SS Hell Camp
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.88 You Save: $9.07 (45%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.98 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of SS Hell Camp
Movie Review: No Hell Camp
Summary: 2 Stars
Another in the short list of Nazi exploitation pictures, "SS Hell Camp" is a crazy, plotless film. Those expecting to view scene after scene of Nazi atrocities will be bored as the film tries to be something it is not. The vast majority of the running time concerns a small group of partisans who are trying to free their villa from the Nazi invaders. The lesser section of the film is of an Ilsa like Nazi doctor and her apparent love of torture and strange experiments. Her primary scientific research focuses on a large deformed male who she supplies with women to rape and kill. It appears she has some belief that mating the women with this creature will produce an even better master race. For some reason, she becomes involved with an equally sadistic soldier whose duty is to find and kill the partisans. So, basically, the film becomes a low budget war movie with battle scenes and lots of shot up flailing bodies falling to the ground. The ending is also out of place with the rest of the film and makes little sense in the context of everything that has occurred prior. The movie was haphazardly shot as evidenced by one scene where the entire camera crew is clearly visible in the shadows. The dubbing is terrible and the "action" scenes are anything but. I gave "SS Hell Camp" two stars due to two scenes of torture and murder that I was not expecting, one concerning an infant. In all, far too much time is spent on things other than Nazi atrocities and none of that is very good. One last thing, there is no hell camp, its more of a basement, should have called the film "SS Hell Basement". View at your own risk.Movie Review: Two Stars For The Pubes
Summary: 2 Stars
When I was a kid, my parents sent me to a diabetic summer camp, and I usually tend to think of that as a kind of SS Hell Camp. Naturally I saw the film, SS Hell Camp, because I'm one of those weirdos who tends to like cheap, cruddy films that exploit one of the darkest(if not the darkest) moments in world history simply for violent thrills and sleazery.
But after viewing SS Hell Camp I realized that the diabetic summer camp wasn't so bad, and that I would have rather spent an hour and a half there again instead of watching this movie. As you can guess, it takes it's inspiration from Ilsa-She Wolf of the SS. A loony Nazi scientist chick is torturing women in the name of medical science. She's created some kind of terminally horny, hairy dude she keeps in a cage, and every now and again she throws an unfortunate victim in with him. He proceeds to savagely do his business until the woman expires. These scenes become rather long and boring, believe it or not. It only seemed to pep up a bit when the horny beast-man decides to eat the pubic hair of one of the girls. But it is rather sad when a scene like that is the highlight of the film. The rest of the movie is devoted to some partisans who are plotting to bring the evil doctor chick down.
Mother Mary and Joseph, is this boring!
I gotta tell ya, a flick like this shouldn't be boring, there's no excuse. So I gotta say, SS Hell Camp is one to avoid. You're better off giving Ilsa another go.
Movie Review: Awful, awful, awful
Summary: 1 Stars
My god, this film is terrible!! One of the hardest films to track down in the UK "video nasties" scare, there are instances even now of this selling for £200-£300 on eBay in it's original VHS video format ...!! Unfortunately this film being rare had nothing whatsoever to do with it being any good.
"The Beast in Heat" (to use its more famous title) seems to be a low budget clone of "Ilsa She Wolf of the SS", but without a single ounce of the talent or budget present in any aspect of even that film's production. It's basically a very boring war movie in which we watch grumpy (and very obviously un-German looking) Nazi soldiers trade insults with civilians and members of resistance groups in some anonymous European village. Every so often some very obvious stock footage kicks in of planes and tanks attacking, which, apart from being obviously filmed completely seperately, is also in a different aspect ratio to the main feature footage!! Yes it's that bad! This dull state of affairs drags on for 85% of the films running time and is enough to have you reaching for the fast forward after just a few minutes. Everything is awful - the acting, the script, the dubbing, the sets...one hilarious moment occurs early on when a railway bridge is blown up. I guarantee you've never seen anything so lame. I swear they had the camera zoom in wildly on a STILL PICTURE of a very small detonation and even added extra hand drawn flame effects directly onto the celluloid. If it wasn't for the unbearable tedium of the rest of the film, you could at least spend a few happy minutes laughing at this type of stuff.
