KZ9 - Lager di sterminio

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.

Women are held captive by the Nazis and tortured. One of the women is seen as highly skilled and is forced to help a doctor who is working on a way to cure homosexuality, as well as transplanting uteruses from fertile to barren women, among other things.

The version available from Fortune 5 DVD is grainy, and even though it is in English, it has (what appear to be) Dutch subtitles. This could obviously be improved: cleaner picture, and the original language spoken with English subtitles would be nice.

The film is written and directed by Bruno Mattei, who is probably best known for his zombie films ("Virus") and mediocre efforts in horror and sci-fi. This is not horror or sci-fi, but it could easily be called mediocre.

There are plenty of nude women showering and/or being molested to exploitatively feast your eyes on, if only the film was not so fuzzy. Also a few sex scenes with threesomes, under the guise of an experiment on heat transfer.

In one scene, actual film of concentration camp victims is shown, adding to the realism, but again in an exploitive and indecent manner.

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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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.

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.