Ilsa, la tigresse du goulag

ILSA, THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA, is the third film in the ILSA series I've watched and my favourite yet. That's not to say I particularly enjoyed it, but I am pleased to report that it doesn't just focus on senseless and sleazy torture like the previous movies in this series. Instead, it has an actual plot for once, alongside action sequences to recommend it.

The storyline sees Ilsa now working at a remote Siberian prison camp where the inmates are routinely abused and killed (including by a tiger in one memorable moment). She sets her sights on one particular Russian agent, but he manages to escape her clutches when the camp is overthrown. Later, Ilsa and her chums are holed up in Canada, where she once more runs into the agent she's obsessed with punishing.

There are a few torture and gore scenes in this film but they're relatively tame and if not tame then at least unrealistic. Most of the film seems to have been devised as a softcore flick, with tons of sex scenes involving Dyanne Thorne in various states of undress. She's certainly an arresting beauty, and her charms just about carry the film, at least until an arresting shoot-out at the climax which is handled adroitly. ILSA, THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA is no classic but at least it's less offensive than the previous outings and has a better story.

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.

I loved the other three, but it's easy to see why Jess Franco's Ilsa the Wicked Warden was picked as the third movie in the trilogy, and this one was forgotten. Nowhere near as shocking as any of the others. The best part of the movie is the starting when they're actually in Siberia (most of the movie takes place in like Canada or something). The deaths at the Siberian camp are entertaining, but the chainsaw/arm-wrestling scenes is cut under the title, The Tigress. Over all its a pretty boring action movie.

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".

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