“Entertaining, sometimes brilliantly funny…” Chortle.co.uk
For loyal subscribers, the second BONUS EPISODE – an open discussion, full of facts, figures, flops and favourites as we join hands and bank accounts and put on our best auditing trousers to ask the biggest question. Why are so many of the films on the DPP list such unwatchable crap?
If lavish quality productions like ‘Cleopatra’ and ‘Dr No’ were possible in 1963…what the hell is going on with the wigs in ‘Blood Feast’? If technology can bring ‘The Birds’ and ‘The Great Escape’ to the big screen convincingly… why can you see boom microphones dropping into shot during The Ghastly Ones?
So we’re opening the curtains and letting in some daylight on the bad scripts, wobbly cameras, corny stories, wooden acting, unlit scenes, inaudible dialogue, shoddy titles and crackly music. Gory is one thing, sure. Gruesome is another. Shocking and sleazy? Why not. But often it’s the appalling amateur production values that are the most traumatising part of these tapes and have us reaching for the remote.
Comedian, novelist and pub quiz host Richard Asplin takes you through stories and stats of production costs, budgets, financing, schedules and investments of the low-budget indie movies we’re ‘enjoying’ to unearth why you could have made and marketed ‘The Evil Dead’ from the leftover coins in the coffee machine on the backlot of ‘Avenger’s Endgame’…
Press play…if you dare…
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph.
Well it couldn’t stay fun for long. On the flip side of the silly splattery slapstick, the movie monsters, fake blood and prosthetics…this. The first true ‘exploitation’ in our ‘exploration’.
A nasty little exercise in soft core women-in-prison unpleasantness, the movie that launched the thankfully short-lived nazisploitation trend, from the director of Mondo Bizarro, Love Is A 4 Letter Word and Hollywood’s World Of Flesh. This early effort virtually created this unpleasant Women In Prison genre of exploitation picture, whihc brought us 1971s Women in Cages and 72s The Big Bird Cage both giving the world an early glimpse of the legendary Pam “Foxy Brown” Grier.
WHO are the two brave women sent to enemy territory to be picked up and imprisoned?
WHAT is the weapons-grade secret they have been sent to retrieve from poor Martha Grossman?
HAS this entire piece of nonsense really been shot on one cardboard set over a weekend?
HOW MANY times can they claim this is a true story shot on location when it clearly is snuffy titillating drivel knocked up by a bored theatre group?
HONESTLY – the German Shepherd is the only watchable thing in it. And he still looks like a wrong ‘un.
God bless the BBFC who got rid of this forever. If you want to know how and why, join me for an adults only edition of Lets Get The Banned Back Together – Episode 5. LOVE CAMP 7
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph.
“Entertaining, sometimes brilliantly funny…” Chortle.co.uk
Oh he’s a mad doctor all right. Not like your usual furious GP. He’s not banging on about NHS cuts, Health Secretary appointments or Covid Mask policies. He’s mad…with power!
A year after one Romero set the horror bar high with Night Of The Living Dead, his namesake lowers it a good foot and a half with this Philippines jungle shocker!
WHY did a young boy bleed green blood and turn insane and drown himself…only to turn up 5 years later?
WHY do the dates on Dom Ramon’s coffin not tally with the dates on the letters he sent his son?
And can you REALLY base a whole movie on a monster clearly created with Sellotape and lettuce?
Comedian, novelist and pub quiz host Richard Asplin takes you kill by kill through a spoilerific romp through the gravestones, ghouls and gore in episode 4 of this exploration into all the horror movies your government, your teachers and your parents NEVER wanted you to see!
Press play…if you dare…
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph
Somehow from the same year as The Ghastly Ones, we – at last – discover what can happen when a skilful young director with high ideas meets offal-chewing ghouls with a low budget… the legendary NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD!
WHO is the monstrous man in the graveyard who attacks and eats young Johnny?
WHAT HAS BECOME of the owners of the abandoned house that hides corpses and rifles?
WILL the brave, bickering, brutal survivors get out alive as corpses begin to rise from the grave?
And HOW did George A Romero terrify a generation with exploding trucks, chicken-chewing children and one of the first black heroes in modern movies?
Comedian, novelist and pub quiz host Richard Asplin takes you kill by kill through a spoilerific romp through the gravestones, ghouls and gore in a feature length episode 3 of this exploration into all the horror movies your government, your teachers and your parents NEVER wanted you to see!
Press play…if you dare…
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph.
Hello Ban Fans! Its me, your horror host Richard Asplin. Just dropping by for a moment to offer you a free glimpse into the first “XXX-Rated Extras” “Bonus Episode. This 50 minute feature length tour is a time-travelling spin full of quotes, re-enactments, trailers, and tribunals – telling the story of how the Video Nasty moral panic of the early eighties came about.