But of course, somewhere in this mess lurks the reason for the film's true appeal - the scenes of SS officers torturing naked women prisoners. I'll give this film one (just ONE!) compliment - it does star a very foxy leading lady in the shape of Macha Magall, as the sadistic "Doctor Kratsch". Sadly no match for Dyanne "Ilsa" Thorne in the charisma stakes, but it's impossible to tell if she's any good as an actress due to the inept dubbing she is saddled with (along with the rest of tha cast).
That aside, the "cruel" experiments that she is in charge of are real bottom-of-the-barrel trash. Making most shock value in the cheapest way possible is easy - have everyone naked. Right, what next? Well from there the flaws really start to pile up. The central "experiment" of the film is a sex-crazed dwarf that Dr Kratsch keeps in a cage, and whom she occasionally whips up into a frenzy of over-acting by throwing a naked woman in with him. What follows each instance of this is a montage of the worst possible face-pulling and general pantomime style rape attacking from the dwarf, and plenty of screaming from the hapless naked actress while she tries to look as though she is being overpowered by the crazed mini monster (rather difficult, as he is so small!) The camera zooms in wildly on splashes of too-red tomato sauce being liberally spashed about, as the beast carries out his assault. In one sequence, the dwarf even ups the outrage stakes by lifting his cross-eyed face from woman's lap to show a mouthfull of torn-out bloodied hair...ugh! Don't worry, there's not even a hint of realism to any of this. All the while, Dr Kratsch and her attending guards watch silently, occasionally licking their lips in apparent arousal at the gruesome sight (I don't know where all the unusable footage of them laughing their heads off is, but there must be loads of it).
Realism fares no better in other scenes as still more naked prisoners are tortured, eaten alive by rats (yes they are gerbils), or have stuck-on fingernails pulled out, The dubbing in these scenes is the worst synched dialogue you have ever seen. "Stop it...you're hurting me..." the soundtrack burbles while a bored looking actress's lips move in completely unconnected directions. Even throwing a baby in the air for rifle target practise or shooting a naked woman directly between the legs can't raise a gasp with production values as low as these.
Due to the sparse placement of the torture scenes within the rest of the generally boring war and resistance action, it's rare for anyone to manage the feat of sitting through this rubbish to the bitter end, so should you fail, I'm sure you can guess the well deserved fate that awaits our cruel SS lady doctor...have a guess where she ends up. Sadly it's presented very half heartedly...you'll be only too happy to see the end of the film roll up on your TV. To realise that such a waste of space as this has been given a DVD release is more entertaining than actually watching the thing. They could at least have kept the original cover ( a hint of which can be seen in the lower left corner of the sleeve), it was a masterpiece of trash cinema promotion.
The irony is that the British politicians and press who campaigned for films like these to be banned have ultimately succeeded in prolonging their shelf life far beyond that which the films deserve. This should go back to the obscurity in which it belongs.
Movie Review: Totally stupid - not even so bad it's good.
Summary: 1 Stars
Ok..where to start with this little 'gem'. Like many I bought this movie based on it's reputation and the fact that it had been banned in the UK for years. On viewing it I really don't see what all the fuss was about. It is quite possibly the worst film I've ever seen.
The story centres around the scientific exploits of degenerate Nazi Scientist Dr Ellen Krast (the stunning looking Macha Magall. In fact the ONLY thing this film has going for it is that most of the female characters are attractive. And nude a lot of the time) who believes that she has created the perfect 'human being' who will in turn lead to a master race. In reality the perfect 'human being' is a short, squat, hairy neandrethal (played by Sal Boris)who looks about as scary as Big Bird and as perfect an example of the human being as Homer Simpson. Krast's attempts to 'create' the 'master race' from the loins of her creation are somewhat hampered by the fact that the local peasant women she throws to her creature are raped and killed by it. Instead of being a little peeved at this turn of events, Krast seems to overlook it as of but minor insignificance. Why create it in the first place then, the viewer may ask? Why indeed?
