Tag Archives: Nanni Cobretti

Creating the Perfect EVIL Race Takes Needless Amounts of Surgery and a Good Pair of Balls! “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” reviewed! (88 Films / 4K UHD and Standard Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

Nazi officer Colonel von Kleiben heads a concentration camp where he experiments of young Jewish and Russian female prisoners.  His experiments bore through the encampment lot with unconventional reproductive system surgery for the good of and in the name of purifying the Aryan race, experimentations that also including nonconsensual sexual activities between the women captives and the top physical specimens of the Nazi ranks.  Kleiben’s masked, real intentions are to practice for his own sake in a testicle transplant after a Russian woman castrates him during his attempted raping of her during conflict.  Woman after woman is sacrificed for the surgeon’s rigorous rehearsal by having their uteruses removed and replaced by another and when they expire on the table, their corpses are discarded into the camp’s incinerating ovens.  One Nazi solider is earmarked to be Kleiben’s hope to be whole again and uses the soldier’s affections toward a female prisoner to gain power and control in coercing him blindly into the experiment. 

If pleasure seeking banned films from certain sovereign states, then perhaps “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” should be on your short list.  The 1976 Nazisploitation film from Italy depicts a semblance of torture simulations used from Hitler’s Reich and lays the groundwork for total absurdity with a plot coursed with nonsense motivation at the disadvantage of a minority group under the threat of torture and death.  Also known as “Captive Women II:  Orgies of the Damned,” as more of a sequel in the collective Naziploitation subgenre popular in the 70’s, or most widely known as simply “S.S. Experiment,” the film is from the “Django the Bastard” and “Kill Django… Kill First” director Sergio Garrone, who co-wrote the script alongside “The Weapon, the Hour, & the Motive” co-screenwriter Vinicio Marinuci.  The Società Europea Films Internazionali Cinematografica produced the video nasty venture and expressed no regret the depictions of Nazi terror with the continuation of the subgenre by producing “S.S. Camp 5:  Women’s Hell” as well as other rape-inclined exploitation, such as “Mandinga” between master and plantation slaves and the caged women narrative of “Barbed Wire Dolls.”  

Sifting through the atrocious Nazi experiments, the unabashed sum of nudity, and the ridiculously selfish plot of one Colonel’s lengths to restore his manhood, “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” has a handful of mainstay principals key to the premise’s perpetuation encircled around Colonel Kleiben’s clandestine reasons to willingly and uncompassionately order a new type of surgical procedure on innocent civilian women prisoners.  Played by the square jawed, blonde haired Italian Giorgio Cerioni, who after “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” went on a string of playing a woman abusing Nazi in nazisploitation films between ’76 and ’77 with “Deported Women of the SS Special Section,” “SS Camp:  Women’s Hell,”  “The Red Nights of the Gestapo,” Kleiben’s a stoic, behind-the-scenes force and Cerioni dons the decadence evil well behind German medals and sense of false soldier duty as he works both the known to Kleinben Jewish world class surgeon Dr. Steiner (Attilio Dottesio, “The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine”) pretending to be German and Kleiben’s targeted German solider Helmet (Mircha Carven, “Death Will Have Your Eyes”) sought for his textbook testicles.  Dottesio’s Dr. Steiner is a conflicted man brought to do surgery on his fellow Jews that will result in their certain death and while he knows this, and it weighs on his conscious, the stuck doctor keeps himself from being exposed from other than the Colonel who knows and exploits his little secret for advantage; Dottesio wears a burden upon the surgeon’s face but doesn’t do enough to provide the body language of resistance in being doctor death against his will.  Yet, Carven wholly depicts an outlier amongst the typical German national who rather read books than shoot the sexual gab of his countrymen, which is in itself a nice slice of visual irony with the Nazi being known for burning literature.  Carven keeps Helmut relatively quiet, reserved, and a watcher from afar, noticing blonde prisoner Mirelle as the two fall for each other at the moment of locking eyes.  Carven and Paolo Corazzi (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) sizzle with chemistry that’s left pieced too far apart and with not enough relationship context toward their insta-love connection.  There are other peripheral dialogue characters that keep the story spicy in their debauchery with Serafino Profumo (“Escape from Hell”) who had that perfect thin mustache and bald and stout look that makes him a formidable slimeball as the Nazi Seargent, Patrizia Melega (“SS Camp:  Women’s Hell”) as Dr. Steiner’s sadistic lesbian colleague Dr. Renke, and a handful of German soldiers to be the plug to the female prisoner outlet, such as with Matilda Dall’Agilio, Agnes Kalpagos, and Almina De Sanzio.  One of the more details to gripe about the cast is that they’re all Italian bronze that dilutes the allusion of the nationalities their portraying. 

