SS Experiment Camp was one of the films to kick-start the video nasty furor in the UK. As a result, for the past 25 years or so, it has been considered a notorious film. However, like The Driller Killer, it primarily attained it's infamous status due to the crude cover art used on it's video box. Those people who actually watched the film discovered that it was nowhere near as shocking as it's reputation suggested. Furthermore, it is actually unintentionally hilarious on a number of occasions. SS Experiment Camp is a bit of an enigma.

The story involves a group of women who are delivered to the aforementioned SS Experiment Camp. While there they are subjected to some inexplicable experiments, which often seem to involve forced copulation with a group of Nazi studs (who it has to be said all look strangely Italian). The purpose of the experiments is to find the best stud from this Aryan select and transfer his balls onto the camp commandant who, as we discover, lost his when a Russian woman he was raping bit his off.

Now, the above synopsis may well make the film sound deeply depraved and offensive. Well, it is sleazy and in highly dubious taste but the execution of the film is so amateurish and unrealistic that it really sounds a lot worse than it actually is. The depiction of the camp is more Butlins than Belsen at times. The inmates seem relatively unconcerned for the most part and the Nazi baddies are often hilariously unconvincing. That said, there are some nasty moments, particularly the treatment meted out to the young girl at the orgy; she ends up hanging naked upside down in a shot that recalls the aforementioned distasteful cover shot. But, generally speaking, sequences that achieve such offense are uncommon here. The scenes showing the experiments, while certainly tasteless, are often more strange than anything else. The copulation in a tank of water idea being an example where it is too bizarre to take altogether seriously.

The film does, however, have two uproariously funny sequences. In neither case is the humour intentional...

Funny scene #1: In the first scene we have one of the Nazi studs returning to the dorm and saying how much he is looking forward to banging some hot women in the next experiment. The good Nazi, Helmut, takes offense at this and says, "I think every time you open your mouth you talk sh*t", to which the bad Nazi replies, after a long pregnant pause, "Hey, I don't like that last remark you made....about sh*t". Cue a silly fight.

Funny scene #2: The second hilarious scene begins when Helmut discovers, just as he is about to have sex, that he has no balls. He then runs naked through the camp in search of the commandant. Once he finally confronts him, he delivers the truly immortal line, "OK you bastard...what have you done to my balls?".

Both of the above scenes make the film worth enduring in a comedy sense.

It's very sleazy. There's acres of full-frontal naked female flesh. It's occasionally gratuitously violent. But above all, the notorious SS Experiment Camp is, in the final analysis, a rather silly film.

Ghastly medical experiments are conducted on the lovely young lady inmates in a secret SS love camp in order to create a superior race. The wicked, but impotent commandant Colonel Von Kleiben (excellently essayed with suavely sadistic aplomb by Giorgio Cerioni) has the testicles of handsome and virile stud soldier Helmut (hunky Mircha Carven) transplanted into his body. When Helmut discovers that he's been severely mutilated, he assists the female prisoners in revolting against their vile and vicious Nazi captors. Director/co-writer Sergio Garrone really wallows in the unflinchingly raw and graphic sleaze: there's a ripe abundance of gratuitous distaff nudity, a group shower scene, a debauched orgy, seamy soft-core sex, and even lesbianism. Moreover, Garrone delivers the in-your-face harsh and disturbing brutality with unsparing explicitness: women are electrocuted, bloodied and mangled bodies are incinerated in a large oven, a couple of gals have their uterusses surgically removed, and the testicle transplant is every bit as gross and sickening as it ought to be. One especially nauseating sequence occurs when a hapless lass gets boiled alive in a vat of scalding hot water and subsequently gets frozen when the water temperature is turned down to a freezing cold level. Another equally appalling set piece features a frail, naked and seriously wounded virginal waif being hung upside down on a pole and slowly bleeding to death. Nice supporting performances by Paola Corazzi as gorgeous blonde political prisoner Mirelle, Attilio Dottesio as noted master surgeon Dr. Steiner, Serafino Profumo as a gruff, savage sergeant, and Patrizia Melega as the dedicated, but lascivious Dr. Renke. Maurizio Centini's rough, unpolished cinematography, the laughably crude dubbed dialogue, the spare, shuddery score by Vasili Kojucharov and Roberto Pregadio, and the downbeat ending all further enhance the awesomely ugly fun of this perfectly foul, putrid and offensive lump of choice crass Nazisploitation junk.

Sergio Garrone's SS Experiment Camp is one of the most infamous entries in that rather dodgy sub-genre known to fans as Nazisploitation, mostly thanks to its inclusion in the official UK video nasties list during the 1980s. And whilst it is certainly a film that is in very poor taste, using a Nazi torture camp as a backdrop for its tawdry tale of sex and violence, it is also a very silly one and one still worth watching if you're an exploitation completist.

Giorgio Cerioni plays Colonel von Kleiben, head of a team of scientists who are experimenting on female political prisoners in an effort to advance the Arian race. But von Kleiben secretly has his own agenda: by conducting sex experiments using the Third Reich's most physically perfect soldiers, he is also hoping to locate the ideal donor for his intended 'testicle' transplant (his own knackers were bitten off!).

After quite a lot of soft-core sex and the occasional nastier moment (a woman is boiled and then frozen, others have their eardrums burst, and one girl is shot and then hung upside-down), the film finally gets to deliver some truly memorable (and unintentionally funny) scenes. The testicle transplant is guaranteed to get men crossing their legs (particularly when the surgeon pops each nad out, snips and then places them in a tray) and the point when unwilling donor Helmut discovers, mid-shag, that his nuts are missing is hilarious.

SS Experiment Camp may not the best example of the genre (both Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and Gestapo's Last Orgy are better), but the film is still worth seeing, partly because of its infamy, but mostly because it includes the classic line, 'how have you been doing with my balls?'.

5.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 6 for IMDb).