Liebes Lager takes place at the tail end of WWII in a concentration camp holding the female relatives of Nazi traitors, where the guards and officers are getting a bit twitchy about the advancing enemy troops and the fact they will all probably end up swinging from their own gallows. In order to raise enough money to flee to safety, the Nazis turn the camp into a brothel, and the prisoners into prostitutes, charging the inmates of a nearby POW camp to sample their delights.
Despite opening with the hanging of three female prisoners, Liebes Lager doesn't feel as deliberately sleazy or as sadistic as a lot of the better known Nazisploitation movies, the intended tone being far more light-hearted than most ('hilarious' highlights include a German officer being hung by accident and emptying his bladder over the man below, and an incredibly camp gay costume designer brought in to dress the women for 'work'). However, treating concentration camp atrocities such as rape and murder in a jocular fashion actually proves just as objectionable as the genre's harsher and more notorious entries, if not more so. Slapping a whimsical soundtrack over the degradation and abuse of female prisoners is in very poor taste, detracting from the very real suffering experienced by thousands at the hands of the Nazis. At least the likes of SS Experiment Camp, Gestapo's Last Orgy and The Beast in Heat didn't treat the subject matter as a bit of a laugh (even the genre's more camp entries kept a straight face).
That said, the film's approach makes it one of the more unique examples of Nazisploitation, and since when did fans of the genre worry about good taste anyway? Liebes Lager delivers forced communal showers and internal examinations, with plenty of full frontal nudity. Unlike a lot of Nazisploitation films, there's very little in the way of torture, but the final act delivers quite a bit of violence during a battle between allied forces and the Germans, with the women, tits out and naked from the waist down, making a bid for freedom.
Despite opening with the hanging of three female prisoners, Liebes Lager doesn't feel as deliberately sleazy or as sadistic as a lot of the better known Nazisploitation movies, the intended tone being far more light-hearted than most ('hilarious' highlights include a German officer being hung by accident and emptying his bladder over the man below, and an incredibly camp gay costume designer brought in to dress the women for 'work'). However, treating concentration camp atrocities such as rape and murder in a jocular fashion actually proves just as objectionable as the genre's harsher and more notorious entries, if not more so. Slapping a whimsical soundtrack over the degradation and abuse of female prisoners is in very poor taste, detracting from the very real suffering experienced by thousands at the hands of the Nazis. At least the likes of SS Experiment Camp, Gestapo's Last Orgy and The Beast in Heat didn't treat the subject matter as a bit of a laugh (even the genre's more camp entries kept a straight face).
That said, the film's approach makes it one of the more unique examples of Nazisploitation, and since when did fans of the genre worry about good taste anyway? Liebes Lager delivers forced communal showers and internal examinations, with plenty of full frontal nudity. Unlike a lot of Nazisploitation films, there's very little in the way of torture, but the final act delivers quite a bit of violence during a battle between allied forces and the Germans, with the women, tits out and naked from the waist down, making a bid for freedom.