Camp is titled that because that’s where it largely takes place, and not — repeat: not — because it bears the qualities of camp. Oh, if only! You’ll wish for some levity, as the Japanese film is as much fun as having the campfire singe your wiener — the edible kind or the sexual tool. Take your pick, but one guess as to which route this flick trafficks.

Sisters Kozue and Akane — respectively, the smart, pretty one and the one who’s not so much — go camping, which is a little strange since the last time they did, Kozue was raped by Akane’s boyfriend. That night is nothing compared to this return trip, when the girls are accosted in the lodge by a party of five hardly reformed sex maniacs, each of whom is code-named for his particular fetish; Copro treats urine like vintage wine, while Pilo, who likes to burn things, fellates a fireplace lighter. A round or few of brandy-laced tea later, they pit the siblings against one another in a game neither will win. You’ll never be able to look at a vacuum hose the same way. The guys are not sick, though; they prefer the term “more affectionate.” In other words, just a typical Tuesday night at the Fiji house, brah!

Call it what you will, but I call Camp utterly misogynist trash. While director Ainosuke Shibata (whose 2013 debut, Hitch-Hike, double-features with Camp on the Troma label’s From Asia with Lust: Volume 1 DVD release) allows for female revenge, those relatively few moments of comeuppance seem like an afterthought, following an agonizing hour of general torture, poop-chute molestation and other acts of extreme deviance. These are depicted fairly graphically and one would assume they are simulated — then again, one of the siblings is played by adult film star Miyuki Yokoyama, so who knows — but they are bothersome nonetheless. That they are portrayed in a manner to titillate is exponentially most distressing.

It’s no I Spit on Your Grave, that’s for sure, and that’s really saying something. So is this: At least Camp mercifully runs fewer than 90 minutes. —Ed Donovan

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Says bachelor billionaire Christian Grey early in the hotly anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey, “I enjoy various physical pursuits.” Given the cultural dominance of the source material, even those who haven’t read E.L. James’ best-selling “mommy porn” novel (which began life as a piece of Twilight fan fiction) recognize the innuendo dripping from the line: In the bedroom, the dude loves to employ ropes, whips, crops, chains, cuffs and other items displayed on end caps at your neighborhood True Value hardware store. 
 
It’s one of many moments spring-loaded with a nudge and a wink, not all of which are spoken. In its aim to titillate, Fifty Shades trafficks in the unsubtle, beginning with a shot of our virgin heroine, Anastasia Steele (because she’s strong, get it?), craning her neck at Grey’s phallic tower penetrating the Seattle skyline. Soon after meeting the man for an interview, she absentmindedly fiddles with a pencil about her puffy lips. In case audiences are so hormonally charged in anticipation that they miss the sexual symbolism at play, the writing instrument literally is labeled “GREY” (it’s his penis, get it?).

As the film drones on, subtlety becomes as beaten as Steele’s behind. Witness Grey (Jamie Dornan, TV’s The Fall) completing a contract negotiation on anal and vaginal fisting and the like by telling the object of his affection possession, “I’d like to fuck you into the middle of next week.” Steele (Dakota Johnson, 21 Jump Street) doesn’t clear her calendar; instead, she attempts to crack Grey’s cement wall of emotions. In his world of whims and privilege, everything is a transaction, to the point where his power quirks reside on such a level of Howard Hughes-odd — won’t sleep in a bed with another person, hasn’t been photographed with a woman — that the script would not be out of line if its third act revealed robotic parts lurking behind Grey’s beady eyes. 

But Fifty Shades has no third act; it barely has a second. Whereas story structure demands setup, then conflict and, finally, resolution, the incongruously 125-minute movie is nearly all establishment, with maybe 15 minutes of conflict before an abrupt cheat of an “ending.” Although director Sam Taylor-Johnson (Nowhere Boy) has given James’ S&M novel more well-lit gloss than justified, the script credited to Saving Mr. Banks scribe Kelly Marcel is reductive, dumb and dull. For one and only one example, how to convey Steele’s lower lot in life as mousy and unworldly? She uses — gasp! — a flip phone. Repeat: a flip phone! What a vulgarian! 

As Steele, the oft-unclothed, oft-writhing Johnson proves deft at the front half’s comedic scenes, then less effective carrying the dramatic weight toward the end. She fares better than the clearly miscast Dornan, whose rote, single-expression delivery unintentionally turns him into an object of ridicule. When you can’t even sell an O-face in a supposedly erotic film, that spells disaster. 

