[The Private House of the SS / Casa privata per le SS]

(1977/Italy)

Reviewed By-Kit Gavin
Directed by-Jordan B. Matthews [Bruno Mattei]
Starring Gabriele Carrera, Macha Magall, Marina D’Aunia, Walter Bigari [a.k.a. Walter Brandt] and Luciano Pigozzi [a.k.a. Alan Collins]
Source: DVD Exploitation Digital / Media Blasters [United States] NTSC Region 1

1944 Germany. Coming up to the end of the war, camp commandant (pun intended!) Hans Schellenberg is ordered by his superior to recruit ten girls to act as whores but also to spy on the German generals who are believed to be acting as traitors. Shellenberg employs the services of Eva [Magall] as his Madame, whom he threatens to expose due to various incidents detailed in his dossier on her. The beautiful Eva takes on the task and finds 10 girls. Having coerced Eva into procuring the girls, they are trained by a professor and made to exercise and submit to a variety of sexual acts in order to prove their loyalty and allegence to the Fuhrer as well as leap around in tutus and roll on the floor. Cast opposite Eva, and bitterly jealous of her rival is brunette Frau Inge [D’Aunia], Schellenberg’s aide-de-camp, who bears an ugly (and unconvincing) scar across her cheek. Despite this scar, both women are attractive and appear in nude scenes during the course of the film. Having recruited the girls, Hans sets about using them to report back to him and Eva on their countrymen’s loyalty to the Nazi party and to the Fuhrer. In betweens the scenes of "depravity" Hans rants and raves, gets involved in a love triangle between Inge and Eva, and the end exposes a group of high ranking generals before events take a more nastier, more tragic but perhaps inevitable turnaround, as Germany starts losing the war.

Leading the cast is Gabriele Carrera as Hans Schellenberg, the Commandant who lays out the plans for the honey trap with which to snare the generals. Carrera had started his career in a small uncredited role with his brother Salvatore (who would appear porno movies directed by Renato Polselli and Bruno Vani), in Polselli’s little seen LA CASA DELL’AMORE… LA POLIZIA INTERVIENE, and also in Mattei’s other entry into the Nazisploitation arena, WOMEN’S CAMP 119. Carrera is certainly no Helmut Berger yet here he delivers a wonderfully wild and outragously over the top performance. Added to the vignettes of the experiments, the sex, the nudity, and the direction, his performance seems to compliment the film to a tee. Without Carrera’s wonderfully, gleefully camp performance which more often than not errs on hammy overacting, the film would be rather dull. Carrera chomps the scenery with his wild eyes, crazed expressions and at one point in a bizarre white and gold outfit, crowned with a swastika mitre, rises the film to a new level of exploitation greatness.

The two female leads, as the Madame is blonde pretty Belgian Macha Magall, who’s career would reach such dizzy heights as playing the lead of the infamous THE BEAST IN HEAT [also available from Media Blasters as SS HELL CAMP] before gradually fading away into obscurity in the mid 1980’s and Marina D’Aunia, the brunette bitch with a latex scar on her face, and later would appear in hardcore and trashy sex comedies, both perform reasonably well as mostly uninspired characters, which is hindered further by largely unsuitable dubbing. Neither quite manage to reach the sheer insanity of Carrera who gives it all in his role as the Commandant. All the same both are required in scenes of a somewhat ludicrous nature, with Inga taking the lead over Eva, whom she scars in a brutal scene of jealousy coupled with scenes of nudity where she masturbates or is whipped.

