Somewhere in South America women are kidnapped and marched to a concentration camp to serve as sex slaves to Marxist revolutionaries. To keep them in line the leader of the guerrilla forces by the name of "Chino de Guera" (Wal Davis) appoints a subordinate by the name of "Isla" (Nanda Van Bergen) to be the camp warden. Unfortunately for the female prisoners she is much more sadistic than Chino realizes and soon women are being tortured or killed to suit her pleasure. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this turned out to a rather pathetic entry into the women-in-prison (WIP) genre. Although it featured plenty of nudity there was very little eroticism and only a couple of the women, most notably Monika Kalin (as "Tona") and the aforementioned Nanda Van Bergen, were all that attractive. Likewise, having been originally filmed in German the movie was then dubbed into English which left much to be desired. Additionally, the acting was also quite bad as well. In short, this was a pretty bad movie experience and I have rated it accordingly.

Alongside producer Erwin C Dietrich (who also wrote this), with whom he directed many films from this era, Jess Franco brings us 'Love Camp', or 'Frauen im Liebeslager' as it was originally known. Part of a 'women in prison' series, this involves a group of women from all walks of life, at best only partially clothed, who are kidnapped and taken to an isolated jungle encampment in order to satisfy a group of revolutionaries when they are not otherwise engaged. The chief warder Isla (Nanda Van Bergen) is, as you may imagine, a glamorous and sadistic lesbian, with whose advances the kidnapped girls also have to contend.

As often is the case with Dietrich/Franco collaborations, the locations are beautiful (although we are not given any idea where this is supposed to be set) and this appears to be funded with a decent budget. Franco, so fond throughout the 70s of frantic camera movements and intrusive zooms, seems happy to set up a heady mix of torture and/or sex scenes and simply let the lens capture the action. Although the various predicaments are horrific, they are treated in a very casual, somewhat tame manner and accompanied by cheerful, even romantic, jazz music which helps make the very tone of the film disturbing in a way that 'of its time' doesn't really cover. This, and the fact that there is a compliance, even enjoyment, between many of the women and their captors, fits in very well with the perceived popular view at the time that, on film and television, women are often 'mad for it.' Not for me to judge, and who cares what I think anyway? Not me.

Of course, you wouldn't expect any background on any of the girls or revolutionaries, and the dubbing - decent though it is - robs us of much in the way of character. People here are really cyphers, boobs and bottoms you might say, paraded and presented in the way that exploitation films do - and it would be pointless and unnecessary of me to offer criticism of that. I wouldn't, after all, criticise a wildlife documentary for containing wildlife.

There is a twisted romance story at play here, between Angela (Ada Tauler), guerrilla Chico (Wal Davis) and Alberto, Angela's husband, which proves very interesting. And yet what we have here is not the best example of its kind. It comes across as a kind of bawdy, unconvincingly choreographed 'Confessions' film, and the desperate situation that could be wrung out of this comes across as a rough template for soft-core pornography.

Jess Franco and Erwin C. Dietrich go back to prison again, except that this is about a women's prison camp that really is used to gather sex slaves to serve as comfort women for a revolutionary army. That means that while the soldiers are fighting for some level of equality, they also need inspiration of their own and that means women taken right off the streets and from their homes and even from their wedding and asked to be concubines for the glory of freedom.

It'd be troubling but not the kind of movie that Jess Franco would make until we meet Isla (Muriel Montossé, using the name Nanda Van Bergen; she also used the names Vicky Adams and Anna Marc), the lesbian warden -with a talking parrot which is something I have yet to see in a women in prison movie - who is here to enact all the things expected from the WIP genre as well as something beyond that. Decapitations, sure. How about nude women tied to crosses and shot full of holes by a topless firing squad?

Beyond Franco naming one of the revolutionaries after Spanish Socialist Labour Party leader, you have to wonder what the moral is when heroine Angela (Ada Tauler) leaves her husband for the revolutionary leader who turned her and most of her friends out. And then Isla gets away without punishment?

Why am I looking for a moral in a Jess Franco movie? I should just stare at Monica Swinn and forget about things like morals when the revolution needs a love camp.