SS Experiment Love Camp 4K Review (88 Films)

SS Experiment Love Camp (aKa Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur, S.S. Experiment, S.S. Experiment Camp, and Captive Women II: Orgies of the Damned) is a 1976 Naziploitation film co-written and directed by Sergio Garrone (Django the Bastard, Kill Django… Kill First, No Room to Die, If You Want to Live… Shoot!, Killer’s Gold, The Hand That Feeds the Dead, Lover of the Monster, SS Camp: Women’s Hell, and Three Crosses Not to Die). It was co-written by Vinicio Marinucci (Strange Witness, Time Gone By, The Black Hand, SS Camp: Women’s Hell, and Fall of the Mohicans). SS Camp: Women’s Hell was filmed back to back with this. They used the same cast, crew, and locations for it. In a secret camp in Nazi Germany, cruel experiments are conducted for the selection and improvement of the Aryan Race. Female prisoners are forcibly mated with German soldiers. They are subjected to strange sexual and torture experiments. Nazi Sergeant Helmut (played by: Mircha Carven from Beyond Good and Evil, American Fever, The Con Artists, The Statue, and Death Will Have Your Eyes) ends up falling in love with a camp inmate, the beautiful French prostitute Mirelle (played by: Paola Corazzi from SS Camp: Women’s Hell, The Children of Violent Rome, Maladonna, Tales of Erotica, and The True Story of the Nun of Monza). When Helmut is forced to participate in a perverse operation ordered but the camp’s commandant, the Sergeant joins forces with the female inmates to exact revenge on their sadistic overload ran by the evil Colonel Von Kleiben (played by: Giorgio Cerioni from SS Camp: Women’s Hell, Obsession: A Taste for Fear, La Cage Aux Folles II, The Law of Violence, How to Kill a Judge, and Deported Women of the SS Special Section)!!!! SS Experiment Love Camp took advantage of the popularity of the Naziploitation sub-genre they really took off in the late 70’s and 80’s. Italy always made sure to cash in on movies that had success elsewhere. Director Sergio Garrone really got ambitious with both SS Experiment Love Camp and SS Camp: Women’s Hell being shot back to back. I feel like both of these low budget productions are very rushed because of this. He basically did 2 movies for the time it usually takes to do just a single feature. He did some really impressive Spaghetti Westerns so the talent was always there. The script doesn’t have much of a plot because all of the familiar stuff that’s used in these early Nazi films. They make up with the lack of story with plenty of violence, sleaze, torture, and nudity. To be fair, most of the other stuff in the sub-genre did the exact same thing. Mircha Carven as Sergeant Helmut is the lead here. He’s solid as the conflicted soldier during these tests. He starts to have feelings for one of the female prisoners that he’s been paired up. His authorities realize that he might be tainted with this new found relationship so they trick him into a gruesome experiment that forever changes him. The stunning Paola Corazzi is good as Mirelle. She really causes all kinds of issues with her interactions with Helmut. She gives hope to her fellow slaves in the camp. Giorgio Cerioni gives the best performance in this as the psychotic Colonel Von Kleiben. He’s a quality villain that you really want to see suffer at some point because he makes all the other Nazis look normal with his extremely cruel actions. The rest of the supporting cast includes Giovanna Mainardi (Riot in a Women’s Prison), Serafino Profumo (SS Camp: Women’s Hell), Attilio Dottesio (SS Camp: Women’s Hell), Patrizia Melega (SS Camp: Women’s Hell), Almina De Sanzio (The Red Nights of the Gestapo), Matilde Dall’Aglio (Emanuelle in America), Agnes Kalpagos (Deported Women of the SS Special Section), Inga Alexandrova (The Red Nights of the Gestapo), Mara Carisi (Salon Kitty), and Maurizio Reti (Amico Mio). SS Experiment Love Camp is better than it’s reputation. I don’t think it’s one of the best when it comes to the notorious sub-genre but it delivers on everything that the audience would expect from something like this. It was banned for a long time. This video nasty has enough disturbing and shocking moments for violence but it doesn’t go fully extreme. They still don’t back away from showing some wild torture scenarios. Basically almost every woman here isn’t shy and they show off their bodies consistently so it’s very sleazy. It has several softcore elements to it mixed with it’s graphic visuals. I’m glad that SS Experiment Love Camp got the royal treatment on home video because I never expected that for this. It’s definitely worth checking out sometime if you are a fan of 1976 Naziploitation or if you just want to see all of the formerly banned video nasties!!!! Let’s discuss this high definition presentation and special features from 88 Films! This 2160p (1.85:1) uncensored transfer with Dolby Vision and HDR10 is from a brand new 4K restoration from the original camera negative. Last time that I watched SS Experiment Love Camp was on the 2005 DVD from Shriek Show and Media Blasters. 