DPPList72 Video Nasties

Well here we are again this is the second time I have put pen to paper for my buddy Paul as we attempt to go through the list of the dreaded 72 video nasty’s. I must apologise for how long this is taking but we both appear to be in increasingly greater demand in the world of film. As a result I am going to try to squeeze in another one after this. We are both off for a while on a whole bunch of new movies, the first of which is the dark and satanic ‘The Power’ by the legend that is Paul Hills, Excited.Here goes. “SS Experiment Camp” as the DVD box calls it; is firmly rooted in the Nazisploitation genre which was originally penned for the great Don Edmunds movie “Ilsa:She Wolf of the SS”. Let’s be honest as a genre Nazisploitation didn’t last long. Starting with great uncle Don it quickly moved to the in box of Italian smut master general Tinto Brass
(Salon Kitty) and finally dying a death with Sergio’s second attempt at this genre of film “SS Camp 5: Women’s Hell”.
So Nazisploitation lies dormant, however, I suspect like all these things will find its way back at some point. After all Didn’t Mr Rob Zombie create a trailer for a fake filmcalled “Werewolf women of the SS” in tribute to Messer’s Rodriguez and Tarantino….. I digress.
The introduction of this film is a poorly shot torture scene of a naked women known to us as experiment number 732. She is being asked to swear allegiance to the supreme leader. She clearly not being the smartest kid on the block continues to refuse and is tortured to (near) death before being injected in the tit’s* and thrown into the incinerator where she is burned alive. The second naked woman to be tortured is way too smart for all this refusing to say “Yeah Hitler. He’s the daddy, let me in to your hell camp and I’ll cooperate fully” and as a result allows us all to move on and the film to begin. THANK GOD!!
*This is my second review for www.dpplist72.co.uk and the second time we have had some killing in the tit’s. It is as if Melanie Klein were here looking over my shoulder.
When the film begins properly my first reaction is; why did we have to sit through the shit torture scene. Because all of a sudden we have a great shot of what looks like a real prison camp with authentic military vehicles arriving. There are guards in fantastic uniform’s and real looking guns. It looks like a movie. Is Steve McQueen about to jump out the back of this vehicle with a  renade in hand? Of course not! We have just sat through five minutes ofhome VHS footage. The clue was at the beginning – it’s going to be shit…. Or is it?
Over the first half hour of this film my Tut-monitor was going mental. The obligatory shower of seven naked women, the male dormitory inhabited by six of the finest soldier’s fresh back from heroic action on the Russian front. The good doctor blackmailed into Mengele(esk) experiments through previous political transgressions and the evil female doctor. How do we know she is evil. Easy, she is a lesbian, hence seven naked girls in the shower and conveniently only six German hunks. EVIL!!! (not my opinion. Fact. In 1976 Lesbians were EVIL, especially in Italy. Someone (not me) once said it was a Catholic thing) Still there was a nagging doubt behind my  tutting. You see, many of the devices the director was using where good. We were building a moral frame work for the protagonists. We were being challenged by what we were seeing. At times the films ambition and the  bravery of the cast were leaping from the screen saying “How dare you think this is shit – you owe us more than that” and on more than one occasion I found myself agreeing with them.
I genuinely think at the 45 minuet point I had been convinced that this film was worthwhile. Admittedly there were some naive and cynical devices being employed to gain interest from the male audience. Some boobs, bums  and 1970’s pubic topiary were very much on display. Obviously there are no willies (that would be GAY) so feel free to watch with a friend in safety.
Unfortunately as with so many things in life 45 minutes can just be all you need to fuck it up. See England football team for further proof, because at this point “SS Experiment Camp” does exactly that and scores a spectacular  own goal from the half way line. I don’t want to ruin it for you totally but the script now offers up two new sub plots that are completely irrelevant.

One of these is a simple murder of a young woman in distress having been forced to have sex with one of the German soldiers; she is ultimately suspended upside-down after being shot (this image was manipulated later by the press, first she was superimposed onto a crucifix and secondly they put some knickers on to her – Only the British can do this) this whole section was pointless, The script has already established the Nazi’s are brutal and capable of atrocities. This just gets in the way of what was becoming a good plot and reeks of NO CONFIDENCE in the project.
The second! OMG: The testicular transplant, REALLY? I felt from this point on the whole film descended into a farce. Sure they used it as a plot device to make our hero act out. But, and here is the point. By making his  castration the device by which he will act out against the killing machine that was the Nazi’s. All of the noble plot devices offered to him throughout the film becomes irrelevant. He is now killing out of revenge for his knackered Knackers and not for his inherent goodness.  From here on in the film tries to rectify its mistakes but in my mind the horse had already bolted and there was really no way back. Which is a shame, I feel the cast deserved more than this. As I said earlier, they managed to leap out the screen and demand to be listened too but I fear have been conned out of something potentially worthwhile by cheap gimmicks employed by either a poor script or what I suspect was a bandwagon director trying to get noticed.

Either way It’s disappointing for us all