Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS

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Movie
German title The bitch from love camp 7
Original title Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1974
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK unchecked
Rod
Director Don Edmonds
script Jonah Royston
production David F. Friedman
camera Glenn Roland
cut Kurt Schnit
occupation

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is an American exploitation film from 1974.

The film combines elements from the exploitation genres Naziploitation , sexploitation film , women's prison film and concentration camp film with Gore elements. The main character is the SS- Shergin Ilsa, who, as the commander, led the regiment of a German concentration camp in 1945.

The film was never officially released in Germany. In Switzerland there was an edited publication as Die Bündin von Liebeslager 7 . The follow-up films are available in Germany, but only in heavily edited versions.

About the film

action

Ilsa is the overseer of Medical Camp 9 , a Nazi medical camp . Together with her “black widows”, the SS scourges Ingrid and Maigret , who report to her, and a lesbian sergeant (Gretchen), she maintains a draconian discipline in the camp. In the case of the smallest offenses, prisoners are whipped or the guards are thrown as "fresh meat". In addition to the "official" human experiments through private experiments on selected female prisoners, she tries to prove that women are more physically resilient and, above all, less sensitive to pain than men and therefore better suited for military service.

Aside from apparently homoerotic and sadistic tendencies, Ilsa regularly has sexual relations with male prisoners of the work detachment, whom she usually castrates after their performance, which is always disappointing for her .

In the course of the film, however, Ilsa falls in love with the extremely potent US prisoner Wolfe. Wolfe succeeds in satisfying her lust even after she tries to physically overtax him by working with Ingrid and Maigret under their supervision. Gradually, Wolfe succeeds in causing her to become somewhat dependent on him, which he then exploits to plan a revolt and an escape from the camp. In the meantime, Ilsa burns most of the women who were sorted out as unsuitable for her private project in experiments, with the exception of Anna, whom she cannot break despite the use of the most brutal torture methods and who is apparently suitable as evidence for her theory.

Later on, Ilsa's superior, a fat and perverted SS group leader, inspected the camp. The reluctant Ilsa ultimately has to satisfy him sexually by urinating on him, as he disapproves of her private experiments as a waste of resources despite the success that has now occurred in the form of Anna.

When she then seeks emotional balance with Wolfe, Wolfe uses her emotional situation to tie Ilsa to her bed. In their forced absence from the camp, a bloody uprising breaks out among the prisoners. After its success, Wolfe and the prisoner Kata who are close to him flee into the woods and presumably survive. Meanwhile, the horribly beaten up Anna tries to stab the tied Ilsa, but dies shortly before the stabbing next to her tormentor of her injuries.

The other liberated ones take bloody revenge on their remaining oppressors against Wolfes previous advice. Immediately afterwards, however, they are liquidated by a command from Richter, the general's adjutant , on higher orders, so that the approaching Allies cannot find any witnesses. Richter also shoots Ilsa, who is defenselessly tied up.

Emergence

Many of those involved in the production appeared under a pseudonym. Even producer Dave Friedman , who also enjoys a dubious reputation under his real name , chose the German-sounding pseudonym Herman Traeger for this film . The book was written by the Canadian professor John Saxton under the pseudonym Jonah Royston .

Was shot Ilsa within nine days on the set of Hogan's Heroes ( Hogan's Heroes ), a sitcom that in a Stalag ( main camp plays). The backdrop was enriched with numerous, often rather inauthentic Nazi devotional objects and German-language propaganda posters (in Gothic script). Various Nazi propaganda songs are used as background music, which, contrary to what is stated in the credits, not only come from Horst Wessel . As costumes, Ilsa and her two henchmen, as well as the general and his companions, wear black SS uniforms with riding boots, at times American bull whips, Ilsa on various occasions a doctor's smock, which the (very overweight) camp doctor also wears in all scenes. Ilsa's other lowly female guards and the male guard soldiers wear imprecise gray-brown uniforms, the workers more or less ragged civilian clothes, the inmates the smocks common for women's prison films, or possibly less or nothing.

