Liebes Lager (1976)

Director: Lorenzo Gicca Palli

Starring: Karl Koenig, Red Ascott, Ronny Coster, Luciano Pigozzi

More info: IMDb

Plot: The German officers who run a camp for the wives and girlfriends of traitors of the Nazi regime are fearing for their lives with the impending Allied forces closing in. They need a lot of money to buy fake IDs and for transportation out of the country so they prostitute the prisoners to a nearby POW camp.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.







I'm beside myself. This is fucked up. LL is a comedy...about raping and prostituting women!!!!!! Sure, it starts out innocently enough with the hanging of three female prisoners with one of the German officers espousing the merits of the science of hanging. I thought maybe it was just a little bit of dry, dark humor but most of the movie goes from serious drama to broad slapstick. I was rightfully unsure what to think throughout the entire picture.


THEN they start raping the women! Now I'm really confused. The picture plays out like an adult, misogynistic feature length episode of SGT. BILKO with Phil Silvers only Silvers is a real douchebag to women. This is a bizarre flick.


The playful music is laughably bad and the comedy isn't funny. I'd probably respect the film makers for daring to do something different, bold and controversial if only the gags were funny. It's an Italian production so broad, unfunny comedy is nothing new (they and the Japanese have a lock on that kind of thing). Man, I can't get over the raping. It was horrifying and it's made worse because of the lightheartedness of the shit before and after it.



Then the prostituting happens (the title is German for Love Camp) and eventually the camp is attacked by the Allied POWs that came for the action. A huge gun battle ensues with the women getting the upper hand on their captors and going apeshit with guns on not just the Germans but the Americans. Remember that these are German women who had ties to traitors (through marriage, relations, etc) so they not only want their captors dead but the enemies of Germany. THAT was fucking badass awesome!





In one spot there were several seconds of the greatest first person shooter video game never made! Nice!!!


The battle at the end is the best part and that's what keeps it from getting a lower score. The film's 104 minutes long (!!!) and it definitely needs some trimming. This is one bizarre flick, one whose tone I've never seen before. The strangely placed jokes among the raping and general unpleasantness really put me ill at ease. I guess it's because I couldn't figure out what to think about it. LIEBES LAGER is definitely alone in the Nazisploitation genre as the only (intentional) comedy. Not exactly a surprise considering the subject matter but then again, it's the lowest of the low sub genres of sleaze and only one movie dared to go there? I kind of felt let down.