Highly Overrated But Still Good

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Mad-as-a-hatter Nazi Hans Schellenberg (Gabriele Carrara) is instructed, by the Führer himself, to root out traitors in the Third Reich. In order to do so, he and his beautiful-but-scarred assistant Frau Inge (Marina Daunia) assemble a highly trained troop of whores, whose initial job is to satisfy the sexual desires of some German top brass and then convince them to reveal their true feelings about dear old Adolf.After (rather easily) getting the group of generals to betray themselves, Hans and his harlots proceed to weed out other undesirables in the Reich, including the sadistic murderer Oscar (whose head wobbles like a Gerry Anderson puppet as he talks) and his equally nasty henchmen.All is going well for nutty Hans, who loves to bash one out on his organ between orgies (a tune that is—on his church organ), until he unwisely spurns Inge's sexual advances. Miffed, she betrays her boss to his superiors, revealing his desire to become the next Führer...The Nazisploitation genre spans the gamut from the respected (The Night Porter), to the reviled (SS Experiment Camp), via the soft-core (Salon Kitty), the sleazy (The Beast in Heat) and the camp (Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS). Italian trash-meister Bruno Mattei, never one to miss out on a trend that might prove profitable, decided to jump on the bandwagon in 1977 with SS Girls, which he quickly followed with SS Extermination Camp the same year.Mattei starts his first foray into the genre with some hilarious scenes in which the hookers are trained to give their all, whatever the situation. We see the girls practicing ballet, fencing and learning fighting techniques, as well as learning how to sexually gratify everyone and anything from the obese, the severely handicapped, to a dog (a German Shepherd, of course!).The rest of the film is a series of soft-core couplings with tons of full-frontal female nudity and the occasional sadistic whipping scene. Unfortunately, this all soon becomes very tiresome stuff, and the movie quickly loses the bonkers vibe of its earlier moments. A tedious last act, in which almost everyone kills themselves after hearing of Hitler's death, left me more than disappointed.Whilst SS Girls manages to deliver the requisite sleazy sex that one expects from this kind of film, it fails to deliver the gratuitously gory and sadistic violence that makes its infamous counterparts so memorable. I soon became bored of the endless nookie, and longed for a mad scientist to enter the room and begin experimenting on someone. Alas, this was not to be, and so I feel I can only give SS Girls a decidedly average score of 5/10.

The Nazisploitation/sexploitation genre reaches new heights of frenzied lunacy in Casa Privata Per Le SS (aka Private House Of The SS) thanks to the lead performance of Gabriele Carrara. Making his debut, Carrara gives a performance that probably sets some sort of record for unrestrained dementedness… spitting out lines of awful dialogue with lip-smacking zeal and widening his eyes like a madman at every opportunity. The sex scenes are deliriously over-the-top too, resulting in a film which comes across as a sort of high camp, over-sexed, thoroughly hysterical reboot of the more serious-minded Salon Kitty. Thankfully this one spares us the graphic torture scenes that were so often a staple ingredient within the genre, although this is but a small mercy. As a film it is still absolutely terrible.Dedicated Nazi officer Hans Schellenberg (Gabriele Carrara) is told that numerous high-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht are plotting against Hitler. To weed them out, he is instructed to recruit a bevy of beautiful whores and train them as spies. Various suspected officers are invited to a house, where these Schellenberg's whores wine them, dine them and indulge in all manner of sexual depravity in order to find out what they really think of the Fuhrer. They then report back to Schellenberg, who in turn acts as judge, jury and executioner in bringing down any conspirators that are uncovered.In truth, the plot matters little. The film is one long excuse for a whole lot of soft-core sex, bondage and gratuitous nudity, with the story merely getting in the way of all this exploitative excess. No-one seems bothered in the slightest that the whole thing is about as erotic as a stroll through the sewers, nor that viewers would probably get more stimulation watching an advert for petfood. The '70s saw a slew of these sex 'n' torture Nazisploitation entries, and Casa Privata Per Le SS is neither better nor worse than the others. Quite who watched these films and made them successful enough keep the genre going for several years is anyone's guess. Suffice to say that genre addicts (whoever they are) will probably enjoy this, but for everyone else watching it is a thankless ordeal.

Loyal, fanatical and ambitious SS officer Hans Schellenberg (a perfectly slimy and over-the-top crazed portrayal by Gabriele Carrara) is assigned by General Berger (a fine Ivano Stacioli) to find traitors who exist amidst the top echelon of the Third Reich. Hans gathers together ten beautiful whores to accomplish this particular daunting task. The lovely ladies are taught all the tricks of the trade by the classy Madame Eva (the luscious Macha Magall), the cruel Frau Inge (a marvelously venomous Marina Daunia), and the equally vicious Professor Jurgen (a pleasingly wicked performance by Luciano Pigozzi). The harlots learn everything from ballet to fencing to weight lifting to the proper way to brandish a machine gun. Then they are sent out to seduce various lecherous high-ranking Nazi officers and get them to confess about any plans they may be plotting against Hitler. Director/co-writer Bruno Mattei loads this gloriously raunchy and ridiculous Nazisploitation junk with lots of tasty distaff nudity, sizzling soft-core sex, a rousing bloodbath conclusion, more nudity, several stirring action scenes, a cheerfully sordid tone, and still more nudity. Better still, we've got all kinds of blithely kinky and depraved carnal activity on display: lesbianism, bondage, one lass does just what you think with a grotesquely malformed hunchbacked freak, voyeurism, sadomasochism, and even bestiality (a prostitute engages in coitus with a German Shepherd!). Emilio Giannini's glossy cinematography, Gianni Marchetti's bubbly, jaunty score, and a positively infectious sense of joyfully unbridled decadence further add to the overall sleazy fun of this deliciously trashy Italian grindhouse treat.

This film is a blatant low budget rip-off of Salon Kitty. The story is very similar, several scenes have been directly lifted and in one of them Mattei even uses the same actor (Salvatore Baccaro playing the freak, as usual). Clearly, the producers did not have the same amount of money to spend on production design and good actors. Mattei tries to work these limitations to his advantage and frequently crosses the borderline to the grotesque. His Nazi officers are even less believable in their roles than John Wayne was as Genghis Khan, and the male lead (Gabriele Carrara) is more a raving lunatic than the menacing Nazi played by Helmut Berger in Salon Kitty; the physical exercise scenes are so clumsy they border on self-spoof.Still, this is a Nazi-sexploiter and not a comedy. Its biggest asset is undoubtedly Frau Inge, played by Marina Daunia with great enthusiasm, both beautiful and cruel, both strong and mad; enough to melt the brain of any S&M fanatic.