SS CAMP WOMEN'S HELL
Starring Paolo Corazzi, Rita Manna, Giorgio Cerioni

Directed by Sergio Garrone

Kitty Media/Exploitation Deigital

“She’s right. We’re wasting time. Bring me the pinchers!”

WWII, somewhere in Poland (I think): a fresh truckload of women prisoners are brought to the notorious Nazi medical outpost SS Camp 5. The unluckiest of the new inmates are shipped directly to the labs, where Colonel Strasser (platinum-coiffed Giorgio Cerioni) conducts burn experiments which involve pouring a greenish goo onto a naked test subject’s leg and setting it on fire. The “fortunate” ones are rounded up by Magda, who runs a joy division-style whorehouse for camp commandant Lt. Hans (Serafino Profumo) and his officers. Among the latter is Alina (Rita Manna) a Jamaican (?) freedom fighter for the French underground, with whom Colonel Strasser falls madly in love (she seduces him by dancing nude before him with a plastic banana dangling over her crotch). But Alina has other plans for the lovesick dope – namely, to gather information about the camp and swipe his cache of weapons in order to break out.

Nazi exploitation movies like SS Camp Women’s Hell are almost review-proof – there’s really no point in saying whether the movie is good or not, because the subject matter is so polarizing. If you find the idea of using the Holocaust as a backdrop for a sex-and-guts grinder offensive, then nothing short of my saying that this disc will cure cancer, old age, and impotence if you put it in your DVD player will get you to watch it. And if you dig Nazi exploitation, you won’t give two farts in a high wind if the movie sucks; chances are, you won’t even care if the movie is in focus, as long as there are lots of naked girls getting tortured. So to that end, detractors will hate SS Camp Women’s Hell more than most Nazi trash because director Sergio Garrone (who made the even more berserk SS Experiment Love Camp – also available from Kitty Media/Exploitation Digital – back to back, and with most of the same actors, with this film,) has the ovos to use footage taken at real concentration camps to “spice up” the film. As for genre fans, they’ve got themselves a winner here – the violence is slow to build, but Garrone hits his stride about midway through the picture with a non-stop torture-thon involving four escapees and Lt. Hans, who rips out fingernails, crushes another woman’s skull in a vice, guts a third with a spiked glove, and brands a fourth before ripping out her tongue. Oh, and if that’s not enough, he tosses them into a gas oven, where we discover seconds before the flames kick in that they’re still alive, and their flailing death throes are intercut with Lt. Hans raping and impregnating the saintly daughter (Paolo Corazzi) of a Jewish doctor (and as a sort of palate cleanser, we see her aborting the fetus a few moments later). Enough for ya? Man, I hope so.

Kitty Media and Exploitation Digital’s DVD is letterboxed and English-dubbed – I’m sure there’s a horror nerd or two out there who’ll claim that this version is missing ten seconds of expository footage that’s featured in the Malaysian DVD release, but you know what? There’s more than enough SS Camp Women’s Hell on this disc for most people. The presentation is rounded out by the original trailer, as well as a barrage of previews for other ED Nazi titles, including the aforementioned SS Experiment Love Camp (a.k.a. The Beast in Heat, which does Women’s Hell one further in the gross department by adding a rampaging, pubic hair-gobbling apeman rapist) and Elsa Fraulein SS. There’s also a Italian-language interview (with subtitles) with Garrone, who attempts to make a case for his SS movies as being “cathartic” experiences. Whatever you say, man. ________________________________________________________

- Paul Gaita