The Madame Aema Franchise

I now bring you Madame Aema, the longest-running and most popular franchise in Korean film history. It’s pornography.

On my rare porno-watching days, I doth feel the need to protest too much, and justify my actions. This blog is founded upon watching all theatrical franchises (meaning four or more, with weird rules governing remakes and other effluvia). Pornography counts, out of a sense of completion, though surely I’m not about to deal with the multitude of video sequels (which proliferate solely around adherence to a niche fetish). Rather, I aim to be as calm and unexploitative when recounting heaving torrents of flesh. In the case of the Madame Aema films, I am aided in my prudishnesh by the franchise’s complete lack of availability.

Yeah, decades old South Korean pornography is not readily available – who’d-a-thunk it? None of my usual obscurity resources turn anything up (“aema” alone reveals nothing on YouTube, even). I’m not about to wander into the local Koreatown neighborhood and announce to some shopkeep that “Yes, uh, hello. Hi. I’m looking for eleven specific antique South Korean pornography movies that – Oh, you have Kim-Dong Ill? No, sorry, I can’t you that mo- Heyyyyy!”

And simply Googling “South Korean pornography” causes my computer to have probskllxzcA $RW)POXZSA A .*&^


Anyway…Madame Aema can owe its existence to a loosening of censorship upon Korean film in 1982. This often seems to be the way it is, that once greater sex and violence are allowable in a medium, that medium starts genuinely experimenting with that freedom. Hence the loss of the Hays Code in favor of a rating system led to movies like A Clockwork Orange and Midnight Cowboy, whose initial ratings were actually concurrent with what we’d now call pornography: NC-17s, though both are now simply Rs. A discussion for another day and another franchise should explore the very notion of mainstream adult erotica. That franchise would be France’s Emmanuelle, and it seems to have been the inspiration behind Madame Aema.

That inspiration governs what I know of Madame Aema’s plot, about a married woman exploring extramarital affairs in order to broaden herself and enter sexual knowingness, in that particular 1970s sense. Evidently, the tone is similar too, striving for softcore erotica in favor of explicit grotesquery. This is kind of an interesting cinematic movement, erotica, in that it attempts to titillate using subtlety and innuendo instead of graphic sexuality. It hopes to be publicly acceptable, to sexually inspire its audience without catering to raw animal lust. This sounds a most challenging proposition, to skate that thin edge just this side of outright pornography. It’s an endeavor of an earlier time, before video moved adult entertainment back into the realm of niche – not that pornography itself nowadays isn’t successful (far from it!), but excepting Pirates (no link provided, because that one is pornography) there isn’t much output which aims for all viewers at once.

That’s what I mean by “niche” – “fetish,” basically, specialization so extreme, it rather negates grander cinematic artistry. Though a luminary no lesser than Stanley Kubrick once boasted, in his megalomania, that he had the skills to actually make a full-on pornography movie, and still make it as artful as 2001 (in his mind, A Clockwork Orange doesn’t float that NC-17 bill). The nearest thing we got is Eyes Wide Shut, which ain’t quite there either, and I’m sure Kubrick would say so much.


Okay, so back to Madame Aema. Its object of sexual awakening is housewife Oh Su-bi (Ahn So-young). She’s emphatically not named “Aema,” because that’s actually a portmanteau, of either 愛馬婦人 or 愛麻婦人, meaning “Horse-Lovin’ Lady.” This is thankfully not a literal meaning, or I’d perhaps ban myself from the Internet. Instead, it’s presumably common Korean slang, basically their way of saying “Sexaholic Whorebag.” Only, you know, artfully.

So Oh Su-bi’s husband Shin Hyun-wu (Lim Dong-jin – heh heh, “Dong”) has lo these past two years been in prison for homicide. Despite her devotion to him, and despite his evidence of marital villainy (like a Tyler Perry antagonist), Oh Su-bi engages in affairs with certain other fellows in her apartment complex. One paramour disgusts her with his perverted sexual predilections (I am glad my research doesn’t turn up greater details, considering what I’ve seen in non-pornographic Korean film!); another contrasts that with “pure love.” Divorce and France are tossed about, perhaps in direct reference to the Asian-set French Emmanuelle, but in the end Oh Su-bi stays with her husband, now released, and I’m not sure what they’re getting at from this synopsis in terms of female rights or the sexual revolution or the sanctity nor marriage or any pertinent themes.


Trying to get deeper, as it were, into the truth behind director Jeong In-yeob’s artistry, I delve into the wonderful realm of Korean websites (making a point of avoiding North Korea’s self-serving, narcissistically hilarious propagandography). Here’s what I discover (NSFW-ish), in a historical evaluation of the Aema phenomenon:

“70년대를 풍미했던 나 같은 이른바 호스티스영화가 남녀의 육체가 포개질 때 ‘컷’을 외쳤던 반면 은 억눌려 있던 포르노적 욕망을 집중적으로 분출시켰다. 극단적인 클로즈업과 성애를 갈구하는 노골적인 환상이 그때는 정말 충격이었다. 80년대의 아이들은 애마의 풍만한 가슴에 매달려 걸음마를 배웠다..”

Then again, run through Babel Fish:

“70's flavor me which does the hostess movie piled up the flesh of the man and woman what is called is same and at the time of quality the other side which shouts `cuts ' hundred million gushed the porno desire which is being pushed intensively. The claw [cu] which is extreme [ep] with the characteristic child will go and the fantasy which is outspoken buys that time was true shock. 80's the children a toddle was hung in the breast which the pet horse is plump and learned.”

That’s just maddeningly unhelpful.


Madame Aema inspired a wave of copycat Korean erotica throughout the ‘80s. Completely by assumption, I imagine it somewhat like the earlier Franco-Japanese In the Realm of the Senses, in that it makes a genuine effort to combine art house impulses and semi-explicit sexuality. It is likely a lot like the “pink films” which had already dominated Japanese culture – forever it seems Korean culture is in a game of hot potato with Japan. Like those pink films, the post-Aema Korerotica blurred the distinction twixt mainstream and sexploitation, often competing alongside more traditional film types for regular, non-pornography awards and distinctions. It was basically a legitimate genre, not a separate branch of moviemaking, as evidenced by maybe Aema’s greatest inheritor, Mulberry – that one won Best Film, Actress and Actor among Korean film critics, so unless the nation is completely inundated with leering perverts (…likely), these are clearly more than just stag films.


Looking over a synopsis for Madame Aema 2 (1984) confirms so much. Oh Su-bi (which now appears to be the actress’ name, as the character is now called “Madame Aema” – I dunno) is now divorced, and fielding another pair of potential suitors, embodying varying philosophies on sex, love and marriage. Seemingly, 2 comes squarely to the conclusion that those various ideas do diverge, as Aema (I’m just gonna call the protagonist that from now on) rejects matrimony. Alongside tactful descriptions of velvety, soft-focus love (likely with foreground objects doing Austin Powers wang-hiding duty, a “pink movie” tradition), there are descriptions of other scenes you mightn’t expect from erotica. Scenes like Aema collecting butterflies, or riding a saddleless horse along the shore – toplessness optional. Whatever the actual tonal effect of these moments, they’re clearly something you won’t find in your average Skinemax epic.