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” comes with a smidgen of notoriety having been banned in select western European countries over its depiction of violence, especially at the hands of Nazis, and its controversial poster of a naked woman crucified upside.  To this day,  Garrone’s film is still shocking and abhorrent with the aforesaid but also the emotion confliction etched into characters like Dr. Steiner or Helmut who must make a choice, weighing the balance of self-preservation over the salvation and safety of others, and that’s what really drives this nazisploitation to have tremendous impact in an absurdist plot of colonel cajones.  Garrone favors a more realistic approach to the tortures and horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by including close reenactments to their torture methods and Garrone also lingers ever so uncomfortably on the complete discard of corpses into the oven without any dialogue, expression on any faces, and even adds a surrealist glance into the oven of the bodies moving, in an artful dance way, when the flames are ignited.  There’s also the given, often gratuitous nudity that accompanies most nazisploitation films and while nudity usually arouses, stimulation stalls under the barbarism that’s present in the air, the context of which the sex acts are being conducted for, and the outcome of ghastly blood and sinew that follows to the end of the mortal coil.  There’s sensuality between lovers and transactions between prostitution and paying customers but even those innocuous instances rapid degrade into unnerving anticipation. 

88 Films’ new 2-disc, dual format 4K UHD Blu-ray and Standard Blu-ray set is a marvel of physical media engineering.  The 4K UHD is HVEC encoded and presented in Dolby Vision HDR10, 2160p ultra high-definition, and stored on a BD100 while the Standard Blu-ray is AVC encoded with a 1080p resolution on a BD50, both brand new 4K remastered transfers stem from the original negatives and displayed in a widescreen 1.85:1 aspect ratio.  Between the two formats, there’s identical visuals to the naked eye but the 4K UHD does provide a slightly sharper image that has more an immersive pop when comparing the two formats side-by-side.  Colors are rich with a complete hue saturation that isn’t present in previous, more muted DVD or other Blu-ray editions.  Darker scenes have an intention rough quality about them as well as the concrete and unpigmented concentration camp as intended by director Sergio Carrone to put forth as much realism as possible.  No identifiable issues with compression as the picture quality looks clean through-and-through with blacks retaining an inky bide, grading remains consistent and stable, and the minutiae of fabric and skin color doesn’t contest with any ambiguity as Nazi uniforms distill a gray cotton-wool blend, you can also touch the little fuzzies on their garb, and the stubble and sweat greatly show the length of detail on strained and tense faces during torture or combat scenes.  The formats both have the same audio mixes:  an ADR English 2.0 LPCM and an ADR Italian 2.0 LPCM.  The uncompressed audio brings an unfiltered and considerate quality to the front channels with clean and clear dialogue under a diminutive amount of interference and an ambience track that puts its best foot forward, or rather the front, with distinct, sundry range of electronic voltage, machine gun fire, and the surgical slippery stickiness of organs being handled.  The new translated English subtitles are paced well and have no grammatical or misspelling issues.  Special features include a feature tandem audio commentary with Italian film experts Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti.  Plus, Italian audio only interviews subtitled in English, including an interview with the late director Sergio Garrone Sadistically Yours, Sergio G., an interview with music historian Pierpaolo de Sanctis SSadist Sound, an interview with editor Eugenio Alabiso The Alibiso Dynasty (a back cover misspelling error perhaps?), an interview with cinematographer Maurizio Centini Framing Exploitation.  The special features conclude with the Italian title credits for the opening and closing of the film and the original Italian trailer.  88 Films and Joel Robison bring a newly illustrated, censored and uncensored cover art with the censored version on the rigid dual-sided slipcover that’s crazily detailed in all its tempestuous glory with the backside depicting the original poster art of a reverse crucified naked woman, both images are impressed with a pop-pulp coloring and chrome effect. The uncensored version lies within the plastic slip of the black 4K Amaray with a reverse side depicting also the original cover in its more traditional coloring of the horrendous and country-banning portrayal.  Inserted on the left interior is an uncensored illustrative cover, of the original poster art, atop of a 11-page English essay from Tim Murray entitled “Nazisploitation, Punks, and The Nasties…”  The Not rated, 95-minute film is region free for global player use. 

