Today we welcome the blog's very first guest spot, by poster collector extraordinaire Armin from Germany! Armin (aka Posteroid) is most known for his amazing Japanese collection, and just like me he seems to have a particular fondness for posters that reflect the national character of his native country. But while Sweden is more known for blonde girls, sexual liberation and fun in the sun (like in the more successful films of Ingmar Bergman), Germany has a slightly harsher reputation...
WELCOME TO THE LAGER
Female prisoners forced to strip in front of lusting German soldiers...
Sadistic SS guards whipping young, helpless women...
Dirty concentration camps where perverted doctors perform unspeakable experiments on human specimen...
Oh my, what on earth did Lee Frost think when he started all this?
It’s1969, Frost directs the "classic" LOVE CAMP 7, based on a script by Wes Bishop and Bob Cresse. It was the first feature-length Nazi exploitation film. Competently made for a low-budget trash movie and mildly provocative for a 60's roughie, it set the standards for a genre, which (unusual for the exploitation world) only really blossomed a few years later.
Maybe LOVE CAMP 7 wasn't the hit its makers had hoped it to be. Or maybe the time wasn't ripe yet. In any case, for now the world was a safe place again and the Nazis stayed quiet for a couple more years.
Cut to 1975: smut producer David Friedman must have remembered the little piece of dirt called LOVE CAMP 7 and set out to go where no man had gone before. He enlists director Don Edmonds to create the unforgettable and incredibly tasteless ILSA - SHE WOLF OF THE SS. Still provocative today, Edmonds obviously wanted to shock just about anyone brave enough to watch it (guys: don't ever show this to your girl friends unless you are ready for serious trouble).
Shocking it was; indeed it was so shocking that David Friedman took his name off the credits. But it must have made heaps of money....
ILSA - SHE-WOLF OF THE SS was a global hit - at least in those territories where it was allowed to be screened. And it spawned two direct and one indirect sequel, none of which had a Nazi reference.
But by now, the Italians, undisputed masters of the "If it makes money we will rip it off" genre, realised there was $$$ to be made out of the vile deeds or their former WW2 allies. The Italians were incredibly prolific and among the usual junk, they actually created a few interesting entries to the genre. The most memorable are GESTAPO'S LAST ORGY (Cesare Canevari), DEPORTED WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION (Rino Di Silvestro), WOMEN'S CAMP 119 (Bruno Mattei), SS EXPERIMENT CAMP / SS CAMP WOMEN'S HELL (both Sergio Garrone) and NAZI LOVE CAMP 27 (Mario Caiano). The remainder of the Italian and French atrocities of the genre you better stay away from unless you are a completist or just a little insane.
None of these are truly great films, but that’s not the point. Those who have read on thus far are looking for pure sleaze entertainment and they will without doubt be rewarded.
Alas, here ends our journey to the world of political incorrectness. I hope you will spend a little more time here - but watch out for the guards…..
