La bestia in calore

In theory, the Nazi-sex cycle of exploitation cinema should be an absolute winner. Not only are all these films based on spectacularly non-PC and offensive plot premises, but by their very nature they give plenty of opportunity for the film-makers to work in scene after scene of gore, nudity, sex, and combinations of the three. Of course, as any seasoned Euro-exploitation fan knows, it is very rare that ANY so-called "video nasty" lives up to the promise of its garish title and plot outline, and in practice, there is nothing that displays this more succinctly than this genre. The Nazi-sex films are ineptly made, dull, boring, and not nearly as offensive as they should be.

Saying that though, THE BEAST IN HEAT does at least enough to raise itself above other dross such as SS EXPERIMENT CAMP. Badly made and boring it might be, but the comedy of the caged "beast" is enough to keep you watching (even though its appearances are few and far between). The nastiest gore surfaces at the very end, and although it's all quite unpleasant in theory (particularly the moment where the "beast" tears chunks out of an unfortunate victim's mons pubis and gobbles them up), the absolutely dire standard of special effects leaves this whole affair more in the niche of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS than MEN BEHIND THE SUN...

Not really worth bothering with unless you are an enthusiast of this sort of thing. "Fans" of this particularly surreal thread of exploitation would be well advised to dabble in the seedy climes of the closely-related "Women In Prison" cycle, because the best of that genre beats this type of gubbins hands down.

"SS Hell Camp" starts of rather promisingly. In the opening scene we're introduced to an evil Nazi doctor (German actress Macha Magall, playing the role with gusto) AND a weird ape-man creature who has become extremely sex- crazed due to various unspecified experiments. So the idea is that they throw any girl who doesn't collaborate into his cage, so he can awkwardly hump her (without an erection, but why do I check?) until she somehow dies. To me that's a good enough gimmick for 80 minutes of Z-grade schlock, but writer/director Luigi Batzella is a lazy, lazy man. In 1970 he made a war movie called "When The Bell Tolls" that nobody saw, so he figured...why not splice it into this one, almost entirely? If you don't know that in advance, this is a really confusing mess. The war scenes come out of nowhere, but they end up making up more than half of this movie. It's so glaringly obvious that Batzella is just using these scenes as padding, while you just want to find out what's going on in the torture chamber (spoilers: torture). So you get fifteen minutes of terrible, yet delightfully cheesy fun and an hour of intensely boring "sub-plots" that barely pretend to be from the same movie.

The main saving grace of this movie is the aforementioned Macha Magall, an unknown actress that made her last movie in 1982. For shame, because she finds the perfect balance between attractive and freightening. She's certainly an interesting screen presence, but because of Batzella's penny-pinching our lead actress is actually barely in this movie. She deserved to be in much better projects than this, but somehow never really made it into the mainstream. Then again, I guess the lack of a real legacy or any other background information does give her some kind of mystique.

SS Hell Camp (1977)

** (out of 4)

Naziploitation film has a wacked out female German doctor performing experiments on beautiful naked women. This is considered one of the more graphic naxiploitation films but I've seen a couple that are a tad bit worse. Like the others this one here is full of naked women, rape, violence, some blood and various "Hail Hitler's". The biggest problem here, much like the others, is that there isn't enough camp and there's way too many disgusting scenes including one where a baby is taken from its mother, thrown into the air and then shot.

Luckily by the time I put this film on I'd drank about six cans of Stella, which meant that when the shaky video to DVD transfer came on screen my brain was perfectly tuned to the trembling, wavery image that greeted me.

The Beast in Heat is a sleazy video nasty of the Nazi-sploitation type, which means lesbian action, pubic hair, rape, torture and all sorts of crap, poorly executed so much that it begins after a while (and several cans of Stella) to look like an episode of You've Been Framed.

The story? I can't really remember, but I'll describe the first scene. Some Nazi chick (I first thought her name was Dr Crash, then Dr Crap, but on the back of the DVD box it says that her name is Krast) throws a local Italian woman to some freaky pig-like creature, who begins to rape her. We get loads of close ups of his buttocks gyrating about two feet away from her body. And she has her legs closed. Dr Crap asks a German soldier if he's excited, to which he replies yes, and gets a slap for his trouble. Then Dr Crap asks this German chick if she's excited, and the chick says she's excited for the progress of the experiment, and she gets a kiss. Meanwhile, the Italian chick dies because she's begun to realise how this film will turn out.

This is classic exploitation stuff, and I mean classic in the sense that it follows the usual pattern these films do - you get some sleaze and violence at the start, then some boring bits, then more sleaze, then more boring bits, then the end of the film. In this film some partisans are brought in to pad out the story, along with a bumbling German officer. Not much of this is of any interest to anyone. In fact it seemed to me that my Stella-addled brain was switching off each time these guys were featured in a scene.

What I gathered was that one of the hookers who has really badly-staged sex with the German officer is a spy, and lets on to the partisans that there's some bad doings going down over in Nazi town, which involves all those Italian partisan chicks that keep disappearing. Things like being eaten by rats, tortured by Dr Cramps (did she have to do that topless?), and best (worst?) of all, having their fake pubes ripped off by the beast and eaten. Later I was lucky enough to wake up in time to see Dr Craptastic getting thrown to beast, and get her comeuppance before one of the crew got fed up making the film and machine gunned everyone on set, or something.

Crap acting, crap direction, crap transfer. Another video nasty that doesn't live up to it's name, and basically all it boils down to is another Italian hack aiming purely to make cash through some crap genre or other. I had a hangover the next day...or was it this film? I recommend that this film be played at every Church in Britain instead of mass. Every Sunday.

If one can overlook the gratuitous nudity, lengthy rape scenes, and nasty tortures, La Bestia In Calore does provide solid entertainment for those who enjoy particularly inept cinema. Muscleman Brad Harris stars as a priest involved with Italian partisans and provides the film's best line as he sends the resistance off to battle: "trust in the Lord! He's the BEST!" Stock footage from better films with decent budgets is easily discernible, as are toy planes that periodically bomb our heroic partisans--one of whom bears an uncanny resemblance to Saddam Hussein. The award for best torture device must surely go to the 'death by hamster nibbling' sequence, and of course all the actors--including those playing the Nazis--sport truly atrocious 70's hair. Unforgettable!