Last Rites: If nazisploitation or Eurosleaze just isn’t what tickles your movie mania, any cinephile can appreciate the pristine transfer, the raw and uncompressed audio, and its physical accoutrements that rise “S.S. Experiment Love Camp” into a must-have release.

“S.S. Experiment Love Camp” 4K and Blu-ray is Ripe for the Taking!

EVIL Versus EVIL to the Death! “Mad Foxes” reviewed! (Cauldron Films / Limited Edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Mad Foxes” LE 4K UHD and Blu-ray Still Available to Get Before X-Max!

Playboy Hal drives fast cars and enjoys a good time.  While driving his girlfriend out for a night on the town, a road rage run-in with a Nazi biker gang leaves one of biker’s dead and Hal continues on his way to the nightclub for bubbly and music.  The bikers track him down, beating Hal to a pulp and raping his date as the night ends.  Not to roll over and be passive take to insult, Hal recruit’s a friend’s dojo class for an all-out brawl during the outside funeral ceremony for the biker’s fallen comrade, taking violence to the extreme by castrating the gang leader.  In retaliation, the entire dojo class is gunned down in a vengeful massacre days later.  Hal and the biker gang continue their back-and-forth as they embark on a short-term blood feud aimed to annihilate each other’s lives, spilling violence beyond friends and into family ties without mercy. 

A tale of perpetual revenge and exploitation from Spain, “Mad Foxes” takes one-upping to a whole new grotesque level.  After production manager Paul Grau worked on the tantalizing pictures “Secrets of the French Maid,” “Caged Women,” and “The Amorous Sisters” and before helming the comedic sexploitation “Six Swedish Girls in the Alps,” the Nordic born filmmaker debuted with tit-for-tat terror in the streets film cowritten between Grau and softcore, erotic film producers Hans R. Walthard (“Six Swedes in Paradise”) and Jaime Jesús Balcázar (“The Couple’s Sexual World”), leaving no surprise to the shocking and provocative nature of this Euro-nasty that castrates Nazi bikers, shotguns old ladies in wheelchairs, and blows up entire apartment buildings all in the name of spite.  Erwin C. Dietrich and Hans R. Walthard serve as producer and executive producer under the production collaboration of Jaime Jesús Balcázar’s  Balcázar Producciones Cinematográficas and Reflection Film.

A biker gang revenge story sounds right up there with “Death Wish” starring Charles Bronson, but instead of Bronson’s character going up against the impossible odds by way of an organized and self-controlled planning, executing, and removing the threat for good, “Mad Foxes” strikes impulsively while the iron is hot with such ferocity it’ll make your head spin right off the neck.  José Gras (“Hell of the Living Dead,” “Conquest”) envelopes himself to the solo side as Hal in contra the larger Neo-Nazi biker gang.  Hal’s a bit of a philanderer though it’s not entirely explicit but his raped date Babsy (Andrea Albani aka Laly Espinet, “The Hot Girl Juliet”) is a quickly and inexplicably out of the picture before he picks up free-spirited nomad Silvia (Laura Premic) and, by then, Hal seemingly doesn’t have any other care in the world though the aforesaid date Babsy, or perhaps it was his young girlfriend, was raped, and his good friend’s entire dojo, plus said friend (Paul Grau), are massacred in an open fire execution of bullets after they wipe the floor with the Neo-Nazis in a karate skirmish that ends in the gang leader being gratuitously castrated.  Having already cross paths with the gang at least four times, Hal hops in his fast car and drives to the countryside to get away from it all, picking up Silvia on the way, but he inadvertently leads the ruthless camo and leather-cladded gang, led by character played by Peter Saunders and Eric Falk (“Blue Rita,” “Ilsa:  The Wicked Warden”), to his wealthy, elderly, and impaired parents and their house servants.  From there you can imagine the bloodshed that quickly spirals into payback but all throughout the retaliatory strikes, one begins to question who the actually is the good guy in all of this because Hal actually initially ran one of the biker’s off the ran and to his death, driving away with speed and a serene sense of no remorse or concern.  Does Hal bring an ill-fated war upon himself?  One could argue a case for it.  “Mad Foxes” rounds out with Helmi Sigg, Brian Billings, Garry Membrini, Ana Roca, Hank Sutter, Iren Semmling, Hans R. Walthard, Esther Studer and Guillermo Balcazar.

