SS Experiment Love Camp

She’s a political prisoner.  He’s a nazi officer.  But even the Third Reich is powerless against true love!  The synopsis might be factually accurate; but the short-lived Naziploitation sub-genre wasn’t really designed for critical analysis.  It was just another excuse to parade rape, torture and phony surgeries in front of audience’s that were getting increasing hard to shock.  Truth be told, SS Experiment Love Camp (1976) is far from the worst of the bunch, shot with some restraint (in the Trump era, anyway) in terms of debauchery…and in regards to evil Nazi scientists.

Brought in with the latest group of hot enemies of the state, Mirelle falls head over heels for Helmut, a soldier brought in to help propagate the Aryan race.  While casual hook ups are encouraged, their relationship is strictly forbidden by Col. Von Kleiben, who’s hoping to use the advanced medical techniques to solve his own, uh, erectile dysfunction issue.  That’s right, Hitler and his cronies threatened to conquer the world simply because they couldn’t get it up.  Sounds about right.

Anyway, director Sergio Garrone takes things down a path that’s pretty familiar to fans of Italian filmmaking in the ‘70s.  There’s lots of full-frontal nudity, a bit of sadomasochistic torture, a lesbian sub-plot and a few action scenes saved for the finale. But Love Camp isn’t nearly as mean-spirited of some of its contemporaries and even adds a dose of unintentional humor along the way (post-testicular transplant Helmut interjects, “What have you been doing with my balls!”). The film’s status as a video nasty in the UK gives it more attention than it warrants.  But with sets that looked pilfered from the Price is Right, it’s hard to get all that worked up over one of the more entertaining entries in a fad that came and went so quickly.

88 Films spares no expense, delivering a 4K UHD + Blu-ray limited edition that makes one question dismissing the genre as sensationalist trash.  The transfer from the original negative is spot on, remastered up to DolbyVision HDR specs with Italian or English language options. But it’s the extras that really help put this cinematic travesty into perspective, including an audio commentary, interviews with the filmmakers, reversible sleeve and slick slipcover, plus a great set of liner notes that explain the “Nazi-chic” trends of the day.

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