Certainly by 1985’s Madame Aema 3, Aema is no longer the same woman – this is evident partly because of new lead actress Kim Boo-seon, and partly because this Aema finds herself stuck in a loveless marriage to an entirely new foil, Professor Noh. Of course, it would be too much to ask for one Aema to endlessly sexually reawaken on a schedule concurrent with popular film cycles, so basically resetting the stage allows them to run through the same plot sans justification. So again Aema (or Emma, as they’ve now gone with) dabbles in affairs, now with a professional wrestler. Then due to her husband’s huge load (of research), she “wanders the streets in despair.” That’s a hell of an ending!

I guess I’d better start examining this specifically as a series at some point. A series is defined by repetition, and that’s something pure, raw sex undoubtedly can deliver. Eroticism perhaps cannot, as the more often naked genitalia are waggled artfully before us, the less artful that becomes. One pictures Aema, and the rest of Korea’s “folk erotic” movement, getting tugged by the dichotomous dictates of the Criterion mentality, and the trench coat crowd. With more entries, the nearer it gets to the latter, and so the Aema cycle bows out early in the mid-‘80s, dignity still intact.


Enter the ‘90s! In the desperate rush before video completely destroyed the viability of theatrical adult film (which had its last mainstream “hurrah” in the U.S. with Showgirls), the years 1990 through 1995 saw a relative avalanche of Aemae, butter-churning out eight sequels in that time. That means two years (1992, 1993) doubled up.

Each entry now welcomes a new cast, always a new Emma, with no continuity between films. Instead, all explore the same thematic ground, as Emma doubts her marriage, has some sex elsewhere, her husband likely does the same, then each resolves either in divorce or faithfulness. From the summaries (and stills on the Korean Movie Database) these things are kind of like those Danielle Steele books – you know, the ones with Fabio on the cover.

There is no ultimate trajectory for a series preoccupied with repetition, with variations on a formula as if it were simply a subgenre, so like a subgenre it simply becomes a waiting game, to see how many of these things can happen before people simply tire of them. There’s evidently so much similarity between sequels now, I’ll only amuse myself with identifying the ways in which they differ…


Madame Aema 4 (1990): This one appears the first where the husband’s affairs dictate matters. By all evidence, the Emma has herself some fornication too. Otherwise, not much to report, except Emma has a daughter too, which drives emotion, but doesn’t appear to have a bearing on the series’ sexual promiscuity.

Madame Aema 5 (1991): Two daughters now. Also, the usual sordid tales are set at a ski resort, possibly in Japan. This is a change from the usual setting, which by all evidence is Korea’s Jeju Island.

Madame Aema 6 (1992): This one is interesting. It makes note of the rotating roster of so-called Emmas, and actually imagines a multi-generational family of women, all of them somehow named Emma. Not sure how this works, nor how you can have three sisters all with the same name. Whatever’s going on, it allows for a greater quantity of adult angles, which undoubtedly means there’s less actual thoughtfulness. And with the female cast thus expanded exponentially, things start to resemble more traditional male-centric pornography, while the series has previously distinguished itself with its genuine feminine point of view.


Madame Aema 7 (1992): One Emma. A performance artist. Performance art utilized as a perversion enabler. That is all.

Madame Aema 8 (1993): Two Emmas, both of them dancers. One gets married, the other doesn’t, yet each has differing opinions on the institution. This one sides with marriage in the end.

Madame Aema 9 (1993): Emma has an affair, then returns to her husband. There doesn’t appear to be anything noteworthy here.

Madame Aema 10 (1994): During an Emma’s expected marital separation, she lives with a female friend. The series now wholeheartedly delves into lesbianism, which has received at least minor consideration before. Well, dudes love that stuff! But to counter this potential slide into pandering, the token male adulterer is named simply Mr. F. Ignore your immediate “Arrested Development” impressions, for this is possibly a variation on French genre standards like Story of O, indicating the Aemae still intend occasional sophistication.

Madame Aema 11 (1995): The sex stuff in the final entry seems de rigeur. Rather, it’s the tertiary details which appear unique. Like some sci-fi/gangster movie, Emma’s husband develops a “revolutionary new technology” – I picture an Inception dream invading tech, perhaps. Then the Yakuza burst in and interrupt sex scenes for the rest of the movie!


Then the series abruptly ends, without celebration, as it has transitioned into a niche realm by 1995, and Korea’s flirtation with erotica has subsided. Which leaves the most noteworthy days of Madame Aema well in the past, and makes conclusions hard to come by. So I’ll just wander on off in a most anticlimactic manner, and leave it at that…

[Sound of me strolling out of my apartment.]

[Sound of door closing.]

[Long, empty silence.]

Ilsa, No. 4 -- Ilsa: The Wicked Warden (1977)

This entry is not an official entry in the Ilsa cannon, for as loosely connected as that cannon is. It is in actuality an unrelated women in prison flick that was filmed concurrent to The Tigress of Siberia in 1977, and actually released before it. Upon initial release, there was little here to ally it with the Ilsa franchise. For originally Ilsa: The Wicked Warden was known as Greta The Mad Butcher. (It has also over time been known as Greta the Torturer, Greta the Sadist, and Wanda the Wicked Warden.)

This movie would only earn its shaky connection to Ilsa upon rerelease onto home video some time in the late 1980s. Only then was it first called Ilsa: The Wicked Warden. Apparently there was still enough cachet (and iffy copyright) associated with the Ilsa name to warrant this move. Hell, the movie does star Dyanne Thorne in the fairly Ilsa-ish role of Greta. All you have to do is edit out all utterances of “Greta” on the soundtrack, miss one or two so people can comment upon your incompetency twenty years after the fact, and you’ve got a video hit! It’s certainly a better proposition than releasing a forgotten Euro-smut film to an indifferent public.

Normally I would not think to consider a movie that is as tangentially related to a series as this one is. If I allowed a place for every unlicensed coattailling, the scope of my Sisyphean project would increase tenfold. I’d have to watch about a hundred Django movies. So what makes this movie so special that I’m willing to break so many of my franchise rules, and so early? For one, it truly seems to be accepted by Ilsa fans as one of the family. Apparently dissatisfied by the tameness of The Tigress of Siberia, exploitation enthusiasts were happy to receive a new movie that is far more grotesque and wrong. Besides, if I didn’t count this movie as Part 4, then I wouldn’t have had to watch any of the Ilsa films, and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?

The man I have to thank for the position I’m now in is one Jesus Franco. His name can send the heartiest of bad movie lovers cowering, for this Spaniard is one of the most prolific and idiosyncratic directors of horrible European smut extravaganzas from the past half century! I am actually kind of sad that I couldn’t find a copy of this movie, since this would be the one chance in my 1,000 film project to justify watching a Jesus Franco joint.

