La svastica nel ventre

Even as a hardened Italian trash aficionado, there are two kinds of Italian movies I usually avoid. One is the "mondo" movies that feature real animal (and occasionally human) slaughter. The other is the "Nazi sexploitation" films which are definitely in what John Water's would call "bad bad taste" as opposed to "good bad taste". I have seen a couple of the French Eurocine rip-offs like "Hell Train" and "Elsa, Fraulein of the SS", which were less extreme and much more laughably inept than the Italians films. I've also seen the two serious and arty (and pretentious) films--"The Night Porter" and "Salon Kitty"--which inspired the whole misbegotten Nazi sex "genre". I've even TRIED to watch a couple of the actual Nazi sex flicks like the one in the "Grindhouse Vol.1" DVD collection and the one that's on a disc with "Escape from a Woman's Prison", but I found them both way too vile and depressing and couldn't make it past scenes of the naked "Jewish" women dead in the shower/gas chamber covered with their own excrement (that's too much for me).

I made it through this movie though, which says something about it I guess. It is much better made than most of the others and a little more tasteful. The director Mario Caino is not a talentless hack like Bruno Mattei, Sergio Garrone,or some of the others who crapped these things out. It is a weird(and historically inaccurate) combination of Nazi brothel/"joy division" type film like "Salon Kitty" and a Nazi death camp type film like some of the others. The protagonist (Sirpa Lane)is Jewish, but working at a brothel. I'm not sure that anyone knows she's Jewish, but the movie seems rather confused on this point (one of her fellow brothel workers is named Goldberg and also presumably Jewish). The real Nazis were nowhere near as sex-obsessed as the Italians made them out to be and they certainly wouldn't have countenanced ANY Jewish women servicing German soldiers in brothels. Anyway, the heroine becomes involved in sadomasochistic relationship with the Nazi camp commander (after a highly contrived scene where he strips her naked and tries to entice his German shepherd to rape her, and she defends herself against man and dog with a conveniently handy bull-whip). As a result, she rises to become head madam of the brothel where her Jewishness THEN, of course, becomes a problem.

Sirpa Lane is much better than usual here, but that's not saying much if you've seen her in "The Beast", "The Beast in Space", etc. Cristina Borghi, who later became a fairly respected Italian actress, is also in the cast somewhere--she's listed in the credits as "naked prisoner", but that really doesn't narrow it down too much. There's a lot of female nudity and a mixture of consensual sex, non-consensual rape, and semi-consensual prostitution. A couple naked girls get tied up and flogged, but this movie lacks a lot of the gleeful torture scenes of the others. It's not really very erotic (if that's the intention),but neither is completely repulsive.

Let me first explain that I'm giving 7 stars for those folks who are fans of sexploitation flicks NOT serious film critics. This is a Nazi sexploitation flick and it has not only plenty of nudity but explicit, hardcore pornographic shots as well.

That said, let me point out why this is a far better film than Salon Kitty. The two films are different versions of what is essentially the same story: a young Jewish woman during the Nazis' reign is sexually abused and exploited by the Reich eventually becoming the madame of a brothel that caters to Nazi officers where she spies for either the Nazi higher ups or the Resistance depending on which film you watch.

Salon Kitty has lots of sets and costumes and clearly a much higher budget and better cinematography, but it is a silly film peopled by characters you don't care much about and whose thin plot falls apart completely by the end. Oh, and SK also has "freaks". You get to see naked oddities and I suppose that's a thrill for some folks. Generally what you get is a lot of half-naked women lounging around doing not much of anything.

Nazi Love Camp 27, on the other hand, has budget sets and costumes, bad dubbing, and obligatory sexploitation scenes like whippings, the lesbian warden and several hardcore penetration shots including a gang rape. One would think that this was a thinly-veiled excuse for a porno, and to some extent it is, but it actually has a fairly coherent plot and you truly DO care about the lead character and even others. Yes, the final scene is a bit over the top, but you're still interested in what is happening right up to the end of the film --- not just fast forwarding to the next naked part.

Sirpa Lane's performance is strong and due to whatever quirk of talent or fate, she manages to convey the horror and the poignancy of her character's struggles. This is not to say that this is a great film, again know what you're getting into -- but if you had to make a choice and see only one of these films, despite its deplorable title Nazi Love Camp 27 has much more to recommend it than just the sex in terms of character development and plot. Salon Kitty only has naked boobs and dwarfs and amputees in nicely appointed settings.

