| ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE SS (1974): This wasn’t the only ’70s exploitation film to combine sex, sadism and Nazis, but it made a huge impression on audiences and remains a much-talked about curio to this day.
The eye-catching poster, memorable title and unsavoury reputation of this nasty little flick have kept it alive in the minds of movie goers for decades. Local troubadours One Yellow Rabbit even managed to use the film’s notoriety to promote their immensely popular Ilsa, Queen of the Nazi Love Camp, a witty one-act play about the misguided politics of Jim Keegstra. The original film, however, is quite a different beast.
Filmed on the set of Hogan’s Heroes, Ilsa purports to tell the story of real-life Nazi Ilsa Koch. This questionable subject matter is made (slightly) more palatable by two things: a) the bad accents and staged depravity help to remind the viewer that it’s only a film, and b) the Nazis are clearly intended to be the bad guys. Contrary to the film’s reputation, this is a strong anti-Nazi film.
The statuesque Dyanne Thorne plays the role of Ilsa with cartoonish glee. With her platinum blonde wig, jackboots and sneering demeanour, she looks every inch the part of the Aryan bitch goddess. Thorne still finds time to occasionally don the blonde wig and appear at conventions, signing autographs for fans who seem baffled that the infamous She Wolf could seem so nice in real life.
The film itself doesn’t follow a plot so much as a catalogue of depravity. Ilsa (mis)treats the inhabitants of her prison camp like toys to be played with and broken. The men are castrated after she sleeps with them. The women are subjected to torture in an attempt to prove Ilsa’s theory that the female of the species is tougher than the male.
Ilsa finally gets her comeuppance during the delirious climax. After some bedroom games leave her helplessly handcuffed to a bed, chaos shakes the camp as the Allied Forces approach. A freed prisoner (tortured to the point of near death), approaches the helpless She-Wolf with murderous intent, but dies before reaching her. Then a Nazi general appears, and Ilsa thinks that she’s saved. Instead, the general shoots her in the head and sets fire to the compound, so that the Allies won’t find any evidence of war crimes. A fitting demise for the She Wolf… except that the film’s popularity demanded a sequel.
ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS (1976): This time, the setting is a tiny oil-rich nation in the Middle East, during the energy crisis of the ’70s. Ilsa (Thorne again) is now in charge of abducting unwilling women for the harem of a scummy sheik, El Sharif. Thorne’s silly German accent is largely gone now, although that’s pretty much moot considering that Ilsa got killed at the end of the last movie. (Probably a different character named Ilsa.)
The guy who played the Nazi general is back doing a painfully unfunny Henry Kissinger impression in a pointless attempt at comedy relief. Huge-breasted models Uschi Digard and Sharon Kelly play prisoners again, and Russ Meyer star Haji appears, credited as "Haji Cat." However, what really makes this an all-star entry in the series is El Sharif himself, played by respected stage monologist Spalding Gray. The man behind Swimming to Cambodia and Gray’s Anatomy hadn’t yet achieved mainstream success, and appears here under a ton of concealing makeup, and using the pseudonym "Victor Alexander." Apparently, he didn’t want anybody to recognize him.
A harem is an inherently sexier location than a concentration camp, but the filmmakers still manage to pack in just as much sadism and cruelty as the first film. Not really as memorable as the original, this sequel is mostly of interest for watching Gray embarrass himself.
Although Harem Keeper was the last "official" Ilsa movie, two other sadistic chicks-in-chains flicks were later retitled to capitalize on the She Wolf’s fame. The Tigress (1977) had its name changed to Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia, and Greta, The Mad Torturer (1977) became Ilsa, The Wicked Warden. The latter was also known as Wanda, The Wicked Warden, so it’s no small wonder that the soundtrack blips out every time the main character’s name is mentioned. Both films featured Thorne playing a sadistic dominatrix anyway, so inserting them into the Ilsa canon via title changes barely mattered. |
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