Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

‘Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS’ opens with a disclaimer. Producer Herman Traeger warns us that what we are about to see is shocking, torture, brutality, inhumanity… and while these images will shock and disgust you, it is necessary as the producers of this film are showing us these things to educate us on the atrocities that occurred in these hellish camps and serve as a warning that we never, ever allow this to happen again. Two minutes into this ‘social warning’ Ilsa, as played by Dyanne Thorne, is in the shower soaping up her voluminous titties. Thank you Herman Traeger for making this hard hitting docu-drama. Herman Traeger so believed what he told us in the disclaimer to start this movie that he actually made up the name of Herman Traeger, the producers real name being David F. Friedman. Oh, Mr. Friedman had no problem producing ‘The Case of the Maltese Dildo’ under his real name, but this project he took on under an assumed name. Color me concerned.

Ilsa, or Dr. Ilsa I guess I should say, is the commandant at the most brutal, sadistic, war camp in all of Germany. Sure, she tells her new prisoners how ‘fortunate’ they are that they didn’t end up in Dachau or Ravensbrook, but you can ask that prisoner from the first scene who was a bit premature when charged with pleasing Ilsa how ‘fortunate’ he was. Note to self, when having sex with Ilsa, think hard about baseball.

Since this is an exploitation movie of the highest order the first order of business for our new concentration camp attendees is to get naked and get themselves examined. From here they either go into service to the guards where they will be systematically gang raped, or they go into Ilsa’s den of experimental horrors. Whichever straw you draw here is the short straw.

Soon the camp gets a fresh load of male prisoners and these male prisoners do have it a little better. They don’t get experimented on, they are basically used for heavy manual labor and eventually they get to have sex with Ilsa. Looking at Ilsa and her gravity defying Double D’s you would think that’s not a bad deal. Ask Mario (Tony Momulo) about this. Go ahead, just ask him. But new prisoner Wolf (Gregory Knoph) isn’t so concerned. Tall, blonde and handsome, Ilsa at first thought the American to be Aryan material, until she saw him with his pants off. Apparently Wolf doesn’t measure up to Aryan standards. I guess. I’d rather not think about that too much. But Wolf assures Ilsa that size isn’t everything. Thanks for that info Wolf.

Eventually Wolf will make it to Ilsa’s chamber and the wicked maiden will kneel down in proper worship of Wolf’s mastery of self control, but this is all about the ‘experiments’. Naked women will be boiled, put in pressure chambers, infected with every disease known to man only to be injected with even worse theoretical cures, maggots will reproduce in open wounds, blazing candles will be stuffed in vaginas, virgins will be gang raped to death and for entertainment purposes, because that other stuff was just part of a hard day’s work, but for entertainment purposes we will hang a voluptuous naked woman from the ceiling while having her stand on a big ice cube… which will slowly melt… until there is no more ice cube support. Outstanding. The eventual revolt cannot come soon enough.

There are some seriously disturbing things about this unpleasant slice of 1975 exploitation. One of these disturbing things would be how incredibly competent this movie is. We’ve seen our fair share of 1970’s era exploitation flicks and majority of them look like what they are, that is poorly produced 1970’s porn flicks minus the sex. Not ‘Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS’ baby. Directed by Don Edmonds this movie looked and sounded fantastic. The print I saw was crisp and clean, the lighting and staging were as good as, heck I don’t know, ‘Annie Hall’ or some other 1970’s mainstream movie, and the performances were about as good as could be expected from a movie in which everybody had to be naked almost all the time. Since this movie looked so good and was so clean, the expertly designed gore filled torture scenes were completely unobstructed and left little for the audience to imagine what they could be like. You could also see every drop of sweat of the swollen breasts of Ilsa’s brutal sidekicks as they flogged, frolicked and tortured since the SS twins couldn’t do anything unless they had they shirts off. I don’t know who is sicker, the filmmakers who dreamed up this mess or me for watching it until the bitter end. My money is on those guys.

But it’s all tongue in cheek right? If you can’t see the humor in someone sticking a flaming torch in someone’s vagina for the sake of science then I don’t know what to do with you. I’m thinking my experiences with Ilsa and her exploits, because there is more Ilsa where this came from, is probably going to end here. Sorry Dyanne and the twins.