Let me say a little more about Franco’s illustrious career, just to get the point across. Throughout the 70s, this man averaged about 9 movies a year. He dabbled in each and every horrific erotic subgenre, from lesbian vampires to cannibal films and nunspoitation (yes, you can “sploitate” anything). He was a frequent adapter of the Marquis de Sade. And his trademark – for every notable director needs a trademark – is as follows: “His movies often contain long, uninterrupted shots of nude women writhing uncontrollably on the floor or in bed.” Stay classy, San Diego!


Unlike any true Ilsa film, The Wicked Warden is an unabashed, honest-to-goodness women in prison flick. Astoundingly, the others were all brave departures from that standard formula, and amongst Z-grade cinema that puts them in the upper echelon. Now, women in prison films...This has to be the most formula-driven, set in stone genre of them all, with the possible exception of slashers. So without bothering to look over any plot synopsis for The Wicked Warden, we can very likely expect most of the following:

1. An innocent girl is wrongfully sent to a corrupt penal institution.
2. The corrupt head of the institution is running a secret prostitution ring, or some such.
3. Amongst the inmates, a tough female “queen bee” rules over all.
4. An initial degrading strip search (gotta get your assets on screen early).
5. The group shower scene.
6. The lesbian scene.
7. Sexual assaults by the guards (and various similar events I don’t feel like categorizing).
8. The climactic revolution and escape, with the murder of, well, nearly everyone.

So with these as our guidelines, in place of the standard Ilsa formula, let’s see how The Wicked Warden fits into the scheme of things...

Number 5 jumpstarts our checklist – that being the group shower. One girl manages to escape these confines, fleeing soaking wet and naked into the South American jungle. (Franco achieves another genre cliche not noted on our list by setting this in the jungle.) And in order to reward himself for so efficiently getting the entire cast naked in the first scene, Franco plays the physician who takes the girl in once she has eluded her pursuers. Soon enough checklist No. 2 arrives in the form of the warden, presumably wicked, named either Greta, Wanda or Ilsa depending upon your version. She is played by Dyanne Thorne, so for our purposes let’s say she is Ilsa. She takes the girl back to the institution, where she (the unnamed girl) shall promptly die.

By the way, the place “Ilsa” runs is actually a mental institution, not a prison. But the principle is the same, really. And the justification for the inevitable tortures and assaults (No. 7) is a means to cure the inmates’ lesbianism and nymphomania.

Number 1, the wrongly imprisoned innocent with whom we shall identify and leer, is accomplished in an abnormal manner. Abbie Phillips (Tania Busselier) is the dead girl’s older sister. Like the investigative reporters that sometimes replace the innocent girl in this formula, Abbie commits herself to “Ilsa”’s asylum in order to learn the truth. This quickly leads her to meet No. 6 (Juana), and of course to receive generous helpings of No.7. Lord knows if No. 4 ever makes an appearance in here, so I can only guess that it does. Number 6 (the lesbian scene) is provided by “Ilsa” herself, and surely this is a sign this is not a true Ilsa film – amazingly, the Ilsa character in those movies is a staunch heterosexual, despite her Sapphic associates and the general inclinations of this genre.

So we’ve already checked off pretty much everything on the list except for No. 8, which by definition must wait until the climax. So how is this particular film going to spin its wheels until that point, apart of course from more and more of No. 7 ad nauseam? That’s right! The same way the later Ilsa entries did. With lots and lots of vague political intrigue. For it seems Abbie’s sister was part of a revolutionary group and – Oh hey! She’s still alive! I should have read ahead in that plot synopsis. It seems the result of this is it gives “Ilsa” someone to torture for actual plot reasons, demanding to learn the location of the secret Rebel base on Bespin – er, the identity of the revolutionary leader (it’s Franco’s character, by the way). Thus Franco gets killed.

It’s really hard to review a movie this way, working from others’ vague plot synopses. It’s a stupid idea, and it’s doing you no favors. The specifics of the plot sort of dry up at this point. What I can offer you, if you so wish, is a catalogue of at least some of the atrocities (No. 7 again) that can be unearthed in this film like so many nuggets of gold. Here you go, because you demanded it...

The Atrocities (Abridged):
– Prisoners’ numbers branded directly onto their breasts
– Deadly breast acupuncture
– Plastic bag asphyxiation
– More electroshock therapy, but you already guessed that one
– On screen lobotomies
– Douching with acid!
– Coprophagia (you know, poop eating)

Hmm, South America...Per this list, it must be Brazil. And all this sound grosser, if not more morally repulsive, than anything in the original She Wolf. As an added skuzzy benefit, every bit of depravity that takes place at this asylum is secretly videotaped by “Ilsa,” to add to her collection of snuff films she sells on the black market – this indirectly satisfies the prostitution angle necessitated by No. 2.

Of course even lacking better synopses, we all know No. 8 would come to pass in the end. This is the one part of this movie I could find a clip of – the prisoners’ revenge on warden “Ilsa.”

It all starts as your typical, everyday all-girl gang bang, with “Ilsa” as the victim. This quickly descends into straight up cannibalism, with roughly eight or so semi-nude women lustily chewing into “Ilsa”’s flesh! Director Franco highlights the animalistic qualities of this by splicing in footage of lions and other big cats devouring their prey. This is a Spanish movie, so it all plays like a degraded version of an Italian film, which are themselves degraded versions of normal films. Oh, and this scene lasts for a full 4 minutes. If the content alone isn’t enough, then surely dwelling upon it must thrill you. Or bore you out of your mind. Take your pick. By the way, reviews indicate this is the most extreme scene in the film. So if you ever choose to watch this thing, keep in mind it’s NSFW.

Even from this brief clip, it’s clear the film is European, while the real Ilsa series was resolutely North American. Mass naked lesbian cannibalism might be grosser than anything Franco’s Canadian counterparts could conjure, but there is a mighty operatic surrealism to European trash that alleviates the horror. Those of you conversant in Italian horror cinema, or even their spaghetti westerns, can attest to this. It’s extreme, but it’s playful, without aiming for campiness. These movies must have really clouded my judgment and taste, but what little I saw of The Wicked Warden didn’t repulse me excessively.

So what does the future hold for the Ilsa franchise? Are you kidding?! This series is dead, effectively cannibalized worse than “Ilsa” herself. A brief three year run was all the Ilsa concept could sustain, probably because there’s little room for franchising in the realm of sexploitation. And while the grindhouse phenomena which gave birth to the mere possibility of such movies is long gone, a vast unexplored realm of sicko direct-to-video releases continues the good work of Ilsa and her torturous brethren. And if you’re the kind of person who feels the need to seek out more of this, you’re welcome to it. I for one welcome the peaceful and quiet franchises due up next – after a quick detour in Germany.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)
• No. 2 Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
• No. 3 Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977)

Ilsa, No. 3 -- Ilsa The Tigress of Siberia (1977)

I have to admit now that I’ve failed.

