LOVE CAMP 7 (1969) ** ½
Love Camp 7 was the first Naziploitation movie. Being the first of its kind, it seems relatively tame in comparison to what came later. You can tell they hadn’t worked all the bugs out yet. Still, it delivers enough exploitation goods to make it rank slightly higher than a mere curiosity piece.
The film was the brainchild of director Lee Frost and screenwriter Bob Cresse, who had previously worked on the terrific nudie-cutie, House on Bare Mountain. It was produced by the legendary David F. (Blood Feast) Friedman, who also has a role as a Nazi colonel. Friedman, of course, would later go on to make definitive Naziploitation movie, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. While Love Camp 7 isn’t nearly as good as that one, it remains an important stepping stone for the genre.
Two American female soldiers are sent undercover to a Nazi Love Camp where women are forced into prostitution to pleasure soldiers against their will. They have to find a woman held prisoner there who has vital information about one of their secret experiments. Once inside the camp, they are subjected to hosings, body cavity searches, torture, boot licking, bondage, and orgies.
The awkward flashback structure does the film a great disservice. The present day scenes only act as padding and since they don’t feature any T & A or B & D, they’re pretty useless. Another debit is the fact that we keep hearing about all these disgusting Nazi experiments, but we never get to see any of them. Because of this, the movie works better as a Women in Prison picture than as an outright Naziploitation flick.
Oh sure, there’s still plenty of nudity and assorted sadism to be found. In fact, the film goes along at a steady clip until about the third act. It’s here where things devolve into a series of interchangeable unsexy sex scenes of women struggling underneath grungy guards. Despite its flaws, you still have to tip your cap to Love Camp 7 for blazing the trail for an entire genre.
AKA: Nazi Love Camp 7.