| La Bestia in Calore | |
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US DVD Cover under the SS Hell Camp name |
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| Directed by | Luigi Batzella |
| Produced by | Xiro Papas |
| Written by | Luigi Batzella Lorenzo Artale |
| Starring | Macha Magall Gino Turini Edilio Kim Xiro Papas Salvatore Baccaro |
| Music by | Giuliano Sorgini |
| Cinematography | Ugo Brunelli |
| Editing by | Luigi Batzella |
| Release date(s) | July 1977 |
| Running time | 86 Minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
La Bestia in Calore (also known as SS Hell Camp, SS Experiment Part 2, The Beast in Heat and Horrifying Experiments of the S.S. Last Days) is an Italian exploitation film released in 1977. Directed by Luigi Batzella and written by Batzella and Lorenzo Artale, it gained notoriety when it was banned in the UK as a video nasty. This is one of many so-called video nasties about fictionalized World War II Nazi POW camp atrocities.
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A beautiful, nefarious senior female SS officer/doctor (Magall) creates a genetic, incubus-like mutant human beast (half man/half beast). The beast is a rapacious, squat, mongoloid sex fiend which she uses to torture and molest female prisoners while the Nazis watch. The dwarfish beast is kept on a diet of mega-aphrodisiacs. In addition to the beast, the prisoners (male and female) are stripped naked and forced to endure group interrogations, electric shocks, systematic rape, and beatings.
The film duplicates the formula of the surprise hit Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974) and its sequels, which popularized the Nazi exploitation subgenre (particularly in Italian cinema). Macha Magall's sexy yet cruel SS dominatrix is clearly patterned after the titular Ilsa character (played by Dyanne Thorne in all three Ilsa movies), though Magall is less statuesque.
The film is considered a B-movie due to the poor sound quality, formulaic plot, and low-grade special effects (amongst other things). The only set is a laboratory with a cage in the middle, with some cheap costumes, poor lighting, and inept editing. The film contains reused war footage (much of it obviously shot on different film stock) and scenes from Quando suona la campana, another film by the same director,[1] with the lab scenes occupying around 40 minutes of the final film. Several actors from Quando suona la campana were rehired to provide a link with the new footage.
Like many films of the Nazi exploitation subgenre, the movie features torture, gore and nudity.
The film continues to be re-issued in various formats (VHS, DVD).
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