Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
 theatrical release poster | ||
| Starring | Dyanne Thorne George Buck Flower Uschi Digard Colleen Brennan (as Sharon Kelly) | |
| Directed by | Don Edmonds | |
| Produced by | David F. Friedman | |
| Written by | Jonah Royston | |
| Editing by | Kurt Schnit | |
| Cinematography | Glenn Roland | |
| Released | 1974 | |
| Runtime | 96 minutes | |
| Country | USA / West Germany | |
| language | English | |
| Followed by | Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks | |
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a 1974 Nazi exploitation film produced in the USA. The film was directed by Don Edmonds, produced by David F. Friedman and written by Jonah Royston.
Plot
It starred Dyanne Thorne as "Ilsa," commandant of a Nazi Stalag (prisoner-of-war camp); the maliciousness of her character was very loosely based on that of Ilse Koch. Ilsa conducts Nazi human experimentation and 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 (hypersexuality), she gets disappointed when her current victim eventually ejaculates, and promptly has him castrated and put to death. Only an American prisoner, who can withhold ejaculating, manages to use her weakness to his favor.
Location
The film was made on the set of the TV series Hogan's Heroes. The series had already been canceled and the show's 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
When Lee Frost and David F. Friedman's 1969 Love Camp 7 became popular in Canada, André Link and Cinepix's John Dunning created a script for Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. After offering to produce it, Friedman (Blood Feast, The Defilers) agreed and brought on Dyanne Thorne to play the nasty Nazi hypersexual who tortures her prisoners in the film until she is eventually killed by her superior.
In 1969, Ivan Reitman, David Cronenberg, and Roger Corman created Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia and when it was finally released, Dyanne Thorne's fans were generally disappointed with the final product.
All of the sequels are more standard women in prison films 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.
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 of pulp magazine. Nazis tormenting damsels in distress were perennial favorite 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 of sexual fantasy. Overlooking the fact that no woman was ever commandant of a Nazi prison camp, it capitalizes on the very real sadism and hypersexuality of such predatory SS Aufseherinnen as Ilse Koch and Irma Grese.
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. by Rob Zombie. The lead female officer, Eva Krupp (played by Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon), can also be seen as an Ilsa-like character. The film won 'Best Alternative Release' at the 1985 AVN Awards.
See also
AVN award credited to "Werewolf Men Of The SS" in 1985, the film was not produced until 2007.
External links
- Review Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at the Internet Movie Database
- Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at All Movie Guide
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