Review of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975) by Eric B — 20 Mar 2013

What's most surprising about "Ilsa" is its shortage of humor. Beyond a few instances of especially unnecessary toplessness and one golden-shower gag, it's a fairly stern movie about Nazi prison torture. It's just that the prison happens to be run by voluptuous blondes.

"Ilsa" avoids Jewish issues altogether -- these preppy prisoners' "crimes" are unclear. The central rub is that commandant Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne, in a commendably fearless performance) is determined to use sadistic experiments to prove women are more durable soldiers than men. This motivates all sorts of grisly scenes with naked women being burned, electrocuted and forcibly penetrated. Unless you're a hardened S&M devotee, such scenes are not erotic. The other plot thread is sort of a Scheherazade riff wherein Ilsa has a habit of mating, then castrating her male prisoners but meets her match in a crafty stud who keeps her hungry for him to ejaculate. This aspect is a bit more fun, but the memory of all the women brutally mutilated elsewhere can't be shaken off.