This is one of the more infamous of the countless Nazisploitation Italian films produced in the wake of Luchino Visconti's THE DAMNED (1969); actually, it's the only one I've watched thus far - though earlier this year I did catch up with Liliana Cavani's THE NIGHT PORTER (1974) but, like the Visconti film, that one is best termed as Art-house.

Still, for such a single-mindedly commercial effort, I was surprised by how effective this film was: after all, it was made by all-rounded professionals who had been in the business for some time - director Caiano (best-known, perhaps, for the Barbara Steele Gothic horror NIGHTMARE CASTLE aka THE FACELESS MONSTER [1965]) and screenwriter Gianfranco Clerici and composer Francesco De Masi (both Lucio Fulci collaborators). The lead role here is played by Sirpa Lane, with whom I was only familiar from Walerian Borowczyk's legendary THE BEAST (1975): as much as I love that film, I had always felt that her contribution was upstaged not just by the horny and furry titular creature but by the nominal lead of THE BEAST, Lisbeth Hummel. Therefore, I had no idea that she could actually act and, indeed, the whole film is anchored by her good central performance; discovered by Roger Vadim, she subsequently worked with a few other noted "Euro-Cult" film-makers - but eventually retired (after making only 10 films) and, sadly, died of AIDS at the young age of 44!

The plot sees Jewess Lane being imprisoned in a concentration camp (thus adding the 'Women-In-Prison' subgenre to the already heady mix for good measure - in fact, the film reminded me a lot of Jess Franco's contemporaneous ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN [1977]), where she's immediately raped and later selected by a lesbian warden (apparently a given in WIP films) to serve as a prostitute for the gratification of German soldiers on leave. About to be flogged for rejecting the advances of the warden, she attracts the attention of the Camp Commandant and eventually starts a sado-masochistic relationship with him (he frequently asks her to whip him, likes to exchange clothes with her and even wants Lane to pleasure his faithful alsation Axel - but the latter doesn't seem too keen on the idea and promptly attacks her)!!

The finale sees the Jewish girl elevated to the position of a madam in a Nazi whorehouse; the man she was in love with at the beginning of the film suddenly turns up at the establishment as a war hero - but it all ends in tragedy (though not before Lane, her Semitic origins exposed, jokes about Hitler's unemployed 'member'!). I have to say, though, that the gimmick adopted throughout of intercutting black-and-white stock footage with the main action was rather pointless because, although the events are clearly set in 1942, we are never told where all this is supposed to be happening so that said footage could be put into perspective!

I watched the film (which is still unavailable anywhere on DVD) via a DVD-R culled from an English-dubbed VHS edition; I don't know whether it's uncut as the editing seemed quite choppy at times - but the amount of violence and nudity on display was certainly profuse (the former pretty fake but the latter rather graphic, occasionally even stepping into hardcore-porn territory)...

Because of the unusual camera angles, this is one of the best and nastiest of Nazi exploitation flicks.

The problem with both IMDb *and* AMAZON is, they both keep showing this movie cover with Mercedes Cambridge that is *NOT* the Love Camp 27.

This has gone on for at least fifteen years, and I guess I would be shocked if I'm the first to notice. But I've read of nobody else noticing this. I actually bought the phony movie with this cover fifteen years or so ago, and immediately returned it because the movie is not LC27.

I found a mediocre DVD of the REAL Love Camp 27, and I would welcome a pristine copy if it does or will ever exist. Does anyone know? Thanx for any info in advance.

Sirpa Lane stars as Jew Hannah Meyer, whose idyllic life with her German boyfriend Klaus is interrupted by the madness that is war: Klaus is enlisted in the army while Hannah is rounded up and sent to become a prostitute in a 'joy camp'. Plucky Hannah resists her assigned fate and is eventually sentenced to execution, but is rescued by an SS Captain Kurt Von Stein, who admires her chutzpah and takes her to be his lover.

When Von Stein is tasked with operating a brothel for high ranking officers, he gives Hannah a new identity and makes her madam. Hannah plays along, realising it might be her only hope for survival, but fate intervenes, reuniting her with Klaus and spurring her on to fight back at those who have made her life hell…

Just when I think that I've seen all the sleazy Nazisploitation movies available, another one crawls its way out of the sewers, this one making an appearance on YouTube of all places, a fact that is made all the more remarkable given that it is one of the less camp examples of the genre (despite the inclusion of a lesbian commandant), a downbeat, more realistic effort replete with mean-spirited violence and X-rated sex scenes. With events based on real-life Nazi exploits ('joy divisions' really existed, as did experiments on creating a race of perfect Aryan children), the film is not just a good opportunity to ogle countless naked women, but also a harrowing reminder of the extreme evil that mankind is so often capable of.