I shall not be watching every franchise ever made (by my squirelly definition of what a franchise is), since not every one of these movies is readily available. I had anticipated breaking this news at some point, but I thought it was going to be for some old Hollywood serials or obscure German comedies, not the Ilsa series. I didn’t think it would break me – at least not in that way. I’ve looked over every seedy part of the Internet I know of, even YouTube, and the best I can do for the remaining two entries is a few clips. Or I could buy a ratty old copy on VHS for $79, and then buy a VCR too. I dunno, maybe one of you guys could propose a solution...

Anyway, I must soldier on, and instead comment on the final Ilsa films based solely on second hand research. I do think this will improve my writing a little, as watching Ilsa movies lowers my IQ.

So, first at bat – Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977)

The series’ original producers had backed out at this point. They were done, having created an initial travesty and its cash-grab sequel. That was already more milk than you’d think this particular cow could give. Enter the great Roger Corman. This brilliant uber-producer was responsible for the vast majority of women in prison films from the past decade, so he and co-producer Ivan Reitman clearly understood the potential value in a property like Ilsa. That’s right, a future Oscar winner and the director of Ghostbusters put together an Ilsa picture.

This film holds the reputation of being the tamest of the series, with apparently the lowest levels of nudity and torture. It seems that the producers, along with director Jean LaFleur, were really interested in using the Ilsa character as a delivery system for Canadian in-jokes. Wait, huh?! I guess because the previous director was Canadian. Alright then, eh?

Of course continuity is not an issue, so all you need to do in order to justify another Ilsa sequel is to define the new socio-political scope of Ilsa’s depravities. And then get Dyanne Thorne back as Ilsa, but that’s not exactly hard to do, it would seem. LaFleur’s movie trades World War II Germany and oil crises Arabia for Cold War Soviet Russia. This seems completely natural, and is actually a far more logical followup to Part 1 than the Middle East. Had the series, god forbid, carried on ad infinitum into the modern day, one can easily picture Ilsa appearing anachronistically in all sorts of reviled dictator states – Hussein, Amin, Trump...Hell, having started with the Nazis, everything must be fair game now!

Okay, the Soviet Union, 1953. The death of Stalin and the rise of Khrushchev. Obviously in this context we will find our friend Ilsa running a gulag, torturing enemies of the state with an iron, um, fist and lesbian cohorts. Actually, it seems the traditional lesbian duo has been retooled somewhat as Ilsa’s heterosexual companions, the ones who entertain Ilsa’s sexual castoffs on a nightly basis. So this movie takes the bold stance of toying with established series formula, which can often be a daring step, but here seems almost as nihilistic as the films themselves.

Another major shakeup in established series dogma is the identity of Ilsa’s current victims – they’re all male! The first film made the awkward decision to focus almost exclusively on female torture, even in a setting where gender equality would make sense. At the time, I commented that male torture was the purview of an entirely separate arm of grindhouse cinema. It seems that for Part 3, the makers have decided to embrace that new subgenre, which is just as well, since Ilsa did not remain in its original Nazisploitation mode beyond the first film anyway. And it makes sense historically that Comrade Ilsa’s subjects would be male, though I doubt that was the reason for this decision. Looking for reason here is like...well, it’s redundant.

The central tortures of this section, and the movie as a whole, apparently involve electroshock therapy, which we’ve already been treated to in this series. According to a reliable source (Wikipedia), this is because Canadians as a people have a preternatural fear of electricity; I cannot for the life of me figure out why this would be, unless they leave live wires dangling around their hockey rinks or...What’s another Canadian stereotype? Whatever. Other features of Ilsa’s gulag lifestyle, I’m told, include nude wrestling and man-eating tigers. I’m sure had I seen the film I would have something to say about all this, but as it is I’d just be making something up.

The gulag setting, so potentially like its concentration camp predecessor, is proving by Ilsa standards to be somewhat underwhelming here – I think. That barely matters, since rumor has it this whole opening gulag section was merely a caveat thrown in by the filmmakers to justify calling this thing an Ilsa film, to connect this to the others. As mentioned, their interest was Canadian navel-gazing, even though they didn’t need Ilsa to do that. So in order to move the plot to Canada, something must be done. Upon learning of Stalin’s death, Ilsa fears she herself might be in pogrom’s way, so she and her loyal Cossacks proceed to murder everyone at Gulag 14 and burn the place to the ground. I suspect this is the closest things come here to the standard women in prison finale rebellion, and we’re something like a third of the way in. Still, one man survives, one Andrei Chikurin (Michel-Rene Labelle).

It is now 25 years later, and all the actors look exactly the same, because who wants an Ilsa movie where the already-mature Dyanne Thorne plays someone who can qualify for AARP. We are in Montreal. Seemingly my hockey rink crack above was not out-of-place, since that’s the joke they actually make here. The Russians are in town because of Canadian hockey. Andrei is now managing the Russian Olympic team, and his first act is to do what any good team manager does – take them to a brothel. Because coincidence dictates storytelling, and because otherwise we wouldn’t have a movie, of course this brothel is run by Ilsa (cue applause). It would seem the brothel also functions as a perfectly adequate means of justifying the standard genre trappings – Ilsa hasn’t quite kicked her torture habit, now enacting it upon local mob bosses. And a brothel easily takes care of the sex part of the exploitation equation.

Ilsa becomes aware of Andrei’s presence, since he doesn’t look a day older. She spies him through close-circuited cameras, this being a Big Brother brothel. Suspecting Andrei is there for revenge and not just due to a plot contrivance, Ilsa has him taken back to her mansion for a series of psychedelic tortures. Not knowing the content of these tortures, it seems the hallucination angle employed is a means of allowing any damn torture concept into place without having to struggle with the strange plot justifications of Part 2. So the filmmakers go and squeeze in a castration scene, as formula dictates, without actually having to castrate any of their characters. This movie doesn’t have the balls to...well, you know. And damn these films! Google now knows I’ve spent a portion of my day researching castration!

Through these means Ilsa learns that Andrei’s greatest fear – to be seduced by Ilsa. Therefore she chooses to seduce him. At this stage it seems that Andrei occupies the same position as our two Americans heroes from before, namely, The Man Who Conquered Ilsa. I guess it must be somewhat brave to assign this traditionally American role to a Communist, though I doubt most viewers consider these films in quite such close proximity as I have. And Andrei has a superpower far more extreme than Wolfe’s non-ejaculation in She Wolf, though it’s also far more common – he cannot achieve erect. Or at the very least he can control his boners, unlike all pubescent boys. It is by this means that Andrei defeats Ilsa sexually. He uses the moment to spit in Ilsa’s face, certainly not the bodily ejection she was hoping for.

And here comes the KGB – the good guys! Through lengthy scenes of plot and espionage that supposedly put those in Harem Keeper to shame, the Commies have noted Andrei’s disappearance and tracked him down to Ilsa’s lair. Cue climactic shootout, which sounds to be not nearly as breast-obsessed as its forebears. Andrei engages Ilsa in a snowmobile chase, defeats her male henchman via impalement (I have no idea what happened to Ilsa’s pair of female companions in any of this). Ilsa is left to perish alone in the vast Canadian wilderness, just like Les Stroud.

