Bottom of the Barrel Movie
Reviews: The Ilsa Trilogy
If there is a queen of exploitation
cinema, Dyan Thorne is it, based solely on her performances as Ilsa. The first
(and most exploitative) of the Ilsa films was 1975’s Ilsa, She-Wolf
of the SS.
Ilsa is an evil warden at a Nazi death camp. She believes women can withstand
more pain than men and so should be allowed to fight on the front lines. To
prove her theory she conducts “medical experiments” on the female inmates, that
is, she tortures the shit out of them. There is also the bit where she fucks the
male inmates and castrates them when they finish
first.
(“Vonce a prisoner has
slept vith me, he vill never sleep vith a voman again.”)
Sucks to be them.
This is a film meant to show a lot of nudity, sex, and violence. As if that
wasn’t exploitative enough, they tack on a message at the start of the film
saying it was based on fact but characters and locations have been condensed for
the purpose of the film, and that they dedicate the film in the hope such crimes
never happen again.
That sort of message might work on a serious film, but on an exploitation film
like this, it has the total opposite effect and makes it reek of even more
exploitation in a desperate bid to gain some sort of respectability.
(Look
familiar? She-Wolf’s other claim to fame,
besides the all the sex and violence, is that it was
filmed in secret on the set of
Hogan’s Heroes)
Anyway, Ilsa goes around torturing and killing the female inmates in the day,
while fucking and castrating the members of the male work detail at night, until
she gets to Wolf , who calls himself a freak of nature who can last for hours.
(On a side note I should sue the producers for ripping me off without my
permission…ahem...)
That is the basic premise but let’s face it: we don’t watch these films for the
story – we watch them for the sex, gore, and nudity. And this film has plenty of
it:
Shit happens and an escape is organised, complete with slow motion gun fights
and people falling to ground and dying, without actually being shot.
Top quality film making, all round.
Anyway, the
good guys escape, the Nazis get what’s coming to them, and Ilsa has her brains
blown out.
However, even death could not keep such a character down, for Ilsa would be back
in 1976’s Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks.
Ilsa now works for an Arab sheik who enjoys importing females to use as sex
slaves. A movie star and an American millionaire's daughter, are among his
latest victims. Along comes a delegation with a secret agent, determined to get
to the bottom of things.
More nudity (especially from Ilsa’s
African assistants, Satin and Velvet) abounds,
(Yeah. If they played their cards right, they
could have me...)
along with more torture (tits in a vice, flesh eating
ants, and an explosive dildo of sorts),
(“Ah! The old ‘tits in a vice’ trick”)
and of course, more general sleaze.
While not as nasty or sadistic as She-Wolf,
Harem Keeper still has a load of erotic sleaze and exploitation – which is the
only reason you would watch these films in the first place.
Ilsa would return again, this time under new director,
Jesus Franco (director of that “masterpiece” of European exploitation cinema,
Vampyros Lesbos) in Ilsa: The Wicked Warden (also released as Greta the
Torturer, Greta the Mad Butcher, Greta the Sadist, Ilsa: Absolute Power, and
Wanda, the Wicked Warden).
Ilsa (now a redhead) is the warden of a South American
mental hospital for “the purpose of treating sexual deviation in women. Harmless
abnormalities such as nymphomania, lesbianism, prostitution.”
Yes, that is a direct quote from the movie.
A journalist goes undercover and checks in to the hospital to discover what has
happened to her sister, even though no patient has ever actually left the
hospital – which should be a pretty clear indicator of what happened.
All the Ilsa trademarks are here – tits,
torture,
(Shocking!)
and 70’s bush.
(everyone loves a good shower wrestling scene)
However,
there is more than just that subplot. Ilsa and one of the guards are forcing the
inmates to have sex with male prisoners bussed in, filming them and selling it
as porno flicks, and there was something about the government fighting a group
of rebels. Maybe I was too drunk at the time to get it (or
not drunk enough) but somehow it
all comes to end with a big break out coinciding with a rebel attack or
something
I do remember the movie
ending with the inmates eating Ilsa and this scene is
intercut with stock footage of lions eating meat. Seriously!
So can I recommend these films? Not really. Unless you are a fan of cinematic
sleaze and exploitation, there is no reason you would want to these. But for
horror fans of said sleaze and exploitation, and gore, these films are worth a
look.
And yes, there is a fourth Isla film (Tigress of Siberia) but from all reports,
it turned more towards soft core porn and away from the nastiness of She-Wolf
and Wicked Warden. Perhaps a review of that sometime in the future.
There are lots more Bottom of the Barrel Movie
Reviews to come....
