Video nasty is a colloquial term popularised by the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVALA) in the United Kingdom to refer to a number of films, typically low-budget horror or exploitation films, distributed on video cassette in the early 1980s that were criticised by the press, social commentators, and various religious organisations for their violent content. These video releases were not brought before the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) due to a loophole in film classification laws that allowed videos to bypass the review process. The resulting uncensored video releases led to public debate concerning the availability of these films to children due to the unregulated nature of the market.
The Belsen trials were a series of several trials that the Allied occupation forces conducted against former officials and functionaries of Nazi Germany after the end of World War II. British Army and civilian personnel ran the trials and staffed the prosecution and judges.
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a 1975 Canadian nazisploitation film about a sadistic and sexually voracious Nazi prison camp commandant. The film is directed by American filmmaker Don Edmonds and produced by David F. Friedman for Cinépix Film Properties in Montreal. The film stars Dyanne Thorne in the title role, who is loosely based on Ilse Koch, a convicted war criminal and overseer at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Josef Kramer was a Hauptsturmführer in the SS and the Commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen Belsen concentration camps. Dubbed The Beast of Belsen by camp inmates, he was a German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. He was detained by the British Army after the Second World War, convicted of war crimes, and hanged on the gallows in the prison at Hamelin by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
The Irish Film Classification Office (IFCO) is the organisation responsible for films, television programmes, and some video game classification and censorship within Ireland. Where restrictions are placed by the IFCO, they are legally binding.
The women in prison film is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the early 20th century and continues to the present day.
The Dachau trials, also known as the Dachau Military Tribunal, handled the prosecution of almost every war criminal captured in the U.S. military zones in Allied-occupied Germany and in Allied-occupied Austria, and the prosecutions of military personnel and civilian persons who committed war crimes against the American military and American citizens. The war-crime trials were held within the compound of the former Dachau concentration camp by military tribunals authorized by the Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Third Army.
Nazi exploitation is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the women in prison formula, only relocated to a concentration camp, extermination camp, or Nazi brothel, and with an added emphasis on sadism, gore, and degradation. The most infamous and influential title is a Canadian production, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974). Its surprise success and that of Salon Kitty and The Night Porter led European filmmakers, mostly in Italy, to produce similar films, with just over a dozen being released over the next few years. Globally exported to both cinema and VHS, the films were critically attacked and heavily censored, and the sub-genre all but vanished by the end of the seventies.
The Seventh Cross is a 1944 American drama film, set in Nazi Germany, starring Spencer Tracy as a prisoner who escaped from a concentration camp. The story chronicles how he interacts with ordinary Germans and gradually sheds his cynical view of humanity.
Fräulein Devil, also known as Captive Women 4, Elsa: Fraulein SS and Fraulein Kitty, is a 1977 French Nazi exploitation film.
The Stutthof trials were a series of war crime tribunals held in postwar Poland for the prosecution of Stutthof concentration camp staff and officials, responsible for the murder of up to 85,000 prisoners during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in World War II. None of the Stutthof commandants were ever tried in Poland. SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly was put on trial by a British military court in Germany but not for the crimes committed at Stutthof; only as the commandant of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. Nevertheless, Pauly was executed in 1946.
SS Experiment Camp is a 1976 Nazi exploitation film directed by Sergio Garrone. The plot concerns non-consensual sexual experimenting with female prisoners of a concentration camp run by Colonel von Kleiben, a Nazi officer who needs a testicle transplant after being castrated by a Russian girl. It gained infamy in the 1980s for its controversial themes and a public advertising campaign that involved obscene, suggestive posters. The film was banned in some countries, including the United Kingdom, where the film was subject to prosecution as one of the films known as "video nasties"; a title used in the press and by campaigners that came to be used for a list of films that could be found obscene under the Obscene Publications Act.
Gestapo's Last Orgy is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film directed and co-written by Cesare Canevari and starring Daniela Poggi.
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and video works released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It has a statutory requirement to classify all video works released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and, to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 1984. The BBFC was also the designated regulator for the UK age-verification scheme, which was abandoned before being implemented.
Nazi Love Camp 27 or The Swastika on the Belly is a 1977 Italian Nazi exploitation film by Italian director Mario Caiano and starring Finnish actress Sirpa Lane. In between brutal depictions of a brothel in a concentration camp and a high-class brothel for leading Nazis, the film partially focuses upon the Lebensborn program and, albeit being generally categorized among erotic films, it is one of the few Nazisploitation films to contain scenes that have been considered hardcore pornography.
Monica Swinn, is a Belgian actress, best known for her roles in European softcore pornographic films of the 1970s, particularly those of the sexploitation and horror film genres. She acted in 20 of Jesús Franco's films, which occasionally featured her in hardcore lesbian scenes with Lina Romay and another Franco regular, Alice Arno; different versions of films such as Female Vampire (1973) had to be produced because of their explicit scenes. She tended to play characters with a sexual vulnerability, usually maids, prisoners or isolated aristocratic women, although two of her lead roles were as a sadistic wardress in Franco's women in prison film Barbed Wire Dolls (1976) and as a nightclub singer and Madam for the SS in Alain Payet's Nazisploitation film, Hitler's Last Train (1977). According to Swinn herself she was typecast, recalling after reading a typical Franco script: "I'd mull over the previous scenes and think to myself, "This can't be the same character. How many films am I really making here?".
Le deportate della sezione speciale SS is a 1976 Italian erotic-drama film directed by Rino Di Silvestro. The film is considered the first Italian Nazi exploitation film, after the "auteur" progenitors such as Liliana Cavani's art film Il portiere di notte and Tinto Brass' exploitation film Salon Kitty.
Film censorship in the United Kingdom began with early cinema exhibition becoming subject to the Disorderly Houses Act 1751. The Cinematograph Act 1909 was primarily concerned with introducing annual licensing of premises where films were shown, particularly because of the fire risk of nitrate film. After the Act began to be used by local authorities to control what was shown, the film industry responded by establishing a British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) in 1912, funded by an Incorporated Association of Kinematograph Manufacturers levy.
Lee Frost was a film director, producer, cinematographer, editor and occasional actor. Frost directed a string of exploitation films including Hot Spur (1968), The Scavengers (1969), Love Camp 7 (1969), Chain Gang Women (1971), Chrome and Hot Leather (1971), The Thing with Two Heads (1972), Policewomen (1974), The Black Gestapo (1975), Dixie Dynamite (1976) and Private Obsession (1995).
Prisoner of Paradise is a 1980 American pornographic exploitation film directed by Gail Palmer and Bob Chinn. The film takes place during World War II, and stars John C. Holmes as Joe Murrey, a shipwrecked sailor who comes to the rescue of two American nurses who are being held captive by a Nazi officer and his three assistants on an island in the South Pacific. The other members of the cast include Seka, Elmo Lavino, Sue Carol, Jade Wong, and Nikki Anderson. The film was released in the United States in 1980, and received an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.