I really cannot comment of the quality of this film, obviously. I’m sure it’s not great. As a second sequel, though, it offers something to grab onto. Basically, this film greatly reduces the exploitation elements people come to the Ilsa movies to see, instead serving up a weird Canadian agenda I do not understand. A major handicap to artists hoping to continue a franchise is that they have to stay within certain expectations. This film does not do that, and so it kills off an already-shaky franchise. This is the true end of the Ilsa series, and no other Ilsa films would ever be made.

Well, sorta...


Related posts:
• No. 1 Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)
• No. 2 Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
• No. 4 Ilsa the Wicked Warden (1977)

Ilsa, No. 2 -- Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)

A mere year after Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS warmed audience’s hearts, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Sheiks appeared in grindhouses to pick up and continue the complete lack of a story. Over that interminable year, film goers anxiously awaited seeing what the lovable Ilsa would do next...Nothing! Ilsa was dead! The SS shot her and left her corpse to roast in a burning stalag!

But the death of the main character, or the lack of a compelling narrative or theme, can never stop enterprising storytellers from continuing their work. Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is a sequel in the loosest possible sense. It stars the same lead actress from the first film, playing a character with the same name and nature, but drops any notion of even attempting cross-film continuity. No effort to connect World War II era concentration camps with 1970s Arabia would ever take, so thankfully no effort is made. There’s not even some lame Egyptian resurrection subplot or past lives or anything.

So the Ilsa in the title is simply a brand name, a way of saying to all cash-carrying deviants on 42nd Street: “Hey, you remember that gory sexual Nazi torture movie you onanized over a year ago? We have some more gory sexual torture for you now, this time with vague Middle Eastern theming.” And since the atrocities of 1975's Exploitoberfest were apparently too extreme for even the grindhouse crowd (at least too extreme to merit carbon copy franchising), the extreme snuff film tone of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS has been toned down to something fairly similar, but altogether more cheesecake. Despite the same artistic team, including director Don Edmonds, this movie actually eschews the first’s X-rating for the tamer R. But don’t worry, drooling sleazehounds, there’s still plenty of obscenity to be found here.

One reason I am undertaking this enormous project is because I am fascinated by the lengths sequels will take to carry over elements from earlier films For a knowledgeable audience member, a later sequel becomes a ceremonial affair, moving past a particular franchise’s Stations of the Cross. Certain events and decisions that seemed natural (if unwanted) in wartime Germany don’t fit in quite so elegantly in a world of oil sheiks and off-screen OPEC shenanigans. Since the ostensible plot of She Wolf of the SS started with a shipment of fresh females to the titular Ilsa, this is also how Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks must start. Actual helicopter shots sail over the deserts of some unnamed fictional country in the Middle East. It’s all rather bargain basement Lawrence of Arabia, and I think they filmed it in California.

A convoy of trucks delivers a trio of crates to the palace of Sheik El Sharif – played by Victor Alexander, who is both heavily disguised and not using his real name since, you know, headlining an Ilsa film isn’t a source of pride or anything. El Sharif’s palace is one of those tacky, ostentatious places “South Park” gives the Persians so much trouble about. And Ilsa is there (Dyanne Thorne again). Standing on either side of her is something else we will recognize as a carryover element from the original: a duo of militaristic lesbian guards. I had very little to say about the previous Teutonic tit-tasters, but their lithe Nubian equivalents here have a far more significant presence, as they are Ilsa’s true henchwomen, replacing the need for countless faceless Nazi doctors. As the movie goes on, these two characters seem to grow increasingly allergic to their clothing, losing it for no apparent reason over extended sequences. However, at this stage I am astonished to report that we have not seen a single naughty bit. Actually, most characters tend to keep their clothes on in this one!

So I said the opening was about a transfer of females, right? Well, what did you think was in those three crates? Back in her dungeon Ilsa inspects the crates, revealing the three women in question, and more importantly, their three sets of naked breasts. Ilsa reveals they are three well-to-do types (an heiress, actress and equestrian, I believe, as though it matters) who have been kidnapped to be a part of El Sharif’s ever-expanding harem. And when I say “ever-expanding,” I mean that some of El Sharif’s girls happen to be grotesquely obese. This is a throwaway bit, and it’s probably only in there to satisfy whatever paying fetishists want to see fat women topless. Hell, you wanted to see something like that in the 70s, you either went to the grindhouse or you patiently waited for the Internet. Or...did something proactive, like dating...

I should also mention that, though eternally topless, these women are not going full frontal, as they are wearing golden chastity belts. This is the sort of minor detail I wouldn’t normally care to relate, but not in an Ilsa film. Later, El Sharif unlocks said chastity belts, affording us loving closeups of the women’s vaginas. Their faces never get this kind of treatment.

The three new girls cringe at the idea of harem work, so Ilsa threatens them with potential rat-based genital mutilation. This sort of rat torture is strangely similar to something from 2 Fast 2 Furious, which has to be a total coincidence. And nothing ever comes of it. By the way, this movie’s lighter tone is evident in the change of central victims. In the first, the women were selected due to historically accurate, nationally-mandated racism, and forced to endure tortures for no greater purpose. Here, the victims are just three worthless rich women, and the training Ilsa shall put them through is intended to make them better lovers, not destroy their bodies utterly. Most of the tortures to come will have to be created through plot machinations.

How about that? Plot machinations! Nothing serious, mind you, but in this movie, one event leads to another! There’s some espionage stuff in here about warring oil interests, and this is the pretext that signals the coming of the main male parties.

The outsider men here are not much like their She Wolf counterparts. As El Sharif anticipates, a U.S. jet is presently en route, not to deliver lambs to the slaughter but to deliver civilized diplomats. One is Dr. Kaiser (Wolfgang Roehm, who played Derr General in the original), a broad, cartoony version of Dr. Henry Kissinger. His associate is Colonel Adam Scott (Michael R. Thayer). Isn’t Adam Scott the guy who does “Dilbert?”...No, that’s Scott Adams...And since a group of marginally competent filmmakers is trying to tell a plot here, the current function of these men is to spout off exposition. Basically, they seek a means of blackmailing Sheik El Sharif in order to benefit from his oil interests. And Adam is a spy.

Meanwhile in Fauxrabia, El Sharif knows Adam is a spy. That was useless. Further wasting time, El Sharif spouts off his own exposition at Ilsa. This scene serves both expositive and exploitative purposes, though, since as El Sharif says all this, his harem girl violates herself with a gigantic vibrating flute, as is her wont. That reminds me of this one time, at band camp...

Next up is a totally purposeless scene, except it’s the kind of scene this movie was made for. A disloyal servant to the sheik is corralled outside the palace, where he must prove his honor by wrestling Ilsa’s two topless lesbians. Their fighting style reminds me of Bambi and Thumper from Diamonds Are Forever. And of course the servant loses, quite some time later, so we can get another series trademark: male genital mutilation. Whoo-hoo, no movie’s complete without that! The lesbians turn the servant into a eunuch, in a hands-on approach, and somehow the way it’s done here is far more agreeable that in She Wolf. Maybe because it’s now just a sick joke, and maybe because eunuchs have been hilarious since the days of Herodotus.