And there are two more entries in the Fifty Shades saga to come? Were this starter package campy instead of empty, my ass and a theater seat might be more inclined to commit to a binding agreement. —Rod Lott

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On the basis of College Girls Confidential, I clearly went about my higher education all wrong, as my four-year stint at a university was nothing like this. Then again, I didn’t pledge a fraternity, whereas sexploitation specialist Stephen C. Apostolof (Orgy of the Dead) sets most of the black-and-white tomfoolery within the walls of one: Lambda Sigma Delta, for the record. (For those slow on the draw, that shortens to LSD and passes for cleverness.)

But first, Professor Bryce (Sean O’Hara) has eyes (among other parts) for his female biology students. (We know this because of the “Boing!” sound effect Apostolof employs.) One of those young women is failing the class and, therefore, dooming graduation, so a fellow coed encourages her to use her coochie-coo to sway Bryce into passing her. She does; he accepts; and the following conversation takes place in his office as clothes are shed:

Bryce: “You are a lovely biological specimen.”
Clueless Student: “Oh, professor, what a tiger you are! I didn’t know that advanced lab required so many experiments!”

The rest of Confidential — some prints drop that word from the title like trou — is one big-breast fest that interprets the “big man on campus” label anew. A guy rolls around on a bed with two busty babes, who then go downstairs to put their goodies in the face of LSD’s newest pledge. Apparently, this passes for initiation. (What, no latent elephant walk or circle jerk with a saltine?) A real happenin’ shindig is thrown, with topless girls bouncing around everywhere, and one dude taking a bad enough trip to end up in the hospital where he is admonished by a real tsk-tsk of a doctor.

Only at this tail end does Apostolof seem to condemn the behavior of the student body upon which he has capitalized in the preceding hour; you won’t buy his sudden about-face, but you’ll certainly enjoy it. Go looking for skin, not plot, as the characters have about as much need for identities as they do belts. —Ed Donovan

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According to Mondo Keyhole, which is not a mondo movie, only one out of 50 rape victims reports the crime. That’s because they feel guilt, and that’s because — in the narration of businessman/rapist Howard Thorne (one-time actor Nick Moriarty), “They ask for it and they know it.”

Editor’s Note: Do not use Mondo Keyhole as a credible and/or reliable source.

A pornographer by trade, Howard finds his many victims among those busty dreamers who audition for his magazines or who simply bounce down the street. He is largely impotent, despite having a white-hot wife, Vicky (Victoria Wren aka Adele Rein, Common Law Cabin). Unaware of her husband’s hobby that keeps him away from home until the wee hours, Vicky is so bored and so sex-deprived that she shoots heroin. Speaking of needles, turns out Howard can get it up — but only when the woman doesn’t want him, and here, poor Vicky is playing dress-up as Brigitte Bardot all for naught(y)!

Written and co-directed by Jack Hill (Spider Baby) with John Lamb (Mermaids of Tiburon), the black-and-white sexploitation film gets really weird when Howard accompanies Vicky to an “artists and models ball,” a swingers’ shindig of eating food off a naked lady and having shaving-cream fights in the pool.

For Howard, the party looks like a rapist’s paradise, since everyone is wearing masks to render them anonymous. What he doesn’t count on is one of his previous conquests being there, and she’s learned kung fu. Meanwhile, Vicky gets a personal tour of Hell by a guy dressed as a vampire and affecting a bad-Dracula accent (you know, “Bleh! Bleh! Bleh!”). Veering from grindhouse fare to film-school pretension, Mondo Keyhole begins to feel like the “unending torment” the would-be Drac describes. Until then, it’s a flesh-filled fantasy of one messed-up man. —Rod Lott

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Also known under the baffling title of Because of the Cats, Brutalization is an obscure sickie in which five young men pull Hanes Control Top panythose over their heads and rape a woman while making her husband watch — you know, just for kicks! They may have gotten their rocks off, but the viewer should not expect the same.

No worries, folks: Inspector van der Valk (Bryan Marshall, BMX Bandits) is on the case! The police inspector embarks on an investigation, yet punishing the “well-bred” boys ain’t easy because they come from fine family stock. Ranging in age from their late teens to early 20s, they’re tennis-playing sons of rich men who actually work … and who make a fuss when an authority figure dares suggest their offspring are anything but sterling gods of the community.

While fronted in promotional materials, Sylvia Kristel, Emmanuelle herself, is hardly the star, just as Brutalization is hardly a rape-revenge thriller, either. Fons Rademakers, an Oscar winner for his penultimate film, 1986’s The Assault, has a little more on his mind than S-E-X as he explores the social pecking order of the Netherlands (or anywhere, for that matter), but the movie is a procedural, and a deadly dull one.

It’s also a tough watch just for presentation of the subject matter alone, so give Fons some respect for not comprising or dumbing down the material. Truth in titling — or retitling, as the case may be — is strong with this one. —Rod Lott

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