Key players, key movies – all from the comfort of a time-travelling Delorean. The full show will be available exclusively for subscribers – a club you can join via Patron or Apple Podcasts.
Next up, we fast forward 5 years to a shocking tale of whipping, wills, wigs and wickedness. It’s 1968’s BLOOD RITES! Aka THE GHASTLY ONES!
WHY have three couples received a spooky invitation to the old Crenshaw House?
WHY is the groundskeeper Colin kept chained in the basement?
WHO is painting bloody crosses and impaling guests on pitchforks?
And how did director Andy Milligan get the whole shoddy shambles in the can in 5 days?
Comedian, novelist and pub quiz host Richard Asplin takes you kill by kill through a spoilerific romp around the cardboard and crinoline of gothic horrors in episode 2 of this exploration into all the horror movies your government, your teachers and your parents NEVER wanted you to see!
Press play…if you dare…
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph.
Let’s Get The Banned Back Together – Episode One – Blood Feast (1963)
We begin our treacherous trawl through DPP’s list of forbidden films and corrupting cassettes with a deep dive into the oldest film on the list. Herschell Gordon Lewis’s BLOOD FEAST.
WHY is humble Miami caterer Fuad Ramses so keen to take on this order for a 18th birthday party? WHO is the killer removing eyes, legs, brains and tongues from nubile Playmate models? And HOW did anyone think this 67-minutes of gory, titillating, cannibalistic 60’s exploitation guff was going to deprave the British public?
Comedian, novelist and pub quiz host Richard Asplin takes you kill by kill through a spoilerific romp across Miami in the first episode of this exploration into all the horror movies your government, your teachers and your parents NEVER wanted you to see!
Press play…if you dare…
Richard Asplin is an award nominated novelist, comedian, pub quiz host and has written for The Guardian and The Sunday Telegraph.
Who made it? Directed by Rolf Thiele | Written by Jacob Grimm / Wilhemlm Grimm (hardly) / Peter Laregh / Rolf Thiele | Director Of Photography Wolf Wirth | Special Effects (not credited)
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching… Midnight Cowboy | True Grit | On Her Majesty’s Secret Service | Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
The story, that that there is, of “The New Adventures Of Snow White,” is something of a mish-mash of a portmanteau of a fable of an episodic rambling chapter play. It brings together familiar tropes and tales from the brothers Grimm (Cinderella, poison apples, dwarves, handsome princes, lute playing folderol and lush arborial settings) and mixes it awkwardly with a cavalcade of painfully exhausting Chuckle-Brothers style knockabout gaffes and soft-focus topless Euro-porn smut.
If you require more detail than this, here we go…
We begin with our two fools. Bickering and falling over as they wend their way o’er German hill and dale like a couple of panto idiots. If you were to look up “clot” in an illustrated dictionary, it would be these two gurning twits. They act as our Greek Chorus of sorts as their mishaps and misadventures act as sort of chapter headings for each “Grimm” section.
Next up, to an odd iPod shuffle of Krauty country twang guitar and Hendrixy wah-wah meets jazz piano, we meet the first of our fairy tale heroines, putting the “tit” in “titular,” Snow White. Like almost all the women in the plot, she is running, all nubile and perky, topless through some fields. Camera gets very smudgy and soft-focus. If she was eating a Flake or washing her hair with Timotei, you wouldn’t be surprised.
Running as she is, a talking dog (honestly), a talking bear (yep) and an enchanted frog (also big on the chat) all ask if she wants to have sex. She declines and continues to lollop and gambol in soft focus.
Meanwhile (there’s a lot of “meanwhile” in this), a wicked witch or queen desires to have her killed. “Mirror mirror on the wall,” etc. dubbed over from the German into shouty Carry-On lingo. She rubs her nipples. Think Jonathan Ross’s wife Jane Goldman being extra vampy.
Dwarves suddenly appear in the forest. Seven of them. From magic toadstools in the shape of penises. Hendrix continues. Snow White’s top falls off. The Goodies seem to take over the soundtrack, having a crack at some bluegrass. Snow White shacks up with the dwarves and hangs out their tiny underpants on the line.
Meanwhile (told you) we enter a castle to find everyone splayed out, asleep (either from reading the script or from an enchanted spell, it’s not clear). They are of course all mediaevally in their garb, most of which is on the floor. They are largely nude. Our two dolts both kiss a sleeping beauty (possibly THE sleeping beauty) and she awakes! With her boobs out! And she has to marry one of the dolts, according to the king. There is an argument about some geese. The music goes all Dukes of Hazzard and we cut to the Ugly Stepsisters in a carriage. I can’t recall why. But they’ll be back towards the end when there’s some business with a slipper.