Meanwhile, that plane is still in the air.

We get a few scenes in Ilsa’s dungeons and operating rooms. A little gore is tossed about, but somehow the notion of repairing breast implant scars, no matter how repulsive, isn’t nearly as horrifying as the catalogue of wrongs committed in She Wolf. A further bit of plotting reveals that the belly dancing girl in El Sharif’s entourage is Adam’s spy.

But before anything can come of that, it’s time for another wildly tangential sequence. This one is a slave girl auction, somehow lacking in Leias. It starts out as an excuse for women we haven’t seen before to prance around topless for crowds of ululating Middle Eastern stereotypes. When one sheik buys a particularly acrobatic girl, he proceeds to announce his distaste for “the scrape of teeth.” This becomes a remarkably flimsy excuse for a scene of forced dental malpractice. The setup for this single stupid tooth gag is so ridiculously convoluted, there’s very little left that’s actually disturbing.

Meanwhile, the following morning, that plane is still in the air.

By now Ilsa, who seems like a much more minor presence than before, has discovered the dancing girl’s true spy identity, through the recording device in her bellybutton jewel. This leads to some scenes of relatively justifiable torture. Ilsa wants the girl to tell her who other spy is, even though she and El Sharif already know it is Adam. So first up in our torturous cavalcade is some sort of wooden clamp device. Because of the film’s visual murk (courtesy of brilliant Halloween cinematographer Dean Cundey), I can hardly tell what is being clamped, but knowing this series it’s probably her naughty bits...Then ants eat off the girl’s foot. It’s silly.

Meanwhile, that plane is sti– Actually, it’s landed. Halfway through the movie, and here come our ostensible heroes up to the palace doors. I can see why they’re so hard up for El Sharif’s oil. That damn plane must use up a ton in the three days it takes to cross the Atlantic.

The time has come to entertain these guests. Ilsa binds herself up in a spidery black dress that carefully reveals choice bits of anatomy. Despite all this, Thorne has remained astoundingly clothed throughout the film. It will not last for the whole running time, but it’s admirable, and it’s actually almost...a tease. The first film kinda blew its Thorne boob load one minute in.

The final major piece of Ilsa trademarks falls into place. For as usual, Ilsa desperately wants a man, and Adam the American is a fine substitute for Wolfe the American. There is no justification given this time around for the American’s studliness. There is no delayed ejaculation subplot required. (I can’t believe the sentences I’m writing.) And so, following a quick detour where a hand gets sliced off and an eyeball gets eaten, it’s time for the big Ilsa/Adam love scene. Still Ilsa’s breasts somehow remain off-camera, though she’s entirely nude and the buttocks are everywhere. No, they’re saving those breasts for the big hunchbacked leper rape scene in the finale! (Whoops, spoilers!) And parallel to this lovemaking, in a move I’m sure the director thought was “artsy,” El Sharif himself is busy “drilling for oil.” The ineffectual Dr. Kaiser is also allowed a potential partner, in the form of an underage slave boy who – I don’t know what they were going for here. There’s been a subtle gay vibe throughout this thing, and I think the screenwriter is racist.

Fed up with his never-ending gay encounters just as I’m sure Dr. Henry Kissinger constantly was, the good Dr. Kaiser leaves to take the three-day plane flight back to the States. Adam intends to remain in El Sharif’s nameless emirate, and the best reason I can come up with is because the plot demands it. Apparently Adam’s sex is far better than even Wolfe’s, since this Ilsa is being converted to the side of good Not too good, though, since her next big scene is a completely ludicrous affair where she demonstrates...I don’t even know how to put this. She’s...she’s...she’s turned the dancing girl into a...a...a sex bomb. That is, there is...there is...

Okay, deep breath...Just say it quick. There’s a plastique bomb in the girl’s uterus that can only be detonated through vigorous sex. There! This is shown when one of those electronic silver dildo machines (what like they got all over that there Internet) makes short work of the dancing girl. Her...area instantly explodes, sending groin grue splattering all over El Sharif, who guffaws in inexplicable delight at this turn of events. He must take great glee living in a fantasy universe. Apparently this is all part of an under-explained assassination scheme against some other sheik. Encouraged, Ilsa instantly goes to “verk” brainwashing one of the other harem girls (they’re all interchangeable to me), creating another exploding sex assassin. You’ve heard of Chekhov’s gun? This is Chekhov’s diaphragm.

Adam and Ilsa have another love scene, this time surrounded by candles.

Then an assassin (of the male, non-exploding vagina variety) makes an attempt on El Sharif just as he’s engaging in nipple mutilation – okay, that’s a slight change of pace, I guess. The nipple-bearing girl is killed instead. The assassin is caught, and some sort of bizarre death must be meted out to him too, so the film has him set on fire as he runs into the desert. Remember way back when I said this movie had a plot? I think I was being sarcastic.

El Sharif orders Ilsa to kill Adam. But because Adam’s a good lay, instead Ilsa decides to lead an impromptu bloody coup against the sheik, replacing him with his young nephew who it now suddenly turns out has been jailed in the dungeon this whole time. Since this plot development is actually important, unlike the slave auction or rival sheiks or unexplained assassin, you’d think there would have been more hints about this earlier. There was one, a single shot, only I thought it was a monster.

Before the coup can start, a little more needs to be accomplished, mostly to get this up to feature length. Time to drop that shoe. The hunchbacked leper finally gets to rape Ilsa, and I know you were all holding your breathes for that one. And Adam is placed in a torture device of a most convoluted nature, involving a great big assembly strapped to his head, with a tarantula and a candle and a string and, you know, Jigsaw would be proud. In fact, I think this is where those damn Saw guys get their inspiration from.

El Sharif lets Ilsa go, because he is a dumb bad guy, and she instantly assembles her army of eunuchs and lesbians. And saves Adam. Like the last film, and like all women in prison movies ever, there is a standard climactic shootout, and at this point in my write-up I’ve run out of new ways to say there are breasts everywhere. At one point I thought Ilsa had shot the sheik’s cheek, and I laughed most generously, but it turns out it was just the sheik’s guard’s cheek. Sheik El Sharif himself has a much grander fate...The Sex Bomb! Wow, that sounds like an old “Get Smart” movie, doesn’t it? And it’s a good thing they set up that bombastic genital, because otherwise this would be really unrealistic.

Adam releases El Sharif’s nephew, the rightful heir. This unnamed prince is played by a 6-year-old boy who is undoubtedly thrilled to be appearing in a semi-pornographic sex epic. The kid then does something totally out of place for a leader in the Muslim world – he abdicates all decisions to the Americans. So if we really want the Middle Eastern oil that is our God-given American right, we simply have to bang the right Germans...Uh-huh. Ilsa looks forward to joining Adam in this brave new world, but Adam is, er, adamantly against her. (“You stinking bitch!”) So we get that happy ending we’ve all craved, as a little boy throws Ilsa in a dungeon to starve to death.

