Sadly Over-hyped

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Dyanne Thorne is Ilsa the Kommandant of the concentration camp in this Naziploitaion Grindhouse classic of the 1970s. She conducts private experiments to show that women have a higher threshold for pain than men and should be used in the front line which the Nazis actually did to a small extent.Some of the nasty treatment dished out to the female inmates include electro shock treatment to the nipples including an electrified dildo thrust into their vaginas. At a dinner party for a visiting Nazi officer, a naked woman is placed on a block of ice with a garrote like noose tied around her neck. While they eat dinner, the ice slowly melts bloodily asphyxiating her. There are open wounds covered in Typhus infected maggots as well as women being infected with venereal diseases. There is also whippings and gang rapes of the female inmates. Women are submerged in hot water and slowly boiled, others are put into a decompression chambers. In all the torture scenes the women are naked.The men also do not get away so easily from Ilsa. Right at the beginning we see a man who does not sexually satisfy Ilsa getting castrated for his shortcomings. The emphasis on the porn torture though is on the women.Ilsa shows plenty of her ample breasts throughout the film and at one point urinates on the visiting Nazi officer.This is a quickly shot film made in 9 days in the film lot containing the sets from Hogan's Heroes. Some of the script is laughable, some of the gore looks tame nowadays and the whole feel is more camp than exploitation 40 years on.The guy who plays the American inmate and who manages to sexually satisfy Ilsa because he can keep on going like the Duracell Bunny can just about deliver his lines in a wooden manner.There are some well shot action sequences at the end of the movie as some of the inmates stage a daring escape. As a film of its exploitation genre this is regarded as a classic even though it is a low budget, quickly shot and badly made film.

If you like big boobs and Hogan's Heroes, you have just found the mother-lode. Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne) is the busty Kommandant of a Nazi prison camp who has sex with her male prisoners - and those who fail to satisfy this curvy commander face castration. Ilse also performs various sadistic experiments upon her equally hot nude female prisoners, who are also tortured by even more hot nude Nazi broads. Dyanne Thorne does a good acting job, same for the rest of the cast. There are some special effects that don't look cheap and the uniforms look genuine.It's almost like Bob Crane said, "Look. This is how we gotta do Hogan's Heroes. It'll be a hit!" 6/10.

ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS (1975) is doubtlessly one of the most notorious Exploitation movies of all-time, and for good reasons. There is no doubt that the film is sick and sadistic, and it is understandable that many find it to be despicable. Yet it is also undeniable that this is classic Exploitation stuff and that every hardcore lover of cult-cinema (such as yours truly) kinda has to see it. Along with Tinto Bras' SALON KITTY (1976), director Don Edmonds' film which was produced by the prolific David F. Friedman (who also produced Hershell Gordon Lewis' early gore films) spawned the Nazisploitation (or Nazi-Exploitation) sub-genre (which practically is a sub-sub-genre of the WIP or Women In Prison movie). These films, mostly from the otherwise best Exploitation country Italy, usually managed to be extremely sleazy and brutal, yet very boring at the same time. ILSA is the undisputed classic of the Nazisploitation genre, and certainly the most memorable film of its kind. Whether that is a recommendation lies in the eye of the beholder. While ILSA (and all the other Nazisploitation films) are strongly against the Nazis who are entirely portrayed as evil, it also trivializes this very sensitive topic, which is of course even more questionable since way more Holocaust-survivors were still alive in the 70s. (Then again, the producer's name is Friedman, and I recently saw a documentary about the popularity of Nazi-porno novels in 70s Israel, so who am I to judge...)The eponymous sadistic female Nazi-villain Ilsa (played by the huge-breasted blonde Dyanne Thorne) is the commander of a Nazi experiment camp. In order to prove that females are better soldiers than men, she conducts gruesome experiments on the female prisoners. She also has sex with the male prisoners, whom she castrates after being disappointed in the can. This changes when the super-potent American prisoner Wolfe is brought to the camp and satisfies her non-stop...Apart from the idea of Nazi-exploitation as such being questionable, ILSA also has a somewhat anti-feminist message: Even the man-eating villainous bitch gets tamed when she is properly getting... err... satisfied. The film is incredibly perverted and gruesome, and while the violence is often exaggerated to a ridiculous point and hard to be taken seriously it is yet very disturbing. The female cast members, most of which are naked for the majority of their screen time, are beautiful, but the setting and sadistic violence makes that impossible to enjoy. Without getting into detail, I can say that there are plenty of notoriously gruesome sequences, some of them hard to look at even for experienced exploitation fans, others more ridiculous than truly disturbing.Interestingly, this is a German-American co-production, even though the film was banned in Germany (probably both for the violence and the controversial Nazi-topic). Apart from the countless rip-offs, the movie also spawned two sequels, ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS (1976) and ILSA THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA (1977), as well as the unofficial sort-of-sequel GRETA: HAUS OHNE MÄNNER (aka. ILSA THE WICKED WARDEN, 1977) by the Spanish Exploitation deity Jess Franco.In a nutshell, ILSA is highly questionable and I can understand everybody who finds it despicable to make such a trashy movie about such a sensitive topic. However, it is a must-see for my fellow Exploitation fans (even though nowhere near as essential as other super-notorious classics such as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or MARK OF THE DEVIL in my opinion). Definitely not for the easily offended.

Dyanne Thorne stars as Ilsa , an evil Nazi warden hell bent on seeking pleasure that no man can fulfill and testing the limits of pain and torture of her female prisoners.Ilsa is a trilogy of movies , with a fourth movie tacked on and renamed Ilsa.In the era of exploitation movies in the 70's , the Ilsa series was extremely controversial , yet extremely profitable.Ilsa is the best of the exploitation/women in prison genre and despite the controversy , Dyanne Thorne gives a tremendous performance and whenever you see her , you can't help but not see anything else in the picture...she commands prescence.Unfortunately Dyanne's talent has been somewhat wasted over the years, being one of the few actors that let herself be credited by her real name...Hollywood and friends turned their back on her.Dyanne is a minister and owns a wedding business and whilst , in what rare material available out there , she never disrespects the Ilsa films nor the opportunity they presented at the time...it would be hard not to be disappointed at the future that could have been.Trivia: *Producer David Friedman refused to be credited after seeing the final product and has disowned the film entirely.*Directed by Don Edmonds, he is currently looking to finance another Ilsa film entitled Ilana...*Ilsa: She wolf of the SS spawned 2 official sequels "Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the oil sheikhs & Ilsa: Tigress of Siberia.*The Ilsa series is still banned here in Australia *Notorious horror/exploitation director Jess Franco cast Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic prison warden of a south American clinic for women with sexual disorders..the film was originally title "Greta, the mad butcher" ...Jess later changed it to "Ilsa: The Wicked Warden to cash in on the Ilsa franchise.*Ilsa: She wolf of the SS takes inspiration from the real life atrocities inflicted by infamous nazi Ilsa Koch.If you are a fan of Women in Prison films, Naziploitation , Exploitation or just want to see a wicked camp fest...don't forget to check out Ilsa, you won't be disappointed.