“Mad Foxes” is a gratuitous showcase of trashy Euro cinema, the grindhouse champagne of Spanish sleaze, and has little worth toward elevated commentary or technical grandeur.  Yet, within our miniscule cinema-thirsty molecules and riding along our less trodden synapse highways, a spark of interest can’t keep our eyes off the lurid lunacy that’s unfolding before us.  Paul Grau has invested, produced, and released an entertaining indelicate that won’t bore, won’t tire, and won’t be a total waste of time in its eye-for-an-eye format.  Does one man’s need for revenge need to make self-preservation sense?  No.  Does a bike gang have the wherewithal to track down one man from city-to-rural without breaking a sweat?  No.  One aspect of the story that holds relatable consistency through the years, decades, or even millennia is that violence remains a universal truth, and “Mad Foxes” has plenty of teeth to tout when an act of pettiness turns into the next World War for one man and a biker gang.  The story is no “Death Wish” or “Death Sentence” but it does remove rationality from the shackles of a rancorous reality and plops viewers into the throes of an odd quarrel that won’t seemingly end until the very last standing have turned vertical, and all signs of life has ceased.  Hal’s no rogue ex-cop or former elite marine, just a regular playboy with friends in karate places and has a stubborn will to take on the gang singlehandedly on their own sordid turf.  Grau’s unabashed violence never stumbles or wanes to be implied with the Switzerland director helming a Spanish produce movie that churns out Italian-like shock with the closeup carnage and the cynical nature of a fatalistic bout. 

Cauldron Films proudly presents “Mad Foxes” Ultra High-Definition debut to the world featuring a new 4K restoration with Dolby Vision HDR color grading on an HVEC encoded BD66 with 2164p.  This limited-edition 2-disc set also includes a standard Blu-ray presentation that’s AVC encoded on a BD50 with a 1080p resolution.  The Dolby Vision HDR 10 offers extensive and immense saturation that’s balanced, stable, and more vibrant in it’s support of a wider pixel range.  Without compromising the story’s gritty nature with an unflexed amount of detail, textures retain their respective fabric types from the sheen of Hal’s silveresque bomber jacket to the taut leather of the neo-Nazi bikers.  The skin tones appear organic with a surface appeal that denotes and defines body hair, wrinkles, and other skin imperfections, more notably in close ups.  Focal depth does not completely wash out objects or landscapes with careful delineating a sandy beach and wavy ocean with distinction while the cityscape has the light and tone range in clarity of the object.  Only the UHD was covered for the image review, but the Blu-ray pulls from the same 4K restoration that I suspect has most of the same results but with a lesser pixel count in the quality that may be not as perceptible.  Both formats include an English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio, a DTS-HD 2.0 mono, and a Spanish DTS-HD 2.0 mono mix.  All include optional English subtitles in, what I consider horrendous, ADR mixing.  Dialogue has clarity and is clean throughout, but the voice acting is just beyond reproach with drab inflection to express the right emotion during the scene, its all fairly monotonic and automaton deliveries through the asynchronous matching of voice and mouth.  With no innate recording during filming, the milieu sounds are limited to the immediate action of post-production kick and punch skirmishes, a volley of gunshots, car and motorcycle engines, and murderous snikts of blade strikes.  This, in turn, limits and relegates the surround sound channels to mostly the front with only a flutter of immersive quality, mostly with the revving car engines and the occasional gunfire.  Special features on the UHD only include the commentary by film critics Nanni Cobretti and Merlyn Roberts.  The commentary is also on the standard Blu-ray along with additional content in The Untold Story of Robert O’Neal:  a near feature-length interview with leading man José Gras discussing his career in Europe, Erwin and the Foxes offers interviews with producer Erwin C. Dietrich and actors Eric Falk and Helmi Sigg discussing their roles and the production, an additional interview Mad Eric has a second interview with actor Eric Falk, and Troy Howarth provides a video essay with stills and video snippets in Nazi Fox Bikers Must Die.  The special features round out with an image gallery and a feature trailer.  The curated packaging comes in a rigid slipbox with new compositional artwork by Justin Coffee.  Inside, is a clear Amaray Blu-ray case that display same primary artwork and is accompanied with an adjacent folded mini poster, also of Coffee’s art.  The UHD is region free and the Blu-ray is region A for playback as both films carry an unrated designation and have na 80-minute runtime in their widescreen, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, presentation. 

Last Rites: Revenge films are often formulaic but “Mad Foxes” is no ordinary payback thriller that continues to the hit back well into last man standing. The new Cauldron Films’ limited-edition boxset pushes the media technology to max superiority sure to squash any rival, unlike Paul Grau’s ceaseless chaos.

“Mad Foxes” LE 4K UHD and Blu-ray Still Available to Get Before X-Max!