20 years later and skipping an additional format makes a big difference when it comes it’s sharper visuals. This is a big upgrade, when 4K became a serious thing in physical media, I never ever expected SS Experiment Love Camp to get the UHD experience. There’s still so many major movies that don’t even have Blu Rays yet, that’s why you have love boutique labels for giving these it’s best possible opportunity in the home video market. It has a few audio options which includes English: LPCM 2.0 Mono and Italian: LPCM 2.0 Mono tracks on the UHD. The audio has it’s stand out scenes with some action, violence, and pure sleaze. It’s not packed with non stop stuff but it still makes a dent at times. The dialogue is very clean, the torment is elevated, and the music has major boost to it. It has English and English SDH subtitles. It has an “Audio Commentary” with experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti. It has the little over 30 minute.”Sadistically Yours, Sergio G.”. It’s an interview with director Sergio Garrone. He says he takes pride in everything that he does including Naziploitation. He always worked independent because it paid better and it gave him more freedom with his work. He chats about it became harder to put together projects for Italian cinema later on. The producers weren’t willing to bet on anything so there was no more advances. They had to just make their film and hope someone ended up giving it distribution. This all killed their movement so that’s why film died so much over there compared to it’s past. He brings up maybe 600 were made during a year at that point and only around 50 did anything. They started using stock footage and mixed it with new material for an upcoming production. He’s very blunt about how it was damn near impossible to make any money doing this as everything got worse. After all of that, he actually goes into detail about his overall experience shooting SS Experiment Love Camp. It has the little over 28 minute “SSadist SSound”. It’s an interview with historian Pierpaolo De Sanctis. He shows his appreciation for the composer and his career. A new sound changed everything. His music was discovered again by a new generation when it re-released years after the original. He chats about all kinds of different music related to time and others in the business. He goes over the sounds of SS Experiment Love Camp. It has the almost 26 minute “The Alabiso Dynasty”. It’s an interview with editor Eugenio Alabiso. He jokes about keeping the conversation short so they don’t piss off their fans. He reminisces about his past and shows the only photo from his wedding he has with a producer that changed his life. He goes over a situation where a producer that couldn’t even use his real name because he owed so much money so he had to get around it with an alias. He was able to get his first apartment with help of producers for future work. He tells some interesting stories and he goes over his editing process. It has the almost 12 minute “Framing Exploitation”. It’s an interview with cinematographer Maurizio Centini. His first filming job was the Olympics in 1960. He chats about some of the earlier productions that he worked on. He did a variety of jobs while starting out. He took breaks over the years because he represented himself as an agent so it took going to lots of social events to get some gigs. He’s honest about some of his collaborations sabotaged themselves with big backers which caused so many problems with projects losing so much financing before they were even finished. As far as SS Experiment Love Camp goes, he didn’t shoot the more graphic inserts. All of these conversations are in Italian with English subtitles. It has the almost 3 minute “Italian Opening and Closing Titles”. It has the “Original Trailer” for SS Experiment Love Camp. It comes with a slipcover, reversible artwork, and it has a 12 page booklet. It’s available everywhere right now, CHECK IT OUT!!!!