Verdict
Summary
Perhaps one of the most vile and shocking “sexploitation / Nazisploitation” movies ever made (at least that I’ve seen), Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS is a seriously messed up movie. It goes as far as it could have gone, leaving no prisoners, so to speak, with its over-the-top gore, violence, sex (which is close to hardcore sometimes), and nearly nonstop nudity and degradation.
Plot:
A female SS commandant is in charge of a concentration camp meant for medical and scientific experiments … on human test subjects.
Review:
Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne in a role that defined her career) is the cruelest of the cruel SS soldiers, but she also happens to be very beautiful and busty, which is one of her most valuable weapons. Put in charge of a concentration camp meant to cull a herd of human test subjects – male and female – with the sole purpose of redefining the definition of pain and suffering, which she has a theory about and wishes to put to the test. We already know that Ilsa is a diabolical, evil human being. The opening of the film has her making love with a man who dares to orgasm before her, which is the ultimate sin in her book, and she has him castrated as punishment. What follows is much worse: Ilsa takes particular pleasure in torturing, mutilating, and slaughtering her subjects, one after another just to see how long they can last before giving up the ghost. One particular woman named Anna (Maria Marx, who only acted once in her career, but her greatest accomplishment might be the fact that she’s Mario Van Peebles’ mom) continually surprises Ilsa by withstanding pain and suffering longer than all the other girls. Examples of the tortures Anna endures: Burning, flaying, having an eye gouged out, having an electric prod shoved up her privates, having electrodes attached to her nipples and clitoris, and much, much more. It ain’t pretty, but Ilsa loves the process, and the other women in the camp face equal degradations and tortures, including being inflicted with syphilis, having their faces melted by fire, being cooked alive, or being thrown to the SS soldiers for fun. In one instance, a woman is stripped naked and made to stand on a block of ice while her hands and feet are bound and her neck is tied in a noose so that when the ice melts, she hangs to death in front of a dinner party of Nazi guests. When will all this madness end? Well, eventually the women and a couple of the men in captivity rise up and finally try to stage a big escape, but the attempt ends in a slaughter when the entire concentration camp is deemed to be no longer needed and so it’s destroyed completely … including all evidence of its existence, which means Ilsa needs to be wiped off the board as well. But don’t worry: There were sequels.
Perhaps one of the most vile and shocking “sexploitation / Nazisploitation” movies ever made (at least that I’ve seen), Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS is a seriously messed up movie. It goes as far as it could have gone, leaving no prisoners, so to speak, with its over-the-top gore, violence, sex (which is close to hardcore sometimes), and nearly nonstop nudity and degradation. Thorne is absolutely stunning, despite playing one of the most heinous characters ever dramatized on film, and she was truly all woman with her voluptuous figure, but she’s not the only beautiful woman in the movie. The film is jam packed with gorgeous beauties, all of whom are featured in the nude, but the film is just so darn disgusting that it’s impossible to be turned on by all this madness. That’s the true conundrum with the “Nazisploitation” subgenre is that they feature the most vile, awful acts, simulating wartime atrocities for entertainment purposes, and I find it truly confounding that we’re supposed to be entertained by all this disgusting stuff. On the one hand, it’s so shocking at times that I don’t know how to respond as a film historian and a fan of exploitation, but on the other I can see how some people would enjoy all this ultra grimy grindhouse insanity. It’s wall-to-wall sex, gore, and nudity, but where does this lead us in the end? I’ve seen two of the three Terrifier movies and I honestly believe this movie is a template for that sort of mentality of showing as much as possible and pushing the realm of torture and gore as far as it can go for an accessible audience. Am I this movie’s demographic? Well, yes and no; I enjoy a good exploitation movie with a fair amount of “the good stuff,” (sex, nudity, action) but I can only take so much of “the bad stuff” (gore, degradation, torture), and this movie pushes much harder for the bad stuff than the good stuff. It will certainly have an audience, even today, but wow. It’s a lot to take in. Director Don Edmonds shot on the sets of the TV series Hogan’s Heroes, which is hilarious.
Kino Lorber brings Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS to 4K and Blu-ray in a definitive release that makes the film as sharp as it has ever looked. Archival features from the previous DVD release from Anchor Bay (which I still have in my collection) include an audio commentary by Edmonds and Thorne (who are both gone now), as well as an archival interview with Edmonds, a trailer, and a stills gallery, plus a newly recorded commentary by two film historians. There’s a slipcover and a reversible sleeve for the cover. This is numbered #37 on the spine for Kino Cult collectors.
