Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
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| Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Don Edmonds |
| Produced by | David F. Friedman |
| Written by | Jonah Royston |
| Starring | Dyanne Thorne George Buck Flower Uschi Digard Colleen Brennan (as Sharon Kelly) |
| Cinematography | Glenn Roland |
| Editing by | Kurt Schnit |
| Release date(s) | 1974 |
| Running time | 96 min |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a 1974 Nazi exploitation film produced in the USA. The film was directed by Don Edmonds, produced by David F. Friedman and written by Jonah Royston.
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[edit] Plot
It starred Dyanne Thorne as "Ilsa," commandante of a Nazi Stalag (prisoner-of-war camp); the maliciousness of her character was very loosely based on that of Ilse Koch. Ilsa conducts sadistic scientific experiments designed to demonstrate that women are more capable of enduring pain than men are, and therefore should be allowed to fight in the army. Ilsa is also portrayed as a buxom woman with a voracious sexual appetite for men. Every night she chooses another one of her male prisoners and rapes him. However, due to her insatiable hunger, she gets disappointed when her current victim eventually ejaculates, and promptly castrates him. Only an American prisoner, who can withhold ejaculating, manages to use her weakness to his favor. The film was made on the set of the TV series Hogan's Heroes. [1]
[edit] History and saga
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Ilsa is actually a Canadian creation. When Lee Frost and David F. Friedman's pioneering 1969 Nazi softcore epic Love Camp 7 turned out to be a big hit in Canada, André Link and John Dunning of Montreal distributor Cinepix quickly drafted a script for a similar movie called Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and contacted Friedman to see if he was interested in producing it. Friedman (Blood Feast, The Defilers) accepted the job and hired former Vegas showgirl Dyanne Thorne to star as the nasty Nazi nympho. In the film, the busty Thorne gruesomely tortures and kills her prisoners until she gets her comeuppance when the prisoners revolt and she is shot to death by her superior. Although tongue-in-cheek, it's still a gruesome update of Island of Lost Souls, and was a huge hit on 42nd street. Unfortunately, monetary issues with Cinepix and then-producer Don Carmody would later lead Friedman to disown the film.
The sadism was slightly toned down when Cinepix funded Don Edmonds to make the sequel, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976). Partially shot in Canada, this film takes the apparently reborn Ilsa to the Middle East for more torture and lustful activities among a group of women being trained as harem girls.
That same year, Ivan Reitman was brought on to produce at Cinepix, and taking a break from working with David Cronenberg, Reitman teamed up with Roger Corman to bring Ilsa full circle. They created Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia and when it was finally released, Dyanne Thorne's fans were generally disappointed with the final product. Most claim that this Canadian film is the dullest in the series, and Franco's "unofficial" third installment is usually preferred.
A third "unofficial" sequel, 1977's Ilsa, the Wicked Warden was directed by Eurotrash favourite Jess Franco. It was released under the titles Greta, The Mad Butcher and Wanda, the Wicked Warden long before it was even tied to the Ilsa series. Dyanne Thorne is here of course, but few other elements connect it back to the original. The earlier films have a few parallels with early 1970s women-in-prison films, but none so much as Franco's installment, which brings the sadism to a Latin American dictatorship.
All of the sequels are more standard women in prison films which use exotic settings to render the exaggerated sadism of the plots more plausible.
[edit] Criticism and acceptance
The original film, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, is the only film in the series which belongs in the Nazi exploitation genre. It is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Despite this stated attempt at cultural sensitivity, the film is banned in Germany.
Its over-the-top subject matter has turned the film into a cult movie. Perhaps the best explanation for its notoriety is that it is a cinematic version of the "men's adventure" subgenre of pulp magazine. Nazis tormenting damsels in distress were perennial favourite subjects for the lurid, sub-pornographic covers of sensationalistic "true adventure" magazines such as Argosy in the 1950s and 1960s; the film seeks to be a more explicit reversal of the same sort of sexual fantasy.
"The Butcheress" from the video game BloodRayne was modeled on Ilsa.[citation needed] In the 2007 film Grindhouse, a faux trailer for a film called Werewolf Women of the S.S. by Rob Zombie was shown. It was inspired by Ilsa.[citation needed] The lead female officer, Eva Krupp (played by Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon), can also be seen as an Ilsa-like character.[citation needed]