Its difficult in recollection to link a lot of what happens in these laederhosen-ladled shoutily dubbed vignettes, as plot seems to take second, third or even a fourth place to more nubile soft-focus foresty boob jiggling. But my notes tell me we are now in an obligatory cabin. Lumberjack types abound. Another nameless nubile European woman in her late teens is chased about with plenty of wobbly upskirt shots of thighs and gussets. In order, it would appear, to add some unwanted violence to the unwanted titillation, we find mutiliated and dismembered limbs strewn about the cabin. I assume this was the last girl to be caught in the cabin cocking about among the wine barrels.
We haven’t had a meanwhile in a while, so let’s have one of those. More wah-wah, more-soft focus, more silly men falling over, until we are back with the King. He has “decreed” as Kings must in such Grimm Fayre, that all the virgins in the village must congregate so his young son may choose a wife.
This is cause for maidens the town over to gather themselves in soapy water and splash about a bit, nips akimbo, to prepare for the ball. We see some 1970s pubes flash in a mirror for a moment. The Evil Queen or Wicked Witch (it’s not important) decides to cast a spell or two and our two clumsy dolts become doves. That can talk. Sleeping Beauty, now awoken, is unable to find any man to fall in love with her (or at least, have soft-focus waist-up sex). Even the bear and the dog and frog don’t fancy her much. It’s not clear why.
The doves tell Cinderella to dance about a bit in slo-mo and a magical party frock will appear. She does so. Her clothes fall off. She continues to run about waftily. A stage-hand off screen lobs a floaty cotton number at her. She is naturally aghast and enchanted.
The witch offers Snow White (we do seem, at this point, to be in about 9 fairy tales at once) an apple. Snow White eats the apple. And then very very slowly collapses. Very slowly. As she is nude and standing on a cold rock and wants to be comfy and they haven’t got a stunt team.
The Evil Queen finds this most satisfying and legs it away, cackling. Oh, and taking her clothes off and flinging them into a hedge.
Then, for some respite from all the nipples, pale hips, doltish knockaboutery and buckly shoe business, it all gets a bit po-faced and some actual olde timey dancing happens in court. Much bowing and curtesying and fans and pomp. A flute. Maybe a tambor. And the villagers have lusty looks over velvet pantaloons.
At which point the party is over, it seems. Midnight or something. Cinderalla drops a shoe and everyone departs. It’s not clear why. Or I might have nodded off.
(by the way – if any of this is making sense, or indeed piquing your interest, or making you ponder that this might be a jolly harmless romp, you have misunderstood).
Then we rush towards the finish as the camera crew are losing light, losing film, losing money and losing most of the tired audience
The ugly sisters try and get into the slipper, as is de rugeur in this sort of sketch. And in a nod to the original Grimm story, cut each other’s toes off to jam their feet in the footwear. Much ketchup bloody and waxy fake toes.
Snow White is layeth in a clear Perspex box so she resembles just so much sushi. Pouting occurs by the Dwarves. They are not short of pouts. They are however, short.
Someone gets on a horse (by now it’s so tiring, so soft focus, so pale and wan and the sunlight fades between the autumnal fronds and the wiry pubes, it’s difficult to tell who or what. Or indeed why). But there’s some bouncy naked horse riding. Can’t be sure if they have sex on the horse. Or are just cocking about a bit. The sound track gets heavy on the wah wah.
The Prince waves a magic flower and lots of nature appears to transform. Into nude women. The 2 doves return to their natural state as 2 over-worked seaside children’s entertainers. The bear turns into the beardy man from the cover of The Joy Of Sex. The magic flower opens the box of sushi and Cinderella clambers out.
It now goes full “rolley-oh-doh” with the madrigal nonsense like very, very early Pink Floyd when they sung about goblins and pixies. Some heavy petting in a hedge.
And then it all wraps up with a hilarious comedy misunderstanding about some rocks, they burst into song and over the fields they go, into the sunset. Like that bit at the end of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade. Except nude and giggling in German.
I think that’s it.
Is it any good?
Well who am I to judge. It’s a sex comedy. Not that it’s sexy. Or noticeably comedic. Perhaps the jokes are funnier in German. Or the boobs are sexier.
Sex comedies happened much when I did. That is to say, the nineteen seventies.
There have always been comedies and farces, be they Shakespearean, Chaucerian or Hogarthian, that rely largely on a man trying to get his end away, with hilariously disasterous results. Or lusty maidens and coy virgins and a variety of misunderstandings causing people to pop up in the wrong bed, in the wrong clothes, with the wrong partner. And we invented the word “bawdy” to cover most of these.
But it wasn’t until the 60s and the heyday of the 70s that the idea of popping along to the movies on a Friday night to catch some “cheeky” soft-core romping against the backdrop of sitcom silliness and swanee whistles really happened.
Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film PostersOriginal Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters
It saved the industry, some say. In the UK, as the British public began to settle in to cheaper and cheaper colour television sets to take in their daily dose of soaps, game shows, cop shoot-outs and quizzes, audiences began to stay home from their local cinemas. The flickering delights of the Roxy, the Odeon, the Gaumont and the Picture Palace lay empty on suburban Saturday nights. What was out in the rainy streets that you couldn’t get at home for free? And in the warm?