I think the little details above are enough to make it clear this is not nearly as harsh as She Wolf. This movie achieves that campy, tacky quality some would have you believe the original also possesses. I am no longer having a hard time reconciling the series’ fundamental nihilism. The atrocities are stupid enough now that things simply come across as weird rather than awful. It’s all kind of like a bad John Waters movie, minus the idiosyncracies and plus a stronger grindhouse aesthetic. This is a really strange comic book mixture of weirdness and violence. It would take a truly special audience to appreciate this, people both “adult” enough to demand a story filled with torture and mutilation, and immature enough to accept exploding diaphragms at a necessary part of that.

What can I say about it as a sequel? It dilutes the original premise, and is therefore the weaker film. Let most film series run long enough and they resort to camp, even without Joel Schumacher’s help. However, I’ve never seen a series descend this quickly. Of course, the grindhouse lot doesn’t need to be patronized with serious melodrama for so long, therefore it’s far easier to go from Kamp to camp. And given its pedigree, I doubt this movie could have avoided being tongue-in-sheik.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)
• No. 3 Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977)
• No. 4 Ilsa the Wicked Warden (1977)

Ilsa, No. 1 -- Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

Five movies into my 2,000 movie project and I’m already watching pornography. This has to be proof that I’m selecting these franchises at random, because I would not have chosen to view this so soon (or at all): a sexploitation grindhouse flick about Nazi medical experiments during the Holocaust. Great, that description just made someone want to see it. It’s gonna be quite a shift from being snarky about middlebrow car pictures to finding entertainment in Naisploitation. From rapping to raping. What fun!

What little most people know about Ilsa, or grindhouse cinema in general, comes from the little-seen box office bomb Grindhouse, particularly Rob Zombie’s fake trailer for Werewolf Women of the SS. So a grindhouse, that’s a theater in a 1970s inner city that shows B-grade exploitation flicks. This phenomena is unique to its time, as white flight, television and changing cinematic standards forced the old single-screen theaters to rethink their business models to remain viable. Exploitation films proved popular since they offered something viewers couldn’t find on any other filmed medium, namely increased levels of sex, violence, degradation, sleaze, filth, taboos and puking. My only direct evidence of these cinemas and their audiences comes from Travis’s date in Taxi Driver, so I can only imagine these places were frequented by single, lone trench-coated perverted masturbators and Paul Reubens. So if you were to mention to these various transients and hoboes with shotguns that a film such as Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS exists, these bums would not spit-take their brown-bagged whiskey, but rather declare “I must watch this Holocaust pornography posthaste.” Know your audience. Ilsa could never achieve mainstream success, or distribution in Britain, but it could succeed admirably in the narrower stakes of the grindhouse circuit.

As noted, beyond all reasoning Nazisploitation is not a single isolated incident, but a full-on movement within the realms of exploitation. To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, here is a partial list of other Third Reich sex romps, all of them real:

– Salon Kitty
– SS Hell Camp
– Salò (eh, kinda...)
– Last Orgy of the Third Reich
– Hitler’s Lust Train
– Helga, She Wolf of Spilburg (no points for originality here)
– SS Girls
– SS Experiment Camp
– Deported Women of the SS Special Section
– Achtung! The Desert Tigers
– Nazi Love Camp 27
– Hot Nazis
– Nazi Love Island
– Gestapo
– Gestapo 2
– Stalag 69

The roots for this movement lie in earlier pulp magazines, where damsel in distress tales would descend into degraded sexual torture on a regular basis. During the 1960s there was even a literary tradition of Holocaust pornography in freaking Israel! While Ilsa is the proud flag bearer of this August cinematic fraternity, the premier (that is, first) Nazi sex epic is 1969's Love Camp 7. The film was enormously popular in Canada, which I think has more to do with the fact it was produced and distributed there, and less to do with deviant Mounties looking to loose their maple syrup.

Don Edmonds, director of Love Camp 7, sought to outdo himself with Ilsa, creating a film famed (within certain limited circles) for being the most extreme example of a rather extreme genre. Granted access to the old “Hogan’s Heroes” set on the promise that he burn it to the ground afterwards, Edmonds set about creating his masterpiece.

The film, or at least the version I saw (which I believe is the uncut, Aryan version), opens with a disclaimer proclaiming the story’s connection to history. A common technique amongst earlier grindhouse sex films was to open with a doctor or some such touting the veracity of what follows, as a weak means of justifying as educational what would otherwise be purely pornographic.

The history referred to here, with reference to “medical experiments in special concentration camps throughout Hitler’s Third Reich,” is partly the story of evil Nazi mad scientist Josef Mengele. More apropos, though, is the historical figure Ilse Koch, “The Witch of Buchenwald.” She and her husband, SS colonel Karl Koch, ran the slave labor concentration camp at Buchenwald in so cruel a fashion it made their fellow SS cohorts uncomfortable. Ilse was a notorious sexual torturer. She would often order the prisoners to rape each other, or have them battle to the death in a personally-made gladiator pit. Spurred by charges of corruption, embezzlement and black market techniques, the SS executed Karl Koch, and sentenced Ilse to life imprisonment. Then she killed herself. Knowing all this certainly taints one’s exploitation experience, but we can at least expect an SS-ordered execution at the end.

Commandant Ilsa is played ex-Las Vegas showgirl Dyanne Thorne in the role she was born to play, baby. Ilsa’s introduction finds her in the middle of schtupping some guy whose name I would not learn until late in the film (a common problem). It turns out he is Mario (Tony Mumelo). And my first thought while watching all this is, “Yup! This is definitely X-rated!” Sure, the sex is all softcore, but if you cut this film down to remove all shots that included a breast, buttock or genital, you’d have a film under 10 minutes long. Dyanne Thorne’s relative stardom becomes instantly obvious – she has large mammaries, something which was actually important in the 70s before the Silicone Uncanny Valley. Also, the lighting and production values in this scene are surprisingly high. This is pretty much the only scene in this sex flick that actually tries to compliment the human body. From here on out the cinematography will be awfully flat, quite unlike Thorne herself.

The sex scene goes on. Then the man cums. (This is a plot point.)

And here’s why: As punishment, Ilsa castrates him. AAAEEIIRGHH?! The film proves to be just as generous with the blood as it is with the boobs. Thankfully it rarely stoops to directly depict genital mutilation, which is good because it’s a common feature of this “story.” Still, I’d be hard pressed to describe the alternative presented here as tasteful, what with the groin blood flowing down steel troughs and all. Do note that Ilsa employs a pizza slicer.

Much of the film’s cast is soon introduced in the form of incoming prisoners, all female. Soon enough they are all completely nude, as Ilsa systematically inspects them. Boy, there’s little that can de-sexualize the human body as much as this kind of clinical treatment, and yet for some reason it seems the vast majority of grindhouse-level sex flicks use this approach. Also, it’s a bad sign that I could only tell these characters apart by breast size as opposed to, you know, personality or whatever.

