SS Experiment Camp (1976) Directed by Sergio Garrone
Imagine other of the most emblematic films of the notorious Nazi exploitation phenomenon but hornier, that’s the only distinction that at least I could detect when comparing it to the rest of the bunch, everything else is just more of the same, no complaints though. A hardcore connoisseur of the genre will acknowledge that the smutty, inane provocation of Sergio Garrone’s SS Experiment Camp is sheer exploitative codswallop that rarely makes any sense. If one were to cut out every scene of condensed pornographic sadism in this Nazisploitation, there would be virtually nothing left of the movie. However, part of the schadenfreude embedded in the modus operandi of art exploitation is just that, rendering sex and violence so primordial in its foul pragmatism that they seem interchangeable with the thin plot – wanton vulgarity, that is the actual plot in SS Experiment Camp. Once inside its unutterable debauchery, there’s no point in bellyaching; you know damn well what you’re going to get when you venture into a film that sells itself as Nazi torture porno.
In this ungodly genre there are many filthy pieces, mostly bad rather than good, but there is not a single one of them that -at least for me- has left me with nothing to say; on the contrary, they generate in me a certain fascination that prompts me to believe that they are not so bad after all. Lee Frost’s Love Camp 7 is my guilty pleasure within the subgenre, Cesare Canevari’s The Gestapo’s Last Orgy is the one that had the strongest emotional effect on me, Don Edmonds’ Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is the one that most compulsively entertained me, Tinto Brass’ Salon Kitty is the most aesthetically baroque of them all and the one that most captivated me visually, and last but not least -although more of a proto-Nazisploitation- Luchino Visconti’s The Damned is my favorite as it is objectively the consummate masterpiece of Nazi depravity. So, what can I say about SS Experiment Camp? Perhaps I’m already subliminally implying that I’m intrigued enough to devote so many redundant words to it before a final verdict. In the same fashion that Luigi Batzella’s atrocious The Beast in Heat enthralled me with its ephemeral but effective portions of grotesque turpitude, SS Experiment Camp managed to do so as well.
Italian genre film specialist Sergio Garrone is an extraordinary orchestrator of potent cinematic imagery, here he doesn’t showcase his strengths as potently as in his Spaghetti Westerns, but it’s still a goddamn Garrone picture, and it shows even with all those layers of pornographic grime covering his majestic style here. It’s a skillfully stylized Nazi exploitation flick with high pop art content. The film never takes seriously the barbaric violence it exposes in the lewd SS Experiment Camp, it’s a sick look at Nazi depravity like all the others, but it’s campy, cheesy and erotic enough not to be misconstrued for anything disturbingly earnest. The immoral procedures of this kind of filmmaking can be twofold – it is up to the filmmakers to decide independently which to opt for – to treat gratuitous sexual violence erotically or to treat it for what it is, in a revolting and deplorable manner. Garrone’s immodest style opts to apply both procedures, but the mood is one of eroticism throughout. SS Experiment Camp is the most erotic Nazisploitation film ever made – the other possible candidate for that label might be Love Camp 7 – because it has the invidious distinction of being the only film that follows the parameters of the women-in-prison genre where the prisoners seem to enjoy the depraved exercise to which the Nazi officers subject them. The politics of this Nazisploitation is so incorrect that it might shock anyone with a sensitive moral compass or anyone with a smug intellect – this is one of the Nazi exploitation films that appalled the puritanical UK censors during the video panic – and well, anyone who is not an enthusiast of the genre will justifiably dismiss this film as a smelly piece of filth, too disgusting to be merely entertaining. But for fans of the infamous shockers, SS Experiment Camp is more of the same! And if you liked the others, you’ll obviously like this one too.
Sergio Garrone’s tragically depraved melodramatic Video Nasty begins with a bunch of sexy nude political prisoners going through routine medical inspection in a Nazi camp – some being electrocuted and being burned at the stake. All are there to serve in an experiment for the improvement of the Aryan race. The concentration camp is commanded by Colonel von Kleiben (Giorgio Cerioni) and the sadistic experiments by a pitiless female Nazi doctor. Male Nazi soldiers also participate in the sordid experiments. Without further ado, I’ll get down to the juicy stuff. In the sleazy experiments, the Nazi soldiers must have sex with the female prisoners while being submitted to a thorough experimental medical test – though it seems more like simple, crude voyeurism – by the female doctor. In one of these carnal encounters, the Nazi officer Helmut (played by Mircha Carven as one of those ambiguous heroes taken from Hollywood mythology), falls in love with one of the most beautiful prisoners. The two develop a clandestine relationship in the midst of all the perversity that dominates the modus vivendi of the concentration camp. The sex in SS Experiment Camp is not rough or sadomasochistic, it is erotic as in a Tinto Brass movie. The atmosphere is so hedonistic that we reach an extremely paradoxical situation of not being able to tell if we are in a Nazi concentration camp or in a kind of Nazi playboy mansion. And if the orgasmic labors of the Nazi officers in the experiments weren’t enough coitus for one day, the SS Experiment Camp is ready for emergencies…they also have a brothel inside the camp.
The iteration of violence and sex quickly stagnates into a pornographic immutability that makes you believe this is one of the tamest of the film genre. But beware, Garrone’s film saves the best for its dour, nihilistic finale, where he throws in a whole lot of well-orchestrated pessimistic brutality – for a moment you think you’re watching another film tonally distinct from the ludicrous obscenity of the previous acts. SS Experiment Camp opens with outlandish erotica and ends its excursion into depravity with a divine justice that seems to achieve theological heights. It sounds risible I know, but the severe condemnation of both prisoners and Nazi officers suggests a punitive strike against immorality and amoral conformity. Lots of sex, testicle transplant -very graphic by the way- and lots of melodrama is Sergio Garrone’s contribution to the genre. An indisputable shocker that is more infamous for its inclusion in the Video Nasties than for its exploitation merits. From now on I recognize it for both.