Well sex. Thanks to the BBC and the like having very strict guidelines on pre- and post-watershed content, the idea that dads could get a bit of cheeky tits and ass on television was zero. Maybe a bikini in a James Bond film? Maybe a daring cleavage on ITVs Miss World contest? But it was never going to be racier than that. The cinema however? Well, things could go a lot further. Disguised as “documentaries” or the catch-all “nature film,” much could be seen on the screen that would never been seen on the beeb. This all pre-VHS of course.
And for some reason, the silly, jokey, slap n tickly sitcom set-ups made the soft-core fumbles and bra-twanging rutting seem so much more harmless. A McGill seaside postcard rather than anything “sinister.”
So the 1970s saw an influx of these daft films. Too sexy to be funny, too silly to be sexy – falling between two stools and just ending up curios for the agitated, horny, drunk and bored.
When VHS, and un-regulated VHS at that, reared its head in the 1980s and suddenly ANYTHING was possible, the appetite for Timmy Lee’s Confessions and Eskimo Nell’s Igloo vanished.
Which leaves us with things like The New Adventures Of Snow White.
There is nothing sexy about this movie at all. It’s not porn. The woman are topless, yes. There is a little full frontal. A pale bum may wiggle. But it’s Benny Hill silly. Kenny Everett silly. Two Ronnies cheeky. Nothing raunchier, pervier, grottier or seedier than a Confessions’ movie, Keep It Up Jack or Beneath The Valley Of The Supervixens.
The jokes are none. Unless twits knocking themselves on the head, a frog asking “you ‘ad some?” or a toadstool looking slightly similar to a penis is what gets you guffawing. At one point the innocent girl tries to milk a cow. But doesn’t know how. So sucks it off instead. Sort of. Cue the bufoons scratching their heads and going cross-eyed like The Chuckle Brothers.
For reference, if you are – like me – new to this sort of motion picture and want to know what you’re missing, it’s Panto. Silly Panto. Or perhaps one of those “adult” pantos that drunk dads and darts teams go to. With Jim Davidson and Charlie Drake. You know the sort. That.
The cinematography is pure 70s slush. Over exposed and full of lens flare, the colours are sickly. Everything is shot in what one supposes is “dreamy” soft focus, but is in fact just “not in focus.”
So. Imagine renting a 4th generation VHS tape off a weird man in a pub. It’s an adult pantomime called something like “Pussy In Boots” or “Cock Whittington” or “Hansel & Genital” or something. It stars the Chuckle Brothers, Linda Lusardi, two girls from Hollyoaks and Brian Blessed. The sound is crackly. The lighting is poor. They chase women about shouting “to me! To you!! For about 90mins.
Yep. That’s about the size of it. Oo’er missus.
Nasty?
Nasty? Well I mean it’s lewd. In a bums and bushes sort of way. But as I say, no more than you’d get from the saucy postcard flared corduroy antics of Robin Asquith. But there is that one odd bit, where for reasons passing understanding (ratings and shock I assume) it goes all blood thirsty and rapey. Limbs being severed, knives flashing about, waxy fake arms and legs full of offal spilling out over the farmhouse table. And the ugly sisters really do give their toes a right good spurty, ketchup hacking when trying to get into the size 4s. Which is a little “uurgh!” and giggly. Close up, it’s grosser than Casualty. But so, so much less convincing as to make you wonder why they bothered. I suppose it helped, being able to describe it as having “sex and violence” when really it has neither worth the rental fee.
Ban worthy?
No. If the title might make a young parent pop it in the VCR for their toddlers to watch after Paw Patrol and Bob The Builder, then yes. Because it’s a rompy bum-filled double-entendre fest full of sex starved dwarves and horny toads. But the cover of the VHS is so painfully “cheeky” or “saucy” it might as well giggle like Babs Windsor when you open the case or blow a raspberry when you pop it out of the machine. You can’t ban something for being dumb.
What does it remind me of?
It’s a bit Dogtanian and his 3 Muskerhounds, it’s a bit Benny Hill, it’s very Flake advert, it’s got a touch of Shrek with the fairy-tale mash-up. And its as sexy as the underwear pages or shower-installation pages of a 1976 Kays Catalogue.
Where to find it?
For some reason, YouTube has it. I know. Must tell you something. Give it a whirl. Then give it a pause. Then give it a miss. As unfunny as Mr Tumble, as sexy as Are You Being Served. In German. And all done in an old fashioned way with swords and horses and magic.
Well to be honest, summarising this motion picture effort for this blog is –and I’m going out on a (naked) limb here – probably the most writing this movie has been involved with. And I’m including the script, the receipts for Swatika flags and hiring an angry dog to bark at nude Jewish ladies.
