Love Camp 7
1969 · Directed by Lee Frost · USA
Love Camp 7 (1969) was reportedly the first in the notorious Naziploitation genre of films. Directed by Lee Frost, and with a cast that includes exploitation kingpin David F. Friedman, you know the bar is going to be set low.
The plot is basically two Women’s Army Corps volunteers going undercover in the Love Camp to serve as sex slaves to the visiting German officers. Their mission is to rescue a Jewish scientist who is interned in the camp and has secrets to help the allies. What follows is a catalogue of humiliation, torture, sexual abuse and some very questionable German accents. Some of the cast do not even attempt to sound German and speak in an American drawl that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Western. It builds to a brutal climax in which all the German officers and some of the prisoners end up in a bloody heap before the escape to freedom.
It was one of the video nasties banned in the UK and was rejected for certification again in 2020. It remains unclassified by the British Board of Film Classification today.
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS had the advantage of using the set of Hogan’s Heroes, and probably a bit more cash from David F. Friedman as producer, but as the film that kickstarted a genre, Love Camp 7 is a particularly important chapter in grindhouse, sleaze and video exploitation cinema.