The bulk of the film however revolves around the ludicrous, and ultimately extremely tedious, exploits of a group of Partisans trying to overthrow the Nazi occupation of the village and ultimately storm the villa where Krast and her minions are torturing their kinfolk. The 'action' sequences between the Partisans and their German foes are laughable. The director Batzella has literally culled entire segments from his previous movies AND melded it with stock war footage and edited it into SS Hell Camp. The result? You'll probably laugh at it. Particularly when it becomes so blatantly obvious (terrain and personnel magically change and then change back again). You couldn't make this stuff up.
Brad Harris, who plays the local Priest, has the best line in the whole film when he wishes the Partisans well and comments;
"Trust in the Lord. He's the best!"
No wonder he remains uncredited in this film. Rumour has it that the whole cast wanted their names wiped from this movie and it's not hard to see why.
The infamous torture scenes are neither disgusting nor shocking. I've seen worse in Hammer horror movies. The gratuitous male and female nudity may have some reason to do with it's ban but again Bertolucci's Last Tango has a fair amount. The only reasons I can think for a ban are 1) The genre (Nazi Exploitation) and 2. the Concept (Beast rapes women. Although to echo the sentiments of another reviewer this looks more like a bout of (badly choreographed)wrestling than anything else.). Add to this the laughable faces Sal Boris pulls when doing this and it really DOES look like a WWE Bout!
Btw when it gets to the torture scenes have a look for one clip where it shows a naked woman tied down having 'rats' chow down on her insides. Cool huh? Maybe if the 'Rats' weren't really Guinea Pigs or Gerbils!!!!!!!!
And if that doesn't sum up the state of this movie I don't know what will.
Utter dreck.
Movie Review: Difficult to imagine how this could have been any worse.
Summary: 1 Stars
Let me preface this by saying that I bought this film fully aware of the fact that it would be a horrible exercise in exploitation. I harbored no illusions that led me to believe that I was possibly buying a forgotten Bergman masterpiece or a classic John Ford western. I enjoy a good bad movie every now and then, so I figured that this had to be one of the best of the worst. Well, I was half right.
To refer to "SS Hell Camp" as "a" movie is somewhat misleading. In actuality, "SS Hell Camp" is two different movies that happen to be on the same DVD and through an accident of editing, have become inexplicably intertwined in one package. One movie is about a group of Italian partisan rebels in the German-occupied Republic of Salo in the last days of World War II. They sabotage German railroad shipments and work to actively resist the Waffen SS and Wehrmacht detachments in the area. The other movie is about a sadistic bisexual nymphomaniac named Dr. Ellen Kratsch who runs a sexual torture dungeon under the guise of "science." Experiments include the genetic engineering of a bestial naked Italian man with a unibrow who violently has his way with captured females. With a name like "SS Hell Camp," which of these two movies do you want to see?
Either way, it's more of the former than the latter, and is therefore quite slow-moving and only occasionally funny. (My definition of "funny" being "unintentionally hilarious.") There's nothing particularly 'graphic' here other than female nudity and fake blood (neither of which is done very well). The highlight of this movie is a scene in which the country priest remarks "put your trust in the Lord: he's the best!" For a movie that bills itself as being unspeakably evil and extreme, that's not a very good sign. In a movie as bad as this one, it's difficult to know who to root for. The acting is so bad among the partisans that I frequently found myself hoping that Dr. Kratsch would capture them and kill them and then a stray bomb would destroy the dungeon, killing Dr. Kratsch and her underlings. That way, everyone would be wiped out. Even still, I'm not sure I'd have gotten any satisfaction from this movie beyond the feeling of finality that comes with knowing everyone is dead.
If you're looking for a good non-prescription sleep aid, this movie will do wonders for you. If, on the other hand, you're looking for something that's so-bad-it's-good owing to its tastelessness, violence, and sexual perversion, you're out of luck here.