Other smaller players are quite interesting. Where Tinto Brass had chosen Playboy and Playmen centrefolds to play his girls, Mattei seems to have picked small mostly very low down in the cast actresses, not all of whom are exceptionally pretty, in fact "ordinary" would be the best adjective here, to play the girls who are recruited, and seemingly participate quite willingly in the sexual acts and as whores to serve their Fuhrer. The actresses generally went on to play small roles here and there, Krystina Nickell went on to do a couple of hardcore films, Gora Gobert had appeared uncredited in films by D’Amato, Poselli and Batzella, and some of the other girls would surface in small roles in sex comedies. None of the girls’ characters are really given the opportunity to develop, likewise with most of the male characters, which include the sleazy generals whom Hans has recruited the whores to uncover. Amongst the generals however are Greek actor Vasili Karis (a frequent face in sleazy movies), the bald Eolo Capritti [a.k.a. Al Capri] and also on of the producers of the film, Walter Bigari, who seasoned viewers of Italian gothic cinema may recognise as "Walter Brandt" who had starred opposite Barbara Steele in the 1960’s gothic cycle of horror films. Also from the Gothic era of films is Alan Collins [Luciano Pigozzi] as the token Professor Jurgen, overlooking the experiments, who would later work with Mattei again in the late 80’s after Pigozzi emigrated to The Philippines for a number of years. The eagle eyed spectator will even notice future the "beast in heat", cast in a similar role in Brass’ movie, Salvatore Baccaro, a staggeringly ugly comedy/character actor, molesting one of the girls.

Direction of the film isn’t the best by a long shot, but given the production values of the project and the interesting use of editing (Mattei seems to have shot the same scene over and over, such as when the four familiar faces watch the vetting of the girls again and again, and again…) coupled with relatively sparse sets and certainly none of the gloss which populated it’s role model, SALON KITTY, it none the less exudes it’s own sleazy sort of charm. In fact, by comparison to SALON KITTY, it might be argued that SS GIRLS is infinitely more enjoyable as entertainment, where the former plays as slightly pretentious arthouse erotica, the latter has no aspirations of artiness, and is out and out sleaze, coupled with performances and moments that punctuate the film with high camp and (unintentional) humor. Mattei also seems to have crammed as many elements as possible from SALON KITTY into his film and then some… from the whore as spies plotline to the nice Nazi who realises the error of his ways. The last ten minutes, and some of the war footage seems to be tacked on – and the last 5 minutes seems to have been added almost as an after thought, to add on running time and an attmpt to tie up any loose ends.

SS GIRLS is also not as distasteful as some of it’s counterparts which were released in the same period of time in Italy between 1976 and 1978, all of which sold remarkably well around the world, with the exception of LIEBESLAGER (by Enzo Gicca Palli, presumed lost, and was never prepared for an overseas market, surprisingly). There is plenty of nudity and mostly suggested situations (such as frequent whippings and a supposed coupling between a girl and an German Shepherd!), but the film has a relatively light hearted air about proceedings and potentially unpleasant situations are not made as full on and explicit. Likewise the film never lets up, the direction may be static at times, but the film is never boring. There even is the presence of a samurai Nazi for all you non-believes (!!). Also there are no scenes of offensive torture which would appear in the films of Batzella, Garrone et alia, clearly taking the lead from ILSA which had been highly successful in Europe. In fact SS GIRLS is probably the most enjoyable for pure value for money entertainment in the entire cycle of these movies, from the A-list downwards (films such as SALON KITTY, THE NIGHT PORTER), even it’s sister piece (which featured some of the same players) KZ9 LAGER DI STERMINIO [Women’s Camp 119] is considerably nastier.  

Possibly to cover their backs after so much criticism from the fans on numerous web forums, Media Blasters have posted an apology at the start of the film for the condition of the film. In fact, apart from the opening scenes being slightly more grainy, picture quality throughout the film is generally pretty good, and in one scene the video appears to wobble from time to time, none the less it is to Media Blasters credit to acknowledge the faults before they are criticised harshly on the forums. Throughout the film however, picture quality is good clean and solid and the film is presented in it’s original 1:85:1 aspect ratio. The audio (presented in English language only, sadly no Italian option here) is generally good, clean and clear throughout, however quite surprisingly the last few lines of the film are spoken in Italian and presented without subtitles. A minor, slightly annoying gaff that should have been remedied. None the less given the rarity of the film in it’s full length version and in it’s English language original dub (the only other full length print was released in Italy in the mid 90’s in a now OOP cassette), it is good to see this film now available. Most prints out there are presented with a title card and no credits and have been cut down either for dialogue, or sleazy sexual situations, with ten or more minutes excised to make the film run less than 85 minutes. The version presented here is intact and complete, together with full opening credits (under the films original export title – a direct translation of the Italian – viz: Private House of the SS).

