Best movie of this year hands down!

Too much of everything

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

WWII—the Germans are losing the war, but their atrocities continue unabated, a shipment of new prisoners arriving at a women's concentration camp, where they are immediately divided into two groups: whores for the sexual gratification of German officers, and human guinea pigs for Nazi experimentation.Having presumably made a tidy profit from his infamous video nasty SS Experiment Camp, director Sergio Garrone went and did it all over again with SS Lager 5, another tasteless concoction of sex and violence guaranteed to offend the sensibilities of all but the most jaded Nazisploitation fan.This one has all the ingredients one might expect—evil Aryan doctors, a lesbian head guard called Greta (Patrizia Melega), a sadistic lieutenant (Serafino Profumo), group shower scenes, a botched escape plan, one particularly plucky prisoner (Jamaican babe Alina, played by Rita Manna), and the brutal torture of numerous naked women (fingernail-pulling, head-crushing and tongue-ripping, oh my!)—but what makes it REALLY objectionable is its use of genuine concentration camp photography during the opening credits (an eye-opener of an introduction if I've ever seen one) and, later on, authentic death camp footage depicting the unceremonious dumping of corpses in mass graves.This shameless plumbing of the depths of taste and decency in the name of entertainment make SS Lager 5 one of the most effectively nasty films of its ilk.

I've seen a few of these Nazi "video nasty" movies and this has to be the weakest one I've had the misfortune to sit through so far. It's not well made enough to be sufficiently erotic, upsetting, violent or entertaining in any way.Basically a delivery of about 12 female prisoners arrives at (what I presume is) SS Camp 5, and they are divided into two groups; some for experiments, and some for a brothel. Some plot an escape, while the others suffer in various ways. As usual with these films, there is a kind of climactic shoot out and a handful of people have a happy ending of sorts. It's absolute garbage, and as another reviewer has put it, it's nowhere near as shocking as it obviously thinks it is.The threadbare budget is made apparent by the number of inmates (those 12 women are the only ones in the entire camp it would seem), the sets (the lamest prisoner cabins and medical labs I have ever seen in a movie), and the special effects (some isolated burns experiments and some really inept torture methods which don't look like anything bad is actually happening, such as the loose wobbly headband that is supposedly crushing a girls head, or the fake fingers on fire, and finally, two truly dire scenes of victims supposedly being set alight in a furnace.There is a LOT of full frontal nudity, but none of the actresses who undress are very attractive, so you need to be really undiscerning to get a kick out of this movie even in that department. That just leaves...what? The script? the acting? Sorry, it's no-go there too.The most offensive thing about the whole affair is the decision to use REAL concentration camp stills behind the opening credits, and then some actual movie clips of real atrocities are shown while an officer describes the use that prisoners can be to the army. These two moments made me feel angry, because there are real people's relatives and family in those images, and yet here they are being used for nothing more than entertainment. A very unpleasant decision in a film that otherwise has no capacity to shock whatsoever.If you are curious about the Nazisploitation sub genre of films, then try the first Ilsa movie or maybe The Gestapo's Last Orgy, which both actually have some substance - or even The Beast In Heat if you just want a laugh - but please give this one a miss.

All kinds of horrible stuff happens to the luckless lady prisoners at SS Camp 5. Their fierce and sadistic Nazi captors either force the women to become prostitutes so they can sexually service Nazi officers and boost morale or use them as guinea pigs for barbaric scientific experiments. Director/co-writer Sergio Garrone certainly doesn't skimp on the leering low-grade sleaze: we've got plentiful gratuitous distaff nudity, two group shower scenes, an orgy, a few sordid soft-core sex scenes, and one very nasty rape. Moreover, Garrone delivers the raw, ugly and sickening brutality by the nauseating bucketful: Among the hideous sights on display are four would-be escapees being torched in an oven, various poor ladies having their legs set on fire, one gal has her head crushed in a vice, another gets repeatedly punched in the stomach with sharp brass knuckles, a third lass has flaming bamboo sticks placed under her fingernails (ouch!), and a fourth woman has her tongue torn out with a huge pair of tongs. This thoroughly fetid flick further benefits from the sound acting by a capable cast, with especially stand-out turns by foxy Pam Grier lookalike Rita Manna as feisty Jamaican Alina, Giorgio Cerioni as the humane Colonel Strasser, Serafino Profuma as cruel commandant Lt. Hans, Paola Corazzi as fetching blonde Edith, Patrizia Melegna as mean Nazi bitch Greta, Paola D'Egidio as the gutsy Deborah, Attilio Dottesio as quack scientist Dr. Abraham, and Paola Lelio as homely fat whorehouse madam Magda. Maurizio Centini's plain cinematography, the moody, melancholy, flesh-crawling synthesizer score by Vasili Kojucharov and Roberto Pregadio, and the grim, despairing tone all greatly add to the overall considerable sliminess and mean-spiritedness of this choice sick Italian Nazisploitation trash.

This notorious video nasty, "SS Camp 5 - Women's Hell", was shot back-to-back with Garrone's "SS Experiment Love Camp", some of the same scenes were used. It isn't more vile than others but the otherwise liberal Holland cut over 30 min. of it's 92 min. running time! It's uncut like most releases in Denmark. The film delivers the same usual over-the-top torture and sexual degradation against women (they escape in the end, though). Not the best or worst of the genre - for collectors only.