SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL

(a.k.a. SS LAGER 5 L'INFERNO DELLE DONNE)

A group of women arrive as fresh prisoners at a notorious Nazi concentration camp.

The nubile girls are stripped, showered then lined up to be told of their purpose: to meet the desires of German soldiers. Any woman who does not comply, they're warned, will suffer hideous consequences.

Unbeknownst to the majority of the women, the camp is also home to a makeshift surgery where doctors perform experiments on prisoners in the hope of inventing cures for war-inflicted injuries.

One early experiment involves setting a girl's thigh alight, then swabbing it in a lotion that may or may not protect the flesh from burning. Naturally, the experiment fails and the poor girl screams the house down. The good news for the viewer is that this means the experiment must be repeated later in the film!

Professor Abraham is a respected surgeon who is housed at the camp with his beautiful daughter. They are being protected from the rape and abuse that practically everyone else is subject to, on the condition that Abraham lends his talents to the Nazi experiments. Reluctantly, he does - while showing his distate at every opportunity with melodramatic speeches decrying the inhumanity of it all.

There's basically a lot of shagging going on during the first half of the film, as the girls are routinely ushered to the soldiers' quarters for group sex sessions. But things get nasty when a handful of prisoners attempt an escape from the camp ...

Shot back-to-back with LAGER SSADIS KASTRAT KOMMANDANTUR (best known to UK audiences as the video nasty SS EXPERIMENT CAMP), Sergio Garrone's SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL employs much of the same cast, costumes and sets. So much so that I frequently suffered from deja vu while watching this. Even the music is painfully similar.

The actors who played Nazis in SS EXPERIMENT CAMP fill the same roles here, while the prisoners reprise their roles too. Okay, there are a few additions to the cast (and a sad no-show from the soldier who uttered the brilliant line "What have you been doing with my balls?" in SS EXPERIMENT CAMP), but for the most part you'd be hard pushed to tell one film from the other.*

The filmmakers even strap the same short-haired woman to the same electric chair in both films ... although in SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL they go one further by forcing ignited matches beneath her fingernails!

On the one hand, SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL seems to want to be taken more seriously than it's companion piece, with lots of heavy-handed dialogue about how one day the world will recognise the futility of war etc. On the other hand, where's the political motivation behind having a hot Jamaican babe gyrate naked with a banana strapped around her hips? Not that I'm complaining, mind!

Exploitation Digital's disc is a nice one. The film, presented in anamorphic 1.85:1, looks fantastic. There's minimal grain to be found, and images are bright and sharp. The English dubbed mono audio fares well too, coming across loud, even and clear.

Extras include an interview with Garrone (in Italian with English subtitles), who speaks about his experience of filming both SS films, plus his love for filmmakers such as Pasolini and Brass. This featurette is 14 minutes in length.

There are also trailers for SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL, SS GIRLS, SS HELL CAMP and ELSA.

Finally, there's a disappontingly brief gallery of video cover artwork for the film.

The film can be accessed via 12 chapters, by way of static menu pages. The disc is Region 1 NTSC.

There are certain ingredients that a movie needs to qualify as a bona-fide Nazisploitation sleaze fest. These include rape, torture, orgies, experiments, floggings, beatings, shootings, shower scenes, and lots of naked women with outrageously bushy minges.

Going by the above criteria alone, SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL certainly makes the grade. As does Exploitation Digital's disc.

* Indeed, Go Video must have had the same problem distinguishing one film from the other - for those of you who owned the pre-certificate UK video of SS EXPERIMENT CAMP, you'll note that the photographs on the back cover are actually scenes from SS CAMP: WOMEN'S HELL!

Review by Stu Willis