Love Camp

Jess Franco has made some odd exploitation movies in his long and prolific career, and 'Love Camp' is one of his nuttiest. Never one to shy from jumping on a bandwagon, the title of this seems to deliberately evoke the legendary nazisploitation sleazefest 'Love Camp 7', and the plot in some ways is reminiscent of 'Salo', but with a twist. The twist being, that we aren't talking nazis here but revolutionaries. A group of young and beautiful women are kidnapped, taken into the jungle (what country? who knows) , and forced to be sex slaves for "the revolution". The female warden (who I assume is Nanda Van Bergen) is a sadistic lesbian and generally acts throughout like a poor man's Ilsa, another series of movies this tries to pattern itself on. 'Love Camp' isn't as explicitly violent as most of the aforementioned movies, and Franco seems more interested in showing lots of flesh rather than torture and gore. The girls spend most of their on screen time naked, and there are a few shower scenes and the like, so Franco sleaze buffs will not be disappointed on that score. However this is by no means near his best work, and you feel his heart wasn't really in it. Watchable but ultimately unsatisfying, I can only recommend it to complete Francophiles. Others less familiar with his work best steer clear of this one. He can do so much better than this mediocre effort!