Ilsa, La Louve des SS

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a surprisingly well-made film, given its garish title and unabashed exploitative intent. For all the gore, nudity, and laughter inducing dialogue, the film features good camera work, quality special effects, and a quick moving plot. It follows the travails of an American soldier sent to a Nazi medical camp run by Ilsa, who is obsessed with proving women's superior capacity to handle pain so that she can go to the front lines.

Ilsa represents Nazispoitation at its finest. Throwing the history book out the window, the film gives us a Nazi concentration camp populated by topless female guards and open lesbians. Just for fun, it adds gory experiments which all seem to require attractive nude women. Is it tasteless? Lords yes! But it's also fun.

What takes this a notch above other exploitation films is that genuine talent was involved. Ilsa has quality cinematography and surprisingly good special effects. (This may be because, as director Don Edmonds points out, many of the people involved were mainstream filmmakers working under pseudonyms for a quick buck.) Although no one would mistake it for Oscar material, Ilsa is a worthwhile film for all exploitation fans.

ILSA - SHE WOLF OF THE SS is the first in the "infamous" series of exploitation films featuring buxom ball-breaker, Dyanne Thorne. These films are a classic example of true exploitation cinema and should be checked out by any fan of "extreme" or exploitation films. Short version: Ilsa is the head bitch at a Nazi experimentation camp. She gets her kicks by torturing the male and female prisoners in all kinds of interesting ways. Overall, SHE WOLF is pretty tame in the gore department, compared to what is out there today. I'm sure if you saw this when it first came out in '75, it was probably some really racy stuff...but being from a generation raised on blood-and-guts, the Ilsa films are more laughable than "shocking". I prefer SHE WOLF and the under-rated TIGRESS OF SIBERIA installments over HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS and WICKED WARDEN (those two having more of a sleazy sex overtone, and being very light on the red stuff...) but all are worth a look just to say that you've seen them. Anchor Bay has put out a beautiful box-set that contains SHE WOLF, HAREM KEEPER, and WICKED WARDEN, and if you check the right on-line dealers, you can find it for dirt-cheap. Makes a great collection piece. To my knowledge, TIGRESS OF SIBERIA is not available on DVD at this time (at least not in the States...) which is a shame, because although many other reviewers trash it, I really liked that film. Anyway, if you are an exploit fan these films should already be in your collection. If you are interested in checking out this type of material, these films are as good a start as any. Not for the average movie-goer, but not as over-the-top as they could be nowdays. recommended - 8/10 for Dyanne Thorne's big-ass Nazi titties!!!

Most here are aware of how this one plays out. Experiments are conducted on war camp prisoners, which are all overseen by our lovely Fraulein Doktor (of title fame). This gal has a nasty habit of collecting male "forget me nots". Some collect stamps. Others, genitals. Call her an eccentric.

Anyhow, politics between the camp and Berlin come into play along with an American she can't figure out (and the requisite escape plans brewing), but those are mere plot details. No sense boring everyone with gratuitous information on the storyline when there's some juicy bits to discuss.

Torture of many respects abound in this one. Castration, gang rape, bacterial/viral injections, human lobster pots, slow hanging (mit eis schmelzen), nipple 'trodes, the list goes on and on. The production values are pretty fair in this one (the sets being left over from "Hogan's Heroes") and the makeup's not half bad. The acting's a bit over the top in "Ilsa", especially with the doktor's blonde henchwomen, but who can really fault topless floggers? Not I.

Thumbs up for me here. It's only single "X", but still some nasty fun.

Charlie.

An exploitation classic that is a surprisingly enjoyable film. Ilsa, the Arian commandant of a secret medical facility, sets out to prove to her doubting superiors that women are able to endure greater pain and suffering than men. She does this by torturing the female inmates in increasingly diabolical ways, while trying to break the American 'sexual freak of nature', Wolfe. Cue lots of gratuitous nudity, castration, strangulation, boiling alive, magnificent pre-implant breasts, softcore sex and gang rape, golden showers, and general bloody mayhem. The German accents are hilarious, and the acting barely one step up from Hershael Gordon Lewis and early John Waters. It even has the ubiquitous 'moral message' at the beginning. But unlike so many of these movies, 'Ilsa' manages to avoid descending into tedious repetition half way through, and builds to a brilliantly ludicrous climax in which an entire camp is gunned down by machine gun fire, without a drop of blood being spilt. Brilliant.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS certainly deserves its reputation as a nasty film. Although it is thoroughly cheesy, poorly acted, routinely directed, and extremely camp at times, the film still packs a punch due to its ability to offend and disgust at every turn; the depiction of Nazi atrocities in the name of entertainment is hard to defend (so I'm not even going to try) and this movie pulls no punches with its well executed graphic violence and horrific torture scenes.

Ilsa, played with gusto by chesty blonde Dianne Thorne, is the Kommandant at a concentration camp where she oversees medical research performed on the female prisoners. Meanwhile, she uses the males to try and satisfy her sexual needs (and when they fail, she has them castrated!). It is up to German/American stud Wolfe to lead the prisoners in a revolt against the guards whilst simultaneously gaining Ilsa's trust by rogering her senseless at every opportunity.

This notorious sleaze classic packs so much depravity into its 96 minutes running time (uncut), that lovers of exploitation will have a field day. From the opening scene in which Ilsa's sex slave is dragged back to the camp to be emasculated, to the ending in which the prisoners exact bloody retribution, sex and violence pervades every frame. The effective make-up FX by Joe Blasco are repugnant enough for hardened gore-hounds and fans of the female form will be delighted by the copious amounts of nudity (nearly every woman gets naked at some point in the film!). And lets not forget the scene in which Ilsa pees on the Nazi general...

Thirty years after it was made, Ilsa still has the ability to shock—the mark of a true exploitation classic!