Scott LeBrun
In an unspecified South American hellhole, various women from different walks in life are aggressively kidnapped to serve as sex slaves for the male members of a guerrilla army. A new bride named Angela (Ada Tauler) becomes the focal point as she finds herself drawn to a dude named Chino (Wal Davis). The "commander" who watches over the gals is Isla (Nanda Van Bergen), and she decapitates prisoners who don't get with the program.Obviously drawing some inspiration from the "Ilsa" series - right down to the name of the Van Bergen character - this variation on the "women in prison" picture from celebrated Eurotrash director Jess Franco is okay, but you sense that he's mostly going through the motions. Fans of his 70s sleaze will still be fairly satisfied, considering the amount of nudity (female *and* male), loving close-ups of crotches, and sex (lesbian and straight) on display. There is also a dose of torture, but these scenes are not very graphic, and again, you feel as if most of the participants involved don't really have their heart in this.The dubbing is poor, the on-screen performances adequate (Van Bergen does seem to be enjoying herself), and the English dialogue is sometimes pretty funny.Die hard Francophiles may find some value in this, although ultimately it's rather mild stuff in terms of all-out nastiness.Six out of 10.
Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"Frauen im Liebeslager" or "Love Camp" is another film that director Jesús Franco made together with writer Erwin C. Dietrich and it is one of Franco's many Swiss production, which is why the original language in here is German. This one here was made in 1977, so next year it will have its 40th anniversary. The title is extremely misleading. Yes there are consensual sex scenes in this film, but this so-called "love camp" is really all about violence, about rape, about torture, about murder (decapitations) and about lots of gruesome stuff. You must really love Franco to find pleasure in this one. I personally felt it added almost nothing in terms of plot or story, was really bad in terms pf the script. The acting was equally forgettable. Admittedly, some of the girls were somewhat attractive, even in the absence of the gorgeous Lina Romay, but this can probably be said about every Franco film I guess. So this is not a reason to see this one. The only positive aspect I can think of here is that it was over so quickly, before the 80-minute mark. I am all for violence and graphic sexuality if it makes sense in terms of the story. Here it's just to shock the hell out of people and very uncreative. I highly recommend to stay away from this one.
Michael_Elliott
Love Camp (1977) *** (out of 4) No one does the WIP genre better than Jess Franco and once again he delivers the sleaze and nudity. A group of women are kidnapped and taken to a remote jungle where they are forced to sleep with soldiers who are fighting the "revolution". No only must they put themselves out they also have to deal with a sadistic lesbian warden (Nanda Van Bergen). When you go to watch these Euro WIP films it's best not to expect an Ingmar Bergman type drama. What you can expect is a lot of naked women, wacky dialogue and stupid torture scenes and that's exactly what Franco delivers here. All of the women are watchable and the film's 74-minute running time flies by. The torture sequences here are quite tame and laughable compared to other Franco WIP films.
Infofreak
Jess Franco has made some odd exploitation movies in his long and prolific career, and 'Love Camp' is one of his nuttiest. Never one to shy from jumping on a bandwagon, the title of this seems to deliberately evoke the legendary nazisploitation sleazefest 'Love Camp 7', and the plot in some ways is reminiscent of 'Salo', but with a twist. The twist being, that we aren't talking nazis here but revolutionaries. A group of young and beautiful women are kidnapped, taken into the jungle (what country? who knows) , and forced to be sex slaves for "the revolution". The female warden (who I assume is Nanda Van Bergen) is a sadistic lesbian and generally acts throughout like a poor man's Ilsa, another series of movies this tries to pattern itself on. 'Love Camp' isn't as explicitly violent as most of the aforementioned movies, and Franco seems more interested in showing lots of flesh rather than torture and gore. The girls spend most of their on screen time naked, and there are a few shower scenes and the like, so Franco sleaze buffs will not be disappointed on that score. However this is by no means near his best work, and you feel his heart wasn't really in it. Watchable but ultimately unsatisfying, I can only recommend it to complete Francophiles. Others less familiar with his work best steer clear of this one. He can do so much better than this mediocre effort!
AD
