[a.k.a.
Lorraine De Selle, Ivano Staccioli, Ria De Simone, Giovanni Attanasio
Should have included this one in last week's Nazipalooza, but it slipped my mind. It probably will again, sooner rather than later, as it's just your bog-standard death camp flick i.e. more an excuse for sadistic scenario of naked women being whipped and otherwise abused. A new batch arrive at camp Rosenhaus, which is overseen with an iron fist by Commander Wieker (Staccioli), as the scientists there carry out medical experiments to advance the Nazi war-machine, such as finding the best way to defrost airmen suffering from hypothermia (wrapping them in naked women is preferred over a blanket and a cup of cocoa) or transplanting uteruses from fertile women in to sterile ones. One of the new arrivals, Maria (De Selle), has a medical background, so is co-opted to act as an assistant to the camp physician, Dr. Meisel. Turns out he is none too happy with the situation, and organizes an escape for the pair and some of the prisoners. Not much of a spoiler to say this doesn't go well.
It's no Ilsa, which remains the pinnacle of the genre for its sheer absurdity and gleeful relish, not mention Dyanne Thorne. This brings nothing along those lines to the table, though matters are not helped by the ridiculously dark transfer, clearly ripped from Dutch VHS, as you can tell from the roll-bars and hardcoded Dutch subs. Shot back-to-back with Mettei's other Naziploitation flick, SS Girls, this is too grim in tone to provide significant entertainment. Though I was amused how, when two Dutch hookers failed to revive the frozen test subject, they brought out a French super-hooker instead. Should just have sent her to Churchill to end the war. There's also Wieker's pet retard - and, really, there's no other way to describe him - Kurt (Attanasio), who is exactly the kind of person the Third Reich should have been exterminating, drooling and pawing any woman within reach. Lob in the lesbian warden (De Simono) and, really, all the elements are here for a sleazily fun time, but Mattei's approach wrings just about all possible pleasure out of things. While slight credit is given for an impressively-downbeat ending, when even a naked catfight has all the appeal of a WW2 documentary on the History Channel, something is badly wrong.
D+
[June 2012]