Yep. It’s that sort of movie. So, if we must – and as I say, I watch these to stop you having to do so – here’s the “plot” of Love Camp 7.
So we start in the present day (1969) where a grey haired Britishy business man is “consummating” a deal with some American. Or just “closing” a deal, as humans say. Post contract chit-chat leads to talk of the WW2 map framed on the wall, at which point Mr Britishy Businesschap gets all misty eyed and the film is a narrated flashback (“fleshback? Ed) of his derring war “story.”
The 1940s. We’re in a bunker of some sort. Army paraphanalia from a local theatrical-prop store all about the place. Some top brass with a “Mind Your Language” school of accents are talking about a a daring rescue plot.
A scientist with some kind of plans for some kind of super rocket/jet thing has been captured. Or possible killed. It doesn’t matter which. His assistant, one Martha Grossman, has been captured and sent to a Nazi “Love Camp.” Essentially a French brothel type concentration-camp type torture chamber type barracks where tired and weary Nazi officers can take their furlough to relax and have violent whippy sadomasochistic angry slappy sex with naked female Prisoners Of War.
As you do.
Martha (not to be confused with Marcie – see below) has all the knowledge they need to build the rocket. If only they could somehow infiltrate the Love Camp and get all the details…
Cue the arrival of two female officers who have been trained to have eidetic memories and remember everything they hear and read. These two will be parachuted behind enemy lines, picked up, hopefully sent to Love Camp 7 where they can get all the info from Martha before the Allies burst in to rescue them after 3 days.
Okay, so far, so Where Eagles Dare. The bulk of what remains of the movie revolves around the women being brought to the camp, hosed down by a barky, overacting black uniformed SS-Type Commander and his troops while an Alsatian barks at their screams.
Picture Barry Kripky from the Big Bag theory. But fatter. And a peverted Nazi. And a comedy German accent.A violently abusive medical examination follows by a brusque Sapphic doctor (all naked screaming and plunging fists and wobbly cameras). In fact “Naked screaming, wobbly camera” would have been a much more fitting title for this piece of exploitative drivel.
Off to the dorm room where the other semi-naked prostitutes lounge around in open-chested boiler suits on iron bunk beds. One of the “spies” is being a bit “difficult” in the whole “let us beat and slap and violate you for kicks” game so is hung by her wrists by the ceiling. She screams and sobs a lot.
Now some Nazi guards come in like a cattle market and choose their “lovers.” Not much like a cattle market, to be honest. Unless when you get your dairy herd home you strip to the waist and rape it on an iron bed while it whimpers and twists and sobs.
One nazi (the names couldn’t be less important. Let’s call him Coburn, as he looks a little like a young James), gets all emotional and complains that he’s only doing his job. That he’s not a big fan of the slappy rapey boob-mangling humiliation that seems a prerequisite for is role. A spy thinks this is lovely of him to be so sensitive. I mean a high-ranking member of the Maser Race. But with a “soft side.” So they, of course, have proper sex. (This tender boob-noshing and gasping cut “cleverly” between as we watch the other spy get a teary assault. See what they did there? No, me neither).
Next up, Coburn goes to “Kwipky” in order to prove what a “nice” Facist he is and requests a transfer. SS Kwipky laughs this off and forces Coburn to go and work as an assistant in the gruesome “medical lab” where hard working lesbian doctors are trying to perfect sterility by pumping foam and gunk up women’s bits. Coburn is less than thrilled.
Oh I almost forgot. The spy tied to the ceiling? Remember her? She’s eventually cut down and made to crawl naked on the floor and like the Commandants boots, which she does with a lack of gusto. And then taken to a torture room to be stripped (again) and whipped.
Oh what next. And how much more of this awfulness is there?
Well the woman have all been “promoted” to see only senior officers. So they are marched tediously into another room (clearly the same set, just with some hardboard put up) where they are then assaulted and fondled by men in sharper Nazi gear. All caps and whips.
By the way, in case one was to accidentally mistake this pseudo “based on true events” harrowing “documentary” for just gratuitous “uniforms and boobs” tittiliating tripe, Mr Businesschap provides a clipped narration throughout. Like a young David Attenborough. But shit.
Where were we? Sadly still here. A tippity top Nazi SS chap then turns up for no reason, criticises SS Qwipky for his shabby treatment of his officers and promptly asks for recompemce. In the guise, natch, of 4 of the women stripping off and sort of half-heartedly lezzing up with ineffectual moans and gropes.
Meawhile (exciting isn’t it) spy number one is then left alone with…you guessed it, what are the chances, Martha Grossman! Martha spills the beans about the rocket/jet plans thing.
And then something amazing and unexpected happens! Seriously!
