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Plot Outline: In all actuality there’s really not too much plot going on here but I’ll give it a try anyway. Ilsa is a blonde bombshell (who looks to be getting middle aged) scientist who is in control of one of the nazi death camps during World War II. She spends her days torturing women in an effort to create new biological weapons for the third reich, and during her personal time she’s undergoing experiments to prove that women can actually take more pain than men, so of course this means torturing women in various extremely painful ways. During her nights though, Ilsa likes to treat the captured men in her camp as boy toys. The only catch is, if they don’t please her, she cuts off their manhood. Things get interesting when Wolfe, an American student who just happened to get caught up in the war, shows up at the camp and catches Ilsa’s eye. See, there’s something special about Wolfe. Ever since he hit puberty, he’s discovered he can ‘do it’ for as long as he wants. This is just what Ilsa’s been looking for! Anyway, while Ilsa and Wolfe are busy doing the horizontal jig, several of the prisoners plan rebellion. |
The Review: Sure, Ilsa She Wolf of the S.S. seems like a cheap exploitation film but in fact it’s really one of the most accurate portrayals of life inside the German concentration camps during the second world war. ‘Ilsa’ just prefers to focus on the facts that the mainstream media doesn’t like to talk about. Like, in the medical concentration camps did you know the sexy female guards often wore extremely low cut shirts in order to emphasize their breasts? 100% accurate history right there. Did you know that the German’s didn’t actually speak German? They spoke English with heavy German accents and the captives who you would guess to be Polish or from some other European country, mostly spoke with American accented English. It seems strange, yes, but if it’s in a movie it just has to be true! Yeah, yeah, sarcasm is played out but I couldn’t help it. Not only is Ilsa a bad movie but it’s also the worst historical film ever made. Ever. For an exploitation film though, this is pretty darn good. It pushes all the right buttons, shows us what we want and does it all while making us laugh. Well, the laughs aren’t intentional and I’ll bet not everyone laughs, but I can guarantee you I did! The stupid lines performed by the less than amateur cast, the extremely bad technical errors and the production crew’s seemingly little knowledge of WWII just puts a smile on my face. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.
After reading some reviews for the film on the imdb, I get the feeling that some people just aren’t built to laugh at things like this. Anyway, I can’t help but find flicks like this to be cheesy fun, it’s in my nature. So, as a warning I’ll throw in a quote from a reviewer on the imdb for those of you who aren’t exactly sure if this type of film is for someone like you…
A warning to others who might consider renting this because they hear it’s “campy and fun”- don’t rent it for that reason unless you have a really sick sense of humor or a real &*%$ed up idea of fun. – Rusty Martin (imdb reviewer)
Well Rusty, I guess I do have a really &*%$ed up idea of fun because I think the film has loads and loads of it. It’s stupid, has TONS of nudity and quite a good bit of gore. What isn’t to like? Well, I guess all three things would be considered bad by some people, but not by me. Those are the only three aspects of the film that kept me interested. The nudity is rarely attractive or anything to that nature, but the gore is fairly good and it really is a funny/stupid movie. Hearing the random German word or phrase thrown in with all of the accented English makes you wonder why it’s there after a while. Watching Ilsa urinate on a high ranking nazi official was another hilarious and memorable scene. It’s the parts where they’re deliberately trying to shock the audience that got the most chuckles out of me. I would go into more detail, but I think I would be banned in China if I did so. Well, maybe I’ll just list a few of the various atrocities committed: Women are raped using electronic devices, boiled in water, gang raped, beaten and whipped by topless blonde nazis. The men get off lucky to some degree, but there’s still a castration that isn’t exactly a pleasant sight. Not too gruesome, but you so much as mention something like that in front of me and I cross my legs.
So, yeah I find the film pretty entertaining but how does it stand up comparatively? Well, not really all too well. Lots of blood and nudity only go so far with me (hardly sounds like a b-movie review, eh?). I actually need something to happen in a film for me to genuinely ‘like’ it. Ilsa just seems to run around in circles forever. Not quite on the level of something like The Wizard of Gore, but still far too much time is spent on the same plot that never seems to go anywhere until the complete end of the film. The girls want to escape, Wolfe has to keep on sleeping with Ilsa, Ilsa keeps torturing and murdering women. That’s it for the whole film. There’s a small romantic relationship that blossoms between one of the prisoners and our American sex machine, but it’s so poorly developed that you almost forget about it the next time they get together. You may say things like that don’t matter in a film like this, but gore and boobs alone are just boring if we don’t at least have some action in there. The ending livens things up a bit and brings us out of the monotonous plot, but when we finally get some good action and gun play, there’s barely no violence. No blood packets, no nothing. The gun fight is horribly staged and seemed almost completely bloodless except for a few stabbings. I may sound too greedy, but I would have preferred some blood from the gunshots at the end. (NOTE: That wasn’t a spoiler to my knowledge, I don’t think anything could ‘spoil’ this film)
The film has it’s faults… the film has MANY faults, but it is still an easy enough film to watch and entertains me enough so that I have to give it a three. Dyane Thorne may not be the best actress in the world, but she’s pretty evil here and her boobs have entertained audiences far longer than I’ve ever been on this earth. How can I show any disrespect to someone like that? A three for the sake of a three.
