- Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
Infobox Film
name = Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
caption = Theatrical release poster
director = Don Edmonds
producer =David F. Friedman
writer = Jonah Royston
starring =Dyanne Thorne George Buck Flower Uschi Digard Colleen Brennan (as Sharon Kelly)
music =
cinematography = Glenn Roland
editing = Kurt Schnit
distributor =
released = 1974
runtime = 96 minutes
language = English
country = USA
budget =
followed_by =Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
amg_id = 1:24366
imdb_id = 0071650"Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS" is a 1974
Nazi exploitation film produced in the USA. The film was directed byDon Edmonds , produced byDavid F. Friedman and written by Jonah Royston.Plot
It starred
Dyanne Thorne as "Ilsa," commandante of a NaziStalag (prisoner-of-war camp ); the maliciousness of her character was very loosely based on that ofIlse 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 has him castrated. Only an American prisoner, who can withhold ejaculating, manages to use herweakness to his favor.Location
The film was made on the set of the TV series "
Hogan's Heroes ". The series had already been cancelled and the shows producers let the movie be made on it once they learned that a scene called for it to be burned down, saving them the cost of having it demolished.History and saga
Ilsa is actually a Canadian creation. When
Lee Frost andDavid F. Friedman 's pioneering 1969 Nazi softcore epic "Love Camp 7 " turned out to be a big hit in Canada,André Link andJohn Dunning of Montreal distributorCinepix quickly drafted a script for a similar movie calledIlsa, 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 Las Vegas showgirlDyanne Thorne to star as the nasty Nazi hypersexual. In the film, the buxom 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 on42nd Street . Unfortunately, monetary issues withCinepix and then-producerDon Carmody would later lead Friedman to disown the film.The sadism was slightly toned down when
Cinepix fundedDon 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 atCinepix , and taking a break from working withDavid Cronenberg , Reitman teamed up withRoger 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 favouriteJess Franco . It was released under the titlesGreta, The Mad Butcher andWanda, 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 film s which use exotic settings to render the exaggerated sadism of the plots more plausible.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 theHolocaust . Despite this stated attempt at cultural sensitivity, the film is banned inGermany .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 ofpulp 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 ofsexual fantasy . Overlooking the fact that no woman was ever commandant of a Nazi prison camp, it capitalizes on the very real sadism andhypersexuality of such predatory SS Aufseherinnen as Ilse Koch andIrma Grese (seeFemale guards in Nazi concentration camps ).Other figures said to be inspired by Ilsa include "The Butcheress" from the video game "
BloodRayne " and the female guards that appeared in the 2007 film "Grindhouse" in a faux trailer for a film called "Werewolf Women of the S.S." byRob Zombie . The lead female officer, Eva Krupp (played by Zombie's wife,Sheri Moon ), can also be seen as an Ilsa-like character.External links
*imdb title | id=0071650 | title= Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
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