The women are soon separated into two groups. The official, state-sanctioned purpose of Medical Camp 9 is to sterilize the inferior races, as well as to infect them with germane German germs in what is apparently a bid at biological warfare. The lucky women get sent here (or to brothels). Ilsa also has a private project underway, to prove that women can withstand more physical pain than men. Some justification is given, but in reality this is simply a pretext for a movie’s worth of plotless torture scenes. Said tortures are all performed on bound, naked women, and it all quickly becomes tiresome and numbing rather than daring and risque – not the effect I expect the filmmakers were going for. We cannot by any means judge this film by merits such as plot, characterization or artistry, and I don’t just mean that those things are bad, but they are nonexistent. The only things of relative value in this film are the nudity and the atrocities, and, well, let’s just go ahead and catalogue those atrocities, shall we? Here goes...

The Atrocities:
– A nurse performs impromptu oral sex on a sobbing female inmate.
– A lengthy, forced bisexual gang rape, resulting in death.
– Naked, bloodied corpses paraded around endlessly for all to see.
– The systematic electrocution of female genitalia with some sort of a dildo.
– Slowly killing a woman inside a pressure chamber.
– Scalding a prisoner alive in boiling water (the makeup effect for this is surprisingly gross).
– More than one scene exploring the various uses of electric nipple clamps.
– Unnecessary surgical procedures on female nether regions, all done without anesthesia (they actually went and showed this in detail).
– More rape.
– The centerpiece at a dinner table, where a bound and naked female prisoner slowly hangs while perched atop a melting block of ice.
– Maggots forced into a leg.
– The constant physical degradation of the female cast as they slowly succumb to numerous infectious diseases, complete with open, oozing sores.
– As already noted, castration.

I think this is the kind of movie James Woods would air on Videodrome.

From a scientific standpoint, it makes little sense for Ilsa’s study to be focused almost exclusively upon one gender, but the sexual torture of males constitutes a totally separate arena of grindhouse film-making.

Speaking of males, here comes a truck’s worth of them. Their main non-slave labor purpose at the camp is to serve as Ilsa’s nightly sexual playthings. This is always followed by the inevitable castrations post-ejaculation. Standing nude in the barracks, Ilsa systematically inspects the men’s plainly-visible schvanschtuckers, much like Madeline Kahn in History of the World: Part I. All in all, this movie is rather like a Mel Brooks film, only with more sex, more violence, and a complete and total lack of humor, craft, and any other element one finds in a Mel Brooks film. Except there are Nazis.

One of these males is an American (Gregory Knoph) – It wasn’t until the film’s final 10 minutes that I learned his name was Wolfe. Perhaps I wasn’t paying attention to the right things. Anyway, he shortly serves as Ilsa’s sex toy. It turns out the American has a superpower far more useful than Aquaman’s – he can opt to not release semen. This cuts short Ilsa’s plans of cutting him short, and instead the American becomes Ilsa’s regular sex slave. This allows the monotony of the overextended torture scenes to be broken up with the monotony of overextended sex scenes. A little variety is presented here, beyond the diminishing pleasure of Thorne’s omnipresent tits. So rather we briefly explore notions such as voyeurism, threesomes and lesbianism, the latter provided by Ilsa’s duo of loyal Teutonic lackeys. Some choice dialogue: “I will satisfy you until you beg me to stop,” quoth he. “Please cum!!!” quote she.

Eventually an inspecting General arrives in the form of bad actor Wolfgang Roehm. Now, certain fans of this film (obviously they exist, or else there wouldn’t be a franchise) think that this movie is campy, and therefore a lot of fun. Their reasoning for that, I gather, is largely due to Herr General here. Between him and Ilsa to an only slightly-lesser extent, we have one of the most extreme, brazen stereotypes of goose-stepping, sausage-snorfling Krauts outside of a...well, a Mel Brooks film. The accents are ridiculous. Of course as a general, er, standard rule, the acting in this movie is bad. Dyanne Thorne is one of the few who could find further real work after this, and that was mostly in other Ilsa films. Strange how the only thing that really makes this movie remotely palatable to most people is a bit of incompetency the filmmakers probably wanted to avoid. Some examples: Ilsa frequently pronounces “Reich” with a hard “ch.” And at one point (responding to the Dining Room Atrocity), Herr General actually screams out “Vunderbar!!!”

Later, Ilsa pees on him.

But all grotesqueries must come to an end. Following the standard rules of the women in prison genre which Ilsa occasionally resembles, the prisoners have been plotting a revolution for the climax. This begins when the American introduces Ilsa to the pleasures of S&M bondage, effectively leaving her bound and gagged in her own bed. Then the prisoners set about, in suitably gory fashion, to garotte, slit and disembowel ze German soldiers. A shootout takes place, notable only because it switches randomly between slow motion and fast forward, never actually occurring in regular time. And the escaped male prisoners seemingly go ahead and rape the female soldiers for good measure.

What of Ilsa? As she struggles, Kata (Nicole Riddelle) crawls in for her revenge. Now, Kata here is the woman who has endured the vast majority of the non-lethal atrocities listed above, all since she dared stand up to Ilsa. In my notes I called her the Strong Woman (again, names aren’t often clear in this flick). At this point she is a grotesque bloody mess, like Frank in Hellraiser. Kata is juuust about to stab Ilsa when – she dies instead....So, yeah.

The victorious rapist rebels proceed to systematically execute ze Germans (I love how often the word “systematically” is applicable to this film). Sickened, the American leaves with his bland, barely-there love interest whom I’ve never mentioned. Then Mario the castrato explodes in the guard tower. A budget-conscious assembly of German tanks pulls up to camp and the SS proceeds to kill everyone! So much for the good guys. One SS officer retreats to Ilsa’s quarters, where he both shoots her to death and shoots sequel continuity to hell. The officer returns to his tank, announcing that the Allies shall never know about this place and the Canadians shall never use it as the basis for exploitation. And...freeze frame.

Whew! That is a pretty darned nihilistic ending. Tanks for nothing.

This is by no means the most extreme movie I’ve ever seen, though it competes on a similar model. An unprepared viewer could be forgiven for finding it altogether too much. In regards to the upper ends of cinematic degradations, Cannibal Holocaust remains the standard bearer for me. But in a way I found Ilsa here to be more difficult to digest than that film, and not because of the controversy-baiting Holocaust setting. It’s simply because Ilsa has no point. Had I not set myself up to write in length about it, I’d have simply showered and watched a cartoon or something. But Cannibal Holocaust (and I should mention that one is not about the Holocaust) is a media satire, a commentary on voyeurism, and an examination of cruelty and violence. For as sick as its own atrocities are, at least they serve this agenda. Ilsa has no agenda beyond pure exploitationism. For some this is a positive point. For me it just makes Ilsa taste like ashes. It’s just rather nasty and flat. And I have three more movies just like it to watch.


Related posts:
• No. 2 Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)
• No. 3 Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977)
• No. 4 Ilsa the Wicked Warden (1977)