KZ9 - Lager di sterminio

Bruno Mattei, often called the Ed Wood of Italian cinema, started his directorial career with Nazi exploitation films, then moved to women in prison movies, and now directs zombie movies. he actually acted in Lucio Fulci's Zombie 3; I guess to learn the genre.

This is his second attempt at Nazi camp films, and it is poorly made. The lighting is absolutely atrocious and that is better than the acting.

The effects are non-existent, so the experimentation they were doing has no effect. It is just an interesting look at the sickness the Nazi's were working on, like transplanting a uterus, or reviving frozen pilots with women's bodies, or poison bullets to make people suffer more.

Naturally, since this is an exploitation film, you see a whole lot of full frontal nudity, degenerate monsters who rape, and some really creepy Nazi commandants and wardens.

It is funny in that I have seen a lot of girl fights in movies, but in this film, they always manage to get totally naked when they fight.

This is a stunning glimpse of the conditions the women of Rosenhaus experienced up until the end of the war. Nazi doctors perform numerous ghastly experiments on the unfortunate female prisoners in this realistic dramatization.

The film is made more effective through the amazingly advanced color photography (considering this is 1945).

I visited the Rosenhaus camp on a recent trip to Europe and was stunned to see there are still visible bloodstains on the floor where the woman was shot with a chemical bullet.

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SS Extirmination camp is a grim and depressing film. Not like the usual Nazi films ie SS Hell Camp, SS Girls. Its cast of characters symbolise the holocaust, and the music is very sad and plays well with the grim scenes.

Bits of the movie are exploitative, but they (medical tests) are all based on Nazi records, so they are realistic.

The cast is actually very well acted, and the script is brilliant, other parts of the movie, belong in schindlers list, as they are so real in their depitction of the holocaust, such as gassing, shot with poison bullets and and the kind doctors getting hung while inmates sing Israel much to the annoyance of the Commandant.

The sets are all very good, the concentration camp looks like an old industrial factory and the guards all wear proper uniforms, as well as the inmates, and the special effects are not bad either.

For the Exploiation fans, there are rapes, whippings, hangings, uterus transplants, vivisection, and shootings, and gang rapes etc.

For the historical fans out there, there are very depressing moments which show the holocaust for what is was, horrible.

The film is no doubt Bruno Mattei's best film, as it contains a good cast, no stock footage and none of the plot is borrowed from any other film.

I seriously suggest you check it out-

Never thought that I, as a native Dutch speaker, would encounter irremovable Dutch subtitles on a Region 1 movie that came imported from the USA! This movie is available in the newly released "Grindhouse Experience" box-set, but since it never officially came out on DVD, the version is clearly ripped from an ancient VHS copy. And that copy must have originally come from either The Netherlands or Belgium, which makes sense, as the lowest shelves of video stores around here are literally packed with this sort of rancid exploitation trash! I've seen loads of "Naziploitation" efforts and they're all pretty terrible, but in the hands of the infamous Bruno Mattei (appropriately nicknamed the Ed Wood of Italian cinema) you get something that is even worse than terrible, namely something downright unendurable! "Naziploitation" was the most pointless trend of 70's smut-cinema and to this day I still fail to comprehend why it was so damn popular in those days. All these movies practically have the same senseless plot, and so does "Women's Camp 119". Beautiful and defenseless young girls are shipped off to vile concentration camps where they get abused & humiliated by sleazy wardens and where they serve as reluctant guinea pigs for idiotic scientists of the Third Reich. In this piece of garbage, for example, the girls are forced to thaw frozen Nazi officers using simply their body heat and "cure" men from their wicked disease called homosexuality. One poor woman even has her uterus removed because the Nazi's decided she should share her fertility with other, less fertile women. Of course there's a lot of full-frontal nudity and sex on display, but it's never once arousing or even agreeable to watch. This clearly was an extremely low-budgeted production and I don't even think Bruno Mattei's cinematographers could afford to buy a couple of light bulbs. Too often you find yourself staring at an almost entirely black screen and even the exterior sequences suffer from bad lighting. There are numerous (and redundant) scenes in which people glorify the ideals of Hitler and his book "Mein Kampf", and I suppose this was done simply to increase the shock-value. The acting performances are atrocious, with the exception of Lorraine De Selle who's adequate as the doctor's assistant. In the 1980's, De Selle would also star in Bruno Mattei's absolute best movie called "Woman's Prison Massacre"; this time as a warden.

Camp Rosenhausen is the setting of this bleak nazisploitation by cheap horror auteur Mattei, where all manner of ghastly experiments are being conducted to cure homosexuality, thaw frozen aviators and reverse sterility all with the grand purpose of proliferating the Aryan race.

Italian leading lady Lorraine De Selle co-stars as the captive medical doctor forced to collaborate on the inhumane experiments, all the while trying to avoid the threat of the crematorium and the unwanted attentions of crazy Kurt (Attansio) a giggling, slobbering apparently brain-damaged servant used to sexually abuse the captives (and who also likes to indulge on the side, for which he's notorious).

Staccioli leads the cast playing a stern, malicious and especially sadistic commandant unwavering in his commitment to the perverse experiments even as it becomes clear that the Russian front will be overcome. Unlike his nazisploitation contemporaries, Staccioli's character is a lot less sympathetic even by their collectively low standards, and so whilst abhorrent, his character is consistent and believable.

The experiments are outrageous as intended, the overall film rather grim, Mattei exploits most of the typical genre themes from lesbian officers and girl-on-girl fights, to S&M and growling mutts (in this case German Shepherds) as he creates a vaguely watchable entry with better plot structure than most of its ilk, and a fitting conclusion that shouldn't disappoint. Definitely one of the better exponents of the genre.