The YouTube channel I was watching this on (or streaming service or swastikas-and-sluts-on-demand.com site or whatever the fuck it was) suddenly had an audio problem. This was the most stimulating part of the whole tedious 96 minutes. So I was unable to hear the sparkling THX crystal clear sharpness of phrases such as “Jawohl” and “uhhhh! Ooooh!” and “you like zat you bitch?!” which was a shame. The woman who uploaded it (I assume it was a woman) just looped the audio track over so we got the last 15mins of pictures, mixed with the first 15 minutes of sound again. So there we are, watching lingerie draped waifs fake a mixture of bored and violent intercourse with some laxidasical Nazi officers in a sort of “compilation orgy best-of/Now That’s What I Call Munich” repellent romp, while we hear the title music and Mr Britishy Businessman seal his business deal again.
So I’m going to have to surmise the ending based on visuals alone.
The women plan to seduce all the generals and catch them off guard with their trousers down. At which point the allies can burst in to rescue them. And then, in some feeble “I Spit On Your Grave” justice/comeuppance, the women can despatch all the Nazis with beatings, shootings and a lovely skewering in the neck with a corkscrew. Lots of flailing and blood. Oh and boobs bouncing about.
They escape.
We cut back to the prologue where the old Brit is ending his hilarious tale of escapes, spies, intruige and violent genital violation. He leaves, gets in cab to go home. Meets up with his wife…who is one of the spies in old-age make-up. See! He married one of them! So, y’know, it sort of worked out. Except obviously this is all just revolting.
I’m going to stop now.
Is it any good?
Are we grading on a curve? Because “is it any good,” is a rather difficult question. Is it a good film, well crafted, performed, produced and displayed, demonstrating creativity and storytelling at its cinematic best? No. No it fucking isn’t.
Is it a harmlessly titillating pervy bit of soft-core boobs and whips nonsense designed to appeal to a certain type of lonely WW2 buff who has 96mins to kill and can get in a quick wank before his mum knocks on the door? Well no, it’s not really that either.
Is it a fine example of something called “Nazisploitation,” which Wikipedia calls “… a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the women in prison formula, only relocated to a concentration camp, extermination camp, or Nazi brothel, and with an added emphasis on sadism, gore, and degradation…”
Sigh. Yes, I suppose it is.
I was always slightly confused by films in the “exploitation” genre as a lad. Your John Waters style schlockers being tagged with this label. What was being “exploited” exactly? The cast? The crew? The audience? And when it came to genre offshoots with specific themes, such as “Blaxspolitation” and of course, “Nunspliotation” again, I was scratching my head. Is black culture being exploited to make this movie? Are nuns?
Reading a little further, it seems – and I’m sure there are ciniphiles and cineasts with their own definition – “exploitation” cinema simply exploits whatever is currently en vogue, to make some quick cash.
Take a newspaper fear, such as ASBOS and Hoodies, for example. Scaremongering stories of feral knife-weilding skate-boarding tearaways and ruffians fill the newspaper. The Daily Mail has a hysterical Op Ed about the state of the nation.
Quick thinking film makers can then, riding the wave of the cultural impact, release a movie like “Eden Lake” and cash-in on the mood of the people.
The theme, mood, class, grouping, politics or attitude you wish to “exploit” can of course be anything. Hence “Teenspolitation (Bikini Beach), Mexsploitation (Machete) and Sharksploitation (Sharknado) etc.
So who are being exploited in “Love Camp 7?” Well, it appears almost everybody. But the taboo, shock, terror, think-of-the-kiddies, hateful sadism of Nazi War Crimes and the fear of the unknown horrors of camps and doctors and evil SS maniacs is being exploited here to try and drum up some creepy, sweaty “fasctination,” I guess, for what is a rather humdrum, if toe-curlingly sadistic, beneath the counter grubby porno.
It’s incredibly cheap looking, what budget there was clearly going on renting convincing – albeit ill-fitting – Nazi uniforms. One assumes that historical accuracy is important to the porny-nazi crossover market and nothing’s going to put one off one’s stroke than a misplaced insignia or error in rank badge. Clearly all filmed in one small studio, on one sound stage, props (desks, swastika, Adoph busts, bunk beds) have been slid in and out of the one-camera set-up.
You remember Prison Cell Block H? The Australian women’s prison soap opera? Well make that on half the budget, strip all the cast down to their knickers and bung in some jackboots. That’s what we have here.
The acting and whatnot are as piss poor as you might imagine. Stilted, shouty, camp, dumb and over the top. Think Confessions Of A Window Cleaner meets Allo Allo on the set of Emanuelle.
The film has nothing whatsoever going for it. The Nazis are unconvincing, the sex is grubby, nasty, violent and unpleasant, the gore (in the final shoot out) just ketchup and reaction shots. A Maguffin of a “spy plot” cobbled together to string a load of slapping, fondling, crying and “Heil Hitler-ing” to make a nasty little piece of crap seem 2% more “taboo.”
Nasty?
