists(!) who will be worked over in the SS lab. But first we are treated to some Nazi sex in what looks like some unrelated super 8 loop that was cut into the film to spice it up since the movie had been on for almost twenty minutes without any hardcore action. Finally Cockluv has a blond American chick strapped down to his operating table and is going to test her threshold with a fuck machine made of some lawnmower motor and a dildo. This thing looks fucking dangerous as it moves slowly towards the camera pounding away, which is why it never actually penetrates the actress, who was probably pretty grateful for that small favor. Instead the Nazi guard goes for it and the sex is pretty hairy butt standard 70’s grinder stuff. The chick is from Texas so she makes funny comments and German music plays over their scene. The guard has the dirtiest feet in cinema history. When they are finished Dr. Cockluv tells Franz to keep an eye on the Texas chick because “Her sexual vibrations could destroy all of the 3rd Reich!” The next Sex scene is with a brown haired gar who has nice boobs and is pretty into it. The Doctor keeps watching through a kaleidoscope so most of the scene is shot through one! Later this same gal will have a lesbian scene with another gall and their double ended dildo action will look more like they are charming a snake than having any kind of sex. The camera keeps zooming in and losing focus too. As the movie reaches the hour mark it hits a climax. You can tell because newsreel footage of the Allies invading Germany has been cut in randomly. This newsreel footage is in way better shape print wise than the rest of the feature too. Then thanks to an added digital explosion the castle of Dr. Cockluv is blown up and the reign of terror is over. The end! A lot of work was clearly done to restore this movie as the 8mm loops were added, as well as the newsreel footage and slight digital work. It is a silly outing never to be taken seriously. You get the feeling the original filmmakers would have been just as at home making a softcore comedy than a hardcore flick. This new edition has been matted to 1.85 for widescreen TV’s and it is overmatted badly. Tops of heads are lopped off all the time along with occasional all important sex shots. There is even a joke where Franz puts the Doctor’s hand on her/his breast that is rendered incoherent because the breast in question is below the bottom matte. The DVD comes with a second feature called Woman of Vengeance which is reviewed below.

Woman of Vengeance (1977) **1/2- This west coast triple-Xer is the second feature in the Sex Slaves of the SS package from After Hours Cinema. While the print is worn to the point of almost being black and white, and is scratched to hell and back it only lends atmosphere to this sleazy little gem. Rick Lutz stars as a bike shop owner whose life sucks shit. His wife is a demonic shrew who just lays there waiting for it to end when they have sex, and criticizes him endlessly the rest of the time. What he doesn’t know is that his buddy/co-worker is banging her behind his back (and has her put on a ratty blond wig so he doesn’t feel so bad about it!). The wife and best pal plan to have old Rick rubbed out by a professional hitman so they can get a wad of insurance money and run off together. Things brighten up a bit when Ricky boy meets a bombshell in the bike shop, played by real life squeeze Rene Bond. Naturally they hit it off and he makes plans to hang out with her and her friends for a couple of days. Finally after almost a half hour into the movie there is some hardcore sex scenes as Bond’s friends start having the beast with two backs. But due to the condition of this ragged print it is unappetizing to say the least. Since all the color is drained from the print except red (which is what happens to prints that have not been stored correctly) When the gal is giving the dude head it looks like she is chewing off his cock! Yikes! Don’t even ask what it looks like when they start fucking. Rene and Rick start getting busy too as they realize they really, really dig each other, and this scene is rather smartly cross cut with a scene of the wife boning the friend. So its the cheating couples getting it on, cross cut together. Somebody making this movie was actually thinking. In fact that is what sets this movie apart. This is surprisingly well made, even though it clearly is shot for pennies, there is some style going on. Such as when the scenes are faded out using what looks to be actual grease pencil lines, but it adds a sort of hardboiled grit to the proceeding. A later scene has the hitman get off the phone with the wife, confirming where Lutz will be for the kill. She has been a particular bitch on the phone. The hitman is looking at Rick’s picture for confirmation of his target and says to himself “Man, why couldn’t it have been you who made the call first?” I won’t spoil the last third as it becomes more apt that the movie should have been called Man of Vengeance. As already stated the print is a wreck and it seems that some of the sound elements are missing too. Some sound effects seem to be absent here and there and at the 18 minute mark the hiss on the soundtrack becomes so loud you almost have to shut it off. Like Sex slaves of the SS this thing has been matted for widescreen TV’s and should not have been. This looks to have been shot on 16mm originally and this matting wrecks the frame continually shaving off chins, tops of heads, necks, and plenty of the sex (which in some cases is a blessing). This matting is a practice I really wish Pop Cinema/After Hours would stop doing. Its better to have the whole picture and have blank space on the sides of your TV, than lose important picture information so someone can fill up there expensive TV frame. Otherwise this is a solid little B movie hiding as the second feature of this set. But then what do I know, this whole generation watches whole movies on You Tube.

I can't find a clip for this set, so here is a clip of 42nd St. Pete explaining all about Grindhouses on 42nd street 9pick up Pete's AWESOME 8mm Stag collections from After Hours Cinemas)

Review © Andrew Copp

These toys are for grown ups!

THE TOY BOX aka THE ORGY BOX (1971)
D. Ronald victor Garcia
Something weird DVD
Full Frame

Bizarre one, even for the likes of Something Weird Video's output. What we have here is a soft-core sex romp from East Germany, apparently shot both in Germany and in Los Angeles and completely post dubbed and unleashed by Harry Novak on unsuspecting drive-in viewers across the USA. Overflowing with sexual kinks and honest perversion, THE TOY BOX has several truly arousing moments and more dime-store surrealism than you can shake your dick at. Constantly twisting, turning, and folding in on itself, this is a movie of either weird brains, or total insanity. I'm going with the latter. But either way, it's irrelevant because it's pervasively entertaining.