Extras consist of an interview/featurette with director Bruno Mattei, still active in Italian cinema as a director despite being in his mid 70’s. As seems par for the course with interviews with Mattei, he repeats his dislike and disdain for his frequent forays into film making following on from his grassroots as a film editor. Mattei truly has been a director for all seasons, and many might see him as an Italian Jess Franco, by no means as prolific nor as busy as Franco [nor even as sleazy], but for the number of genres which Mattei has touched upon during his 35 year career as a director of mostly sexploitation films – from pseudo-documentaries, nazisploitation, women in prison movies, even action movies to nunsploitation and shooting additional footage in the last week of filming after Lucio Fulci was forced to leave ZOMBI 3 owing to ill health. He briefly touches upon the Nazi-cycle of films, saying he was influenced by (the unnamed) FRAULEINS IN UNIFORm, directed by Erwin Dietrich (misspelled Diedrich in the subtitles), and then starts to talk about film makers and attacks American film makers for having too large crews when making their films. Petty jealousy perhaps on the part of Mattei? Or a European low budget film makers way of working, having been used to smaller more compact crews? Rounding off the extras is a smallish gallery of stills, on poster art nor Italian lobby cards – nor even video covers. An isolated score however plays over the menus including Bach’s Tocatta and Fogue over the main one.

Whilst on the subject of artwork, it should be noted that Media Blasters have gone back to utilising original artwork for their DVD releases after a brief stint of using busty models to garnish the covers of their releases, which started with the horrendous one SPASMO and THE GROOVE ROOM, over using original poster art where it was available. A flip cover was designed for WEREWOLF WOMAN, again using the same model in similar poses to the original poster-art on one side and the locandina artwork on the flipside. Fortunately Media Blasters seem to have abandoned these bland cover models and use now either the original poster art or in some cases (such as ELSA FRAULEIN SS and SS GIRLS here, artwork from the US video covers. For that we should we should be grateful rather than being forced to see rather tame, unsuccessful attempts to glamour up a product.

Media Blasters have come under a lot of flack from the fans of these movies owing to the lack of care and attention paid to the titles. Even geeks have gone so far as to slam titles continually owing to various technical issues which not everyone will understand and have slammed the discs outright, such as complaints about conversions and bit rates. Agreed Media Blasters [here releasing under yet another brand name] have had considerable fluff ups in the past such as bad translations, frequent spelling mistakes on covers and in subtitles, errors in production, and releasing cut versions of films, and shown something of contempt for it’s target audience, recently Media Blasters has come back in leaps and bounds with some of the titles that it has been releasing.

Few could argue that all the titles which have come under the aegis of Media Blasters in their European catalogue range since SYNDICATE SADISTS have really been shining example of good film making, but the company has been taking chances and releasing examples of lurid exploitation sleaze which few if any ever thought would be released on DVD. Other than the stateside release of the stately SALON KITTY by Blue Underground, few companies would touch the supposedly daring "Nazi-sploitation" cycle of films which came out in Italy in the mid 70’s, owing to the general political incorrectness of these films, yet none the less Media Blasters has taken the bull by the horns and started to release these films on the shiny format, together with other B-grade (or below) movies which, given the chance by exploitation fans, are mini diamonds in the rough. Kudos to Media Blasters for doing so, from D’Amato hardcore to Laura Gemser’s LOVE CAMP [forthcoming], here’s hoping we see even more of these sleazy trash-fests soon!

Story/Film: 2.5 BITCH SLAPS
Picture: 3 BITCH SLAPS
Audio: 3  BITCH SLAPS
Extras: 2 BITCH SLAPS
Overall: 2.5 BITCH SLAPS

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