Ilsa - Die Tigerin

Dyanne Thorne's last adventure as the busty shrew Ilsa takes place in Siberia anno 1953, during Stalin's dictatorship. She's the heartless and perverted commandant of `Gulag 14' where political prisoners are getting brainwashed and re-educated in favor of Stalin's ideas. When his reign abruptly ends, Ilsa and her closest companions are forced to flee to Canada. More than 20 years later – during the Montreal Olympics of 1976 – she runs into one of her toughest opponents. She runs a chain of luxurious brothels by now and she uses her power to get even with an old enemy. The initial shock-values of `She Wolf of the SS' are long gone and Ilsa isn't half as creepy as she used to. On the contrary, her actions become more and more dreadful and this film is overall lame. There are a few ingenious torturing methods present in Tigress – like a chainsaw/arm-wrestling contest and drowning in ice-cold water - as well as a lot of soft-core action. Ilsa still guarantees a lot of voyeurism and she now even needs two men at the time, in order to be satisfied. The script is filled with unintentionally hilarious lines, like `Your body is full and warm, like Mother Russia itself' But…even a constant series of naked boobs and bloody mutilation becomes tedious after a while. The Ilsa-series sure prove that. These films have a giant cult following and I'm sure the diehard fans will still enjoy this final installment. If you're more like a random cult-film explorer, I advise you to stop after the first Ilsa film

Like the proverbial cat with nine lives "Ilsa" (Dyanne Thorne) is back and she has returned to the vocation for which she is best qualified--as the warden of a Soviet prison in Siberia known as "Gulag 14". Further, considering that the year is 1953 and Joseph Stalin is the leader of the Soviet Union, Ilsa pretty much has a free hand to do whatever she wants to the prisoners. That said, true to her nature, that means this movie will consist of plenty of torture and brutality along with a few sex scenes involving the beautiful Dyanne Thorne. Unfortunately, unlike the previous two films in the series ("Ilsa, She-Wolf of this SS" and "Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks") none of these scenes were as polished as in the two preceding movies and as a result this particular motion picture failed to achieve the same standards. In my opinion, it was unnecessarily raw and sleazy and lacking in both eroticism and depth. I have rated the movie accordingly. Followed by the 4th (and last) film in the series, "Ilsa, The Wicked Warden".

Tigress starts out promising enough with Ilsa as the kommie kommander of a Siberian gulag. Between torturing political prisoners and feeding them to her tiger, the buxom goddess still finds time for some nightly romps with her rowdy guards and the results are often hilarious. Alas, proceedings take a turn for the worse when the scene shifts to a bordello in Montreal. I mean, when you think of all the gruesome settings in the Ilsa series: a Nazi P.O.W. camp, a Middle Eastern slave harem, an asylum in South America and said gulag, a Montreal bordello really pales in comparison. Furthermore, Ilsa's torture techniques are now performed via a (yawn...) mind control chamber. Instead of physically tormenting her victims, she inflicts psychological torture which results in several highly forgettable hallucinatory sequences. But the producers really missed the boat when they decided to play the latter half as a straight action drama with very little of the campy flair which made the series (and the first part of the movie) so entertaining. Another big mistake was to forego Ilsa's classic transformation from cold-hearted vixen to vulnerable lust-bunny. One of the most appealing (and humorous) aspects of her character was the fact that this femme fatale could be brought to her knees and made a love slave when the right "stud" came along. In Tigress, she's just a one-dimensional sadist from beginning to end. Also missing in action are Ilsa's prerequisite pair of lesbian henchwomen, which makes one wonder if the producers even bothered to watch the first two movies! Even the ending, when Ilsa gets her usual comeuppance, seems largely uninspired and comes across as if they simply ran out of ideas. All in all, Tigress is worthwhile viewing only for true fans of the series. To the uninitiated, I'd suggest Harem Keeper or She Wolf for your first taste of Ilsa's whip.

This is part of the Ilsa series (I think it's number 3). Apparently, the owners of this film would not sell the rights when the rest of the Ilsa movies were re-released on DVD a while ago. As a matter of fact, the only reason I have it is a friend of mine gave me a VHS copy of it that seems to be vintage (I don't even know if it has been released on DVD or another VHS run in a long time. Finding it may be kind of rare). It has its moments, but isn't as good as the rest of the Ilsa movies. It's basically the same type of story (Ilsa is sadistic and has sex a lot), and wasn't as coherent as the Ilsa stories (which sends it down in my opinion). I think that the writers put two different Ilsa stories they were working on together and decided to release it to make a quick buck.

The plot is that Ilsa is the Commandant of a Gulag in Siberia during the tail end of the Stalinist period. Ilsa enjoys two things, torture and sex (for those of you who have seen the other Ilsa movies, this should come as no surprise). She sets out on "re-educating" an author who has been sentenced there for writing criticisms of the Bolsheviks, but finds that he is a tough nut to crack. All hell breaks loose after Stalin dies and the guards have to destroy the gulag and escape. After this, things get goofy. Fast forward to 1976. The writer is now working as a security guard for the Soviet men's hockey team while they're at the Montreal Olympics. He is recognized at a brothel by Ilsa (who is now the head of an organized crime syndicate) and kidnapped. Ilsa decides to go through round two with the torture, but uses some new technology.

All in all, it was kind of lack luster. The biggest problem was that the script was really weak (the major weakness should have come out through the description of the movie). I also learned from this film that there are two identical lakes in Siberia and Quebec (they used the same damn hole in the ice in two separate scenes). Dyanne Thorne's performance is pretty much the same as in her other Ilsa movies, but this film just didn't live up to the rest. Sure, there's a lot of sex and torture, but somehow it really doesn't soothe the palate. I gave it a 3 because it did have some fun parts.

I don't see what the big deal is here...Almost all the other reviewers seem to hate this film, and I don't really get it. After the goofy, uninspired HAREM KEEPER, and the pretty dull sleaze-fest WICKED WARDEN, I was pleasantly surprised with TIGRESS. It's no masterpiece by any means, but this one had some inventive torture and a decent amount of tits-and-ass. This one has the mammoth-mounded Ilsa playing baby-sitter to a bunch of Russian traitors in the first half of the film, and a Canadian whorehouse madam in the second half. Yes, the story is definitely a little disjointed, almost playing like 2 different films, but I think this one had a good balance between sex and gore, and enough sleazy humor to make it an all-around worthwhile and entertaining entry. Definitely worth checking out if you like the series (or sleazy exploit cinema in general), but you may have a hard time finding it - I don't believe that there is a DVD release as of yet (at least not in the States), so start scouring those old mom-and-pop video stores. Regardless of what the other guys say, I like this one - 8/10