Donna (Blond bombshell Ann Myers) tells us in voice over while driving in the rain that two years ago her hirsute boyfriend Ralph (the mustached Sean Kenny billed as Evan Steel) lured her into a life of sin and debauchery for show. See, she and Ralph put on little sex shows for someone they call Uncle for pay. Seems that every month, lots and lots of horny sex tourists get together and hold a contest on who can turn the most creative kink for the old man. We then get a flashback on how Ralph convinced her when he gave her a vibrator for her birthday and she popped her cherry with it on the front seat of his car when he went to the bathroom. Actually, he was watching to see if she was sexual enough to go the distance, and when she finds out she says to herself "you didn't make me do it, it was all ME!"

Once they arrive at Uncle's house, the rumor is that he's dead. They journey upstairs to find a blue corpse of the old man, but this doesn't sway anyone from continuing with the show as they all assume it is just more of his party tricks. While the swinging and orgy commences downstairs, various people come upstairs and put on their little acts of sexual superstardom. The most entrancing of these is not surprisingly Ushci Digart, who is molested by bedsheets that come alive and caress her mammoth mammories and massage her mound of female protrusion. Once she mounts the pile of quivering 100% cotton, all bets are off. Unfortunately, she's not in the movie enough. There is another really hot blond lass with medium chest pillows and glasses, but she sadly takes the glasses off before going down on her partner.

The audience soon finds out that some sort of alien force is making these people kill each other, with only Ralph and Donna realizing there are murderous shenanigans going on! That maybe Uncle is an Alien!

The whole thing is a set up for a series of soft core sex scenes, some of which are hot, most of which are kind of bland, all depending on the performer. Oddly enough, the individual sex scenes are all well shot, as if the director became really interested during those particular days and put his all into them. The colored gels come out, the camera starts moving, the special lenses get used. Things just get more impressive all over. But don't let that fool you into thinking the rest of the movie is not entertaining. Quite the contrary: the inane narration, bizarre mise-en-scene and overall cheapness keeps this thing watchable at all times. This is a cheap jack winner!

One of the best horror films of the year

DEADGIRL (2007)
D. Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel
Dark Sky Films
2.35 DV

This extreme and intense indie flick is a caustic, smart and VERY disturbing sexual horror film that turns the zombie myths on its rotting head. The movie is deep with themes of gender roles, sexuality, sexual politics etc., but never gives easy answers to the very tough questions it raises. Taking typical teen roles that most are familiar with in horror and layering them with emotion and political discussion, Deadgirl stands well above the pack.

The movie starts out with pretty boy high-schooler Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) making pouty faces at raven haired beauty JoAnn (Candice Accola) until his trouble-making buddy J.T. (Noah Segan) convinces him to skip school with him. They cut out and talk about girls, sex and other normal teen boy talk until they get to an abandoned metal facility on the edge of town. After going inside and partying as much as two boys can, they explore and find a bound, nude, teenage girl, whom at first they think is dead. When she moves, they are shocked. Rickie's first reaction is to go to the cops, but J.T. has other plans when his libido takes over. The boys get into a scuffle and Rickie leaves his friend there to rape the girl. The next day Rickie confronts J.T. only to discover that J.T. has killed the girl, but she is not dead. J.T. kills the girl AGAIN to prove his point and she still doesn't die. The boys are now faced with having an undead sex slave who will be able to do anything that can be dreamed up, since she cannot fight back, and there is technically no accountability for their actions. Soon other teen boys come into the fray and things get even weirder.

Some may accuse the movie of being misogynistic because of the material, but it isn't really. It is a film ABOUT misogyny. A film about how boys (and men) objectify women as sex objects to the point that they become nothing but meatholes to be passed around for fun. The movie asks a lot of questions about how this can come to be: whether it is the nature of masculinity? Peer pressure? A bonding experience? Acting out of latent homosexuality? Trying to prove oneself? Or just emotional power-playing? Rickie is the only boy in the film who manages to withstand the elements, clearly having feelings for someone, but that presents its own set of complications.

Another interesting element to the film is the complete absences of parents in the film. We see Rickie's Mom's boyfriend twice, trying to give Rickie some advice on how to be a "Real Man", but we never see his mother at all. No other parents appear. This lack of parenting, or any other adults for that matter, shows the vacuum these kids live in, and what creates these kinds of attitudes and lost kids. Most, if not all of this can be attributed to Trent Haaga's brilliant script that refuses to answer the questions, or even better, gives you "rules" to go by. The girl is never even called a zombie in the movie, she just "is" with no explanation given. The script is all about character and the degeneration that they fall into. It should be mentioned that Trent Haaga also wrote the shot on video zombie movie FEEDING THE MASSES, and that some of the ideas that are presented here obviously got their start in that movie as well. Nowhere near as good, but some parallels are visible.

The film is very low budget, but is shot beautifully, directed really well by the duo of Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel and edited great care. It only falls down slightly with some acting that is a little weak from a couple of newcomers that are clearly not quite seasoned enough for the tough material. The kids have been in some other films but usually in supporting roles, and at times here feel like they lose their feet on occasion. Especially Noah Segan as J.T. who slips into over the top mode now and again, trying to put on a country boy accent for some reason, as well.

Easily, this is one of the best horror films I have seen in a long time, indie or otherwise. It is doing a few select theatrical play dates around the country, midnights and such, so try to get your local art house to book it.