The acting performances of the film are very different. In particular, the American Wolfe in the meantime provides unintentional humorous relaxation, since he obviously has no talent as an actor. In addition, the film is particularly notorious for its false accents on the acting level, such as the fact that Ilsa is unable to pronounce the German word "Reich" even in the same way as a German would throughout the film. However, that does not prevent the script from including numerous German-language lines. The scenes in which Thorne slams his heels on the phone and yells “Yes, my general” are among the bizarre highlights of the film.

For a low-budget film , however, the sets are comparatively good, as they were originally used for a much larger production. In particular, the make-up of Joe Blasco however different the film crafted by most sexploitation films, since it is possible that, convincing look, creating the face of the subject, especially horror. The film was shot in just nine days, several times for 24 hours at a time. The participants shot each scene only once, the script changed a lot during the hectic filming.

Directed by Don Edmonds , who later co-produced the Tony Scott film True Romance , among other things .

The idea for the film came about when Friedman had a huge commercial hit with another women's prison, Love Camp 7 . Love Camp 7 shows a prisoner of war camp where women are held for the amusement of Nazi soldiers. Canadian investors wanted another similar film, but one that was supposed to be much bloodier and more horror-like than Love Camp 7 .

Thorne described the filming in retrospect a few decades later: “It was terrible and stimulating at the same time. You never knew what to expect. It was a very enriching experience for me in spite of the worst possible conditions. I had to be incredibly disciplined while the madmen behind the camera were fighting. Joe Blasco [today Blasco Cosmetics ] was responsible for the mask at Ilsa and he and his crew were probably the only sensible people I had to deal with there. "

Further information

background

The film itself is vaguely inspired by the life of Irma Grese and Dr. Herta Oberheuser . Grese was an overseer in Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz , and an Oberheuser doctor in Ravensbrück . The name Ilsa is probably derived from the wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp Ilse Koch (the "witch of Buchenwald"), to whom u. a. In the form of the use of prisoners for housework and gardening, the film also contains explicit allusions.

Grese was one of the most hated female guards in the camp. Even in her early twenties, she spent her time in the camp shooting prisoners on a whim, whipping women to death, and sexually assaulting prisoners in often cruel ways. She was sentenced to death in the first Bergen-Belsen trial at the age of 22 . Oberheuser was a doctor in the Ravensbrück concentration camp who, among other things, made experiments with injecting pain-inducing chemicals and teaching prisoners “typical war injuries” in order to study the consequences. Oberheuser was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in Nuremberg, later the sentence was reduced and after serving five years she lived a relatively normal life in Germany. She even had a doctor's practice for a few years before a former inmate recognized her and Oberheuser was then withdrawn from her license to practice medicine.

reception

The film is controversial even among the followers of sexploitation films: on the one hand, it only exploits the concentration camp topic according to its possible shock effects, so that it hurts the historical sensibilities of many people. On the other hand, he has comparatively good trick effects and good make-up for a film of this genre , at least Ilsa. Dyanne Thorne himself also has a certain acting talent, so that despite the genre- typical trash factor, he seems unusually realistic for such a film.

Even the fictional Ilsa in her cruelty does not come close to the atrocities that actually happened in the concentration camps. While Ilsa , and the other films of the genre, make no claim to come close to historical authenticity, it is probably the only fictional films that actually come close to the horror that took place inside the concentration camps and do not try only to hint at Schindler's list, for example . Compared to today's productions of non-mainstream horror films, productions for video and DVD, and especially Asian violent films, Ilsa again seems comparatively harmless, since here too the worst scenes are not shown, but only hinted at.

The film is banned in some countries. The website "Girls with Guns" recommends:

I don't recommend this movie unless you have a very black sense of humor, are immune to being offended by fictional material, have carefully stowed all children and maiden aunts, and switched off all moral qualms.

Another website tries to explain both the horror that such films generate and the interest it continues to experience today:

These films blur the lines between good and evil when they present Nazi atrocities in a manner that may not only repulse the viewer, but also spark the prurient interests of the viewer. If the spectator experiences titillation during scenes of torture and rape, then that spectator has identified in some way with the antagonist. To most people, the thought of this is absolutely unacceptable. To those that understand that repulsion and titillation all come from the same place, the human psyche, these films hold a certain power