Love Camp (1977)

A group of women are abducted by a guerrilla army and forced to work as prostitutes at their private brothel in the jungle that's run by sadistic warden Isla (nicely played with lip-smacking wicked relish by Nanda Van Bergen).Director Jess Franco and screenwriter Erwin C. Dietrich scrupulously cover all the satisfying sleazy grindhouse bases: We've got oodles of tasty gratuitous female nudity, group showers, lesbianism, sizzling soft-core couplings, a grim sordid tone, torture and whippings (alas, this stuff is on the mild side), lots of choice cruddy dubbing, and a moderately exciting last reel breakout. Moreover, the women featured herein are quite hot and watchable: Ada Tauler as the lusty and enticing Angela Delame, Monica Swinn as predatory traitor Maria, Esther Studer as virginal innocent Lupita Pavone, and Monika Kalin as the fierce Tona. Walt Davis contributes a decent turn as hunky and sympathetic revolutionary Chino de Guerra. Ruedi Kuttel's proficient cinematography gives this film a neat glossy look. Walter Baumgartner's smooth jazzy score hits the groovy spot. While this flick suffers from sluggish pacing and a meandering narrative, it's nonetheless still trashy enough to qualify as pleasing exploitation fare.

Somewhere in South America women are kidnapped and marched to a concentration camp to serve as sex slaves to Marxist revolutionaries. To keep them in line the leader of the guerrilla forces by the name of "Chino de Guera" (Wal Davis) appoints a subordinate by the name of "Isla" (Nanda Van Bergen) to be the camp warden. Unfortunately for the female prisoners she is much more sadistic than Chino realizes and soon women are being tortured or killed to suit her pleasure. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this turned out to a rather pathetic entry into the women-in-prison (WIP) genre. Although it featured plenty of nudity there was very little eroticism and only a couple of the women, most notably Monika Kalin (as "Tona") and the aforementioned Nanda Van Bergen, were all that attractive. Likewise, having been originally filmed in German the movie was then dubbed into English which left much to be desired. Additionally, the acting was also quite bad as well. In short, this was a pretty bad movie experience and I have rated it accordingly.

Love Camp (1977) *** (out of 4) No one does the WIP genre better than Jess Franco and once again he delivers the sleaze and nudity. A group of women are kidnapped and taken to a remote jungle where they are forced to sleep with soldiers who are fighting the "revolution". No only must they put themselves out they also have to deal with a sadistic lesbian warden (Nanda Van Bergen). When you go to watch these Euro WIP films it's best not to expect an Ingmar Bergman type drama. What you can expect is a lot of naked women, wacky dialogue and stupid torture scenes and that's exactly what Franco delivers here. All of the women are watchable and the film's 74-minute running time flies by. The torture sequences here are quite tame and laughable compared to other Franco WIP films.

Jess Franco has made some odd exploitation movies in his long and prolific career, and 'Love Camp' is one of his nuttiest. Never one to shy from jumping on a bandwagon, the title of this seems to deliberately evoke the legendary nazisploitation sleazefest 'Love Camp 7', and the plot in some ways is reminiscent of 'Salo', but with a twist. The twist being, that we aren't talking nazis here but revolutionaries. A group of young and beautiful women are kidnapped, taken into the jungle (what country? who knows) , and forced to be sex slaves for "the revolution". The female warden (who I assume is Nanda Van Bergen) is a sadistic lesbian and generally acts throughout like a poor man's Ilsa, another series of movies this tries to pattern itself on. 'Love Camp' isn't as explicitly violent as most of the aforementioned movies, and Franco seems more interested in showing lots of flesh rather than torture and gore. The girls spend most of their on screen time naked, and there are a few shower scenes and the like, so Franco sleaze buffs will not be disappointed on that score. However this is by no means near his best work, and you feel his heart wasn't really in it. Watchable but ultimately unsatisfying, I can only recommend it to complete Francophiles. Others less familiar with his work best steer clear of this one. He can do so much better than this mediocre effort!