Page 38 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

does, why Lucia would resume her relationship with Max, Canevari explains Lise's motivation as a
vengeance ploy. Significantly, both Lise and Lucia die in their respective conclusions.
Although Cruz does mention above that many of these Italian exploitation films (in general as
well as specifically these Nazi sexploitation films) are often derivative of American originals, his only
precursor to this sexploitation cycle is Il portiere di notte and, as noted above, little is mentioned of
other Italian influences like Salon Kitty or Salo. However, it was not Love Camp 7, or even Il portiere
di notte, which sparked the cycle under consideration here, but a surprisingly successful American
mainstream pornographic film, Lisa, She Wolf of the SS (USA, 1974, Don Edmunds). Ilsa, with its
emphases on women prisoners as fodder for the bordellos and men as slave sexual labour, also offers
spectacles of the women prisoners used in medical experiments. The 'medical experiment' thread,
along with Pasolini's Salo, introduced an explicit Sadean aesthetic of sexual torture, and this is what
really characterises the Italian Nazi sexploitation cinema.
The vast majority of these Italian-made Nazi sexploitation films run a similar pattern of devolution
from high-art, or at least 'respectable', precursors down to some of the nastiest of European cinema.
As an interesting side note, although not an Italian sexploitation film, one other film buzzes within
the margins here: Holocaust parte seconda: t ricordi, i deliri, la vendetta [Holocaust 2: The Memories,
Delirium and the Vendetta, Italy, 1980, Angelo Pannaccio). Here, as in Il portiere di notte, is an
underground cadre, but this time of Holocaust survivors and their children, who assassinate escaped
Nazis - Simon Wiesenthal as an action hero. What is significant about Holocaust parte seconda is that
it too derives its exploitation plot from Cavani's film, albeit in reverse, and simplifies it by removing
any ambiguity as to meaning or motivation. Exploitation cinema, particularly in this Italian context,
is simplified cinema. Like comic book versions of literary classics these films rework/remake art
cinema into something more accessible, thereby creating a more vernacular cinema. An independent
American film like The Pawnbroker can give way to a Love Camp 7 (also an independent American
film), which can then be further tracked to films such as Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur (literally,
'SS Camp of the Castrated Commandant' but known in English as SS Experiment Camp, Italy, 1976,
Sergio Garrone) or L'Ultima orgia. These texts, although on opposite ends of the '(high/low) culture'
scale, bring into play a theme of explicit visual sadism and medical experimentation. It is this last
aspect, the medical experimentation theme, I now wish to turn to in more detail and relate these
graphic images of pseudo-justified horror to the historical period to which the films are ostensibly
referring.

THE EXPLOITATION OF HISTORY

It is worth reiterating the question posed by Omayra Cruz above, 'How could anyone stoop so low
as to bastardise the terror and tragedy of the Nazi experience?'6 But, as I hope to have demonstrated,
Cruz's 'bastardisation' is not as simple as he would have it: the Holocaust in these films is certainly
simplified, certainly reduced to its most base elements, but such is the purview of exploitation
cinema in general. Each of the films cited here make some direct reference to the historical period in
question, in this case the Nazi era. But we need to ask how these Italian exploitation films simplified
the representation of history?

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