Fuck. yes. I mean there’s all sorts of porn in the world. Apparently. Hard, soft, presumably something in the middle. Black, Latino, dwarves, POV, teen, bondage, threesomes, fetish… You name it. It’s difficult to imagine a word you could hyphenate with “-porn” and not get somekind of dark-web hit. “Animal-porn?” Probably millions of hits. “Bus-Driver-Porn”? Probably just as many. “Hassidic-Porn?” Uhm…well, I’ll trust you to check that out.
So it stands to reason that if you find some folk who like one thing (steam-trains, tuppaware, horse-brasses) and drape some boobs over the top, you have a niche bit of VHS to sell. What’s disturbing of course, is that films like these have added nudity and sex to “Nazism, violence, butchery, degredation, torture, rape and humiliation.” So our target market here is a viewer who’s either seen Confessions Of A Driving Instructor but was disappointed that Timmy Lee didn’t tie any of the buxom wives to an iron bed and whip them til they screamed. Or people who’ve watched The World At War and thought it could have done with a few more tits.
Or Prince William.
People like this exist and the Nazisploitation market blossomed from the 70s until it dies out around the mid eighties.
I assume no animals or people were harmed during the making of this motion picture. But what it says about the viewer’s tastes could lead to some troubling psychotherapy sessions.
Ban worthy?
Would banning it help? I mean I feel about this stuff like I do about many niche interests. Make it very very hard to find by accident. Make it viewable at a cost for adults on some kind of subscription set up. Get it off the shelves of WHSmith certainly. Will folk who “get-off” on this stuff resort to recreations, violent re-enactments and rape if they can’t find this sort of 2D outlet for their lusts? I don’t know. But for Chrissakes if you have to make this stuff, make it better. It may be politically appalling, the worst taste and unforgiveably exploitative. But then cinema often is. You could at least write in some jokes and light the damned set properly.
What does it remind me of?
As I said, Prisoner Cell Block H meets Confessions of a Gestapo Cleaner vs Allo Allo. Shot over a weekend by some amateur dramatic wannabes who’ve got pissed on Liebfraumilch.
Where to find it?
Must you? Oh well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Youtube has it I think. Protected under age restrictions. And…
Actually…no. Find it yourself. Christ the last thing I need right now is accusations of nazi-porn distribution. Will no-one think of the children?
If you weren’t watching this the week it came out, you might have been watching… Easy Rider / Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed / Oliver / The Longest Day
Well it starts with a warning. Classic William Castle style gimmick. (see John Goodman in “Matinee” for a sense of the silliness of these tingle-o-vision gimmicks).
Viewers and cinema goers are asked to imbibe a green liquid and chant the initiation rites oath of Green Blood, which will protect them. (Green liquid available in the foyer next to the Butterkist and Kia Ora, I assume).
Then we’re straight in to a sudden murder on a tropical island. Not clear who or what and no idea why. A small glimpse of a human-ish creature is all we get. A ship arrives at what we discover is Blood Island where a mixed group of seafarers are all here with their own motives: family reunions, research, the usual. One looks to meet her father, another to get their mother home. The ship’s captain warns the new arrivals of a curse, green-blooded men escaping into the sea.
Now pretty much trapped on the island until the boat returns for them, the travellers meet the suspicious Dr Lorca, (imagine Dr Moreau being played by a fat Cuban cocaine dealer) who refuses to give too many details on why the inhabitants refuse to leave or what caused the death of one of the islanders. But an eerie atmosphere invades the jungle, and there is much tribal whispering.
We discover the woman’s father is an alcoholic who is virtally bedridden by drink. Evidence comes to light that son’s mother refuses to leave since the death of her husband, Ramon. However investigation reveals upon opening his coffin, no body to be found. Perhaps there is more to Ramons’s death than meets the eye?
Meanwhile the island is stalked by the monster from the opening scene. Green skinned but humanoid, there are random violent attacks on tribes-people in the jungle throughout.
After a number of chases, deaths and puzzles it is revealed Dr Lorca has been conducting experiments on the island, working on a cancer treatment based on chlorophyll. A victim of one of these experiments is Ramon, who has transformed into the green-blooded beast that terrorises the island.
In the final confrontation with the monster, folk are killed but the monster briefly is redeemed when it recalls its humanity. A fire in the laboratory lays waste to the evidence of the weird experiments as the few survivors depart on the ship. Although are they alone..?
Is it any good?
Hahahahaha. No. This was a treat for none of the reasons it should be. First of all, I found a copy free on YouTube (which is helpful, because the last damned thing I want is to spend a fortune collating knock-off DVDs to put in the bin after a £9.99 plus shipping). But then not a great sign, as movie available free on YouTube do tend to have a “fuck it, watch the damned thing, I don’t give a shit” attitude from the producers. Which tends not to happen with classics.
But I found the movie under the title “Tomb Of The Lving Dead (1969) hosted by Elvira Mistress of the Dark (full horror movie).
S0 let’s talk about this, as it’s a darn sight more entertaining than the messy, unwatchable, zoomy silly, underlit drivel that is Tomb Of The Living Dead.
Elvira I had heard of. Mainly, to be honest, as a plastic clip-together figurine one might find in a toy or model-shop. There was a spate of these in, I think, the 70s. Made by Aurora and advertised in the back of horror comics and annuals. Wolfmen, Dracula etc.
All Hammer favourites for you to build and paint to decorate your bedroom and stop girls coming to visit. In my head (I’ll check now) there was one of a very vampy, voluptuous, bee-hived vixeny maiden called Elvira. Or was that a “Mobius” model? Rings a bell. Let me see.
Ah yes. Here you go. These sorts of delights always appealed to a young me. I never got one. But this is who I knew Elvira as. Just a sort of sexy Morticia Adams type. It turns out Elvira was a US late night cable TV host who would “introduce” late night monster movies with sarcastic, cheeky, valley-girl sass as she lounged on a chaise barely visible over her teutonic cleavage. For many, she was the face of late-night-tv and the face of horror movies.
This version, with the intros and – it turns out – interruptions for cheap puns and hoary old gags at the movie’s expense – is the one on YouTube. So it was this version I “enjoyed.”
Oh who am I kidding. There is nothing realty to enjoy about this early slasher/splatter. Or very little at least.
The opening gimmicky “drink the potion” warning is fun. And apparently was, in limited cinemas, distributed to patrons as a sickly drink. The titles are the first I’ve seen to actually be in that “drippy blood” font, which fans of the Young Ones will recognise from their horror episode “Nasty.”
Our two heroes on the boat – destined of course to fall in love – are played with hammy gusto by actors who resemble the love child of Shakin’ Stevens and Hawaii 5’0s Jack Lord. plus a young Yootha Joyce-a-like.
However it’s the production, once again, that makes it almost unwatchable. The lighting of the sets is blindingly harsh, making the dark shadowy scenes pretty much a pure black screen. The odd flash of colour or light, but endless chases and confrontations, murders and fights take place in almost glaring white or ink black. Among the leaves and fronds of the jungle, or the corners and shadows of laboratories, it’s almost impossible to see what’s going on.
This helps a bit, of course, when one is trying to save money on effects. The monster, when finally revealed, is an odd looking fucker. Clearly the “man in a boiler suit” type, the face and head are such a mess of prosthetics, what looks like a leather gimp mask and who knows what as a hairstyle, the creature – all flailing arms and growling – belongs more happily in the Cantina on Tatooine, chatting with Obi Wan Kenobi and Chewbacca about Kessel runs.
The other aspect of the production and cinematography which had me squinting and clutching my temples is the murder “effect.” Director of photography Justo Paulino had either fought and lost a battle with the director and was forced to employ an absurd, vertigo inducing woozy camera effect every-time the monster made a kill. Or he’s just discovered a new “zoom in/zoom out” button on his camera and wanted to get his money’s worth. But the camera whips in and out and in and out by an inch like a lusty teenager after too much Diamond White, making the viewer positively air-sick.
The score is impossibly thundering and camp, like having someone shout “dun dUN DAAAHHH!” in your face every fifteen seconds. Strings and brass going full bonkers at every opportunity to suggest thrills that simply aren’t there.
Oh and there are no living dead. Clearly a title conjoured up to take advanteg of George A Romero’s hit, plus a director with the surname was bound to have punters queuing up for what they thought might be a part-two chiller, only to find a limping, lame, noisy mess of an unwatchable clunker with the contrast turned up to eleven.
Nasty?
I mean not pleasant. Not pleasant at all. But certainly not stomach-churning, or “turn away” shocking. The effects are the usual cheap standby of “film a flailing limb or sweeping knife. The film a screaming face. Then the angry face of the killer. Then zoom in on a close up of fake-looking bones and blood and gizzard bits in a pile of bright blood lying strewn on the jungle floor.”]
It’s all “before” shots and “after” shots, when true gore fans are hungry for the “during.” There are no “during” shots.
Ban worthy?
Tasteless, in its relentless staking and picking off. You could ban it for being boring, but that’s not a crime. A case of “ban it because it “looks” nasty and “sounds” nasty,” but honestly, it’s campy gore that would look unconvincing in an episode of Buffy.
What does it remind me of?
Nothing really sticks out. It has the aesthetic of the other cheapies we’ve seen so far, (Blood Feast /Blood Rites) and we will be back in the jungle soon enough when we hit the zombies of the eighties. But honestly, I spend so much time tipping and dipping the laptop screen to try and get the glare off to see what the hell was going on, I didn’t have the time or interest to engage enough.
Where to find it?
It’s here on YouTube for free! Featuring Elvira and her sarky inerruptions.
a novel approach 