S.S. Experiment (Italy/Exploitation)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Film: D
I was amazed how recently Hogan’s Heroes was
criticized as one of the worst TV shows of all time for trivializing the
Holocaust and Nazis. Well, some people
are far more naïve, and dangerously so, than ever thanks to political
correctness. Further more, they have
not had to endure dreadful films like the shockingly bad S.S. Experiment. Made in Italy, which has made several
exploitation films related to Nazis and Fascists, the lower part of their
cinema seemed to somehow justify doing such hackwork.
Tasteless is the usually abused adjective describing any
film about how women were tortured and carefully selected to be essentially
breeders for The Third Reich, but this film offers electrocution, scalding,
boiling and freezing of the unwilling or those needing “reconditioning” until
they give in. Then there is the opening
where a woman is wearing a metal bowl on her head and being constantly
electrocuted until she pledges allegiance to Hitler, and know that these women
are naked all during this. The film
gets campy in all this when the male mates show up and look like a gay male
German porno will break out at any minute.
Of course, the rest of the women are either ugly or angry
quasi-Lesbians, especially if they do the torture and pledge loyalty to The
Nazis. Not even Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) can compete with all the bad decisions made
here.
As I watched, I realized it was films like this Pier Paolo
Pasolini was attacking while attacking all of Italian Fascism in his last film,
the dark 1975 masterwork Salo or 120 Day Of Sodom. By taking the look of such films before it
that lasted afterwards, Pasolini was showing how these films celebrated the
very thing they were exploiting. That
they come from Italy is additionally a problem. This runs 94 minutes and cannot decide if it wants to be a
quasi-snuff film or some bizarre softcore XXX exercise. The result is a disaster from a cycle of
them. Now, this DVD will prove that
point.
The 1.33 X 1 image is pan & scan, except for the
semi-letterboxed credits, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono is a bad English
dub. Letterboxing, anamorphic
enhancement and multi-channel sound would not help this film one bit, so this
copy will more than do. There are no
extras, but what could have possibly been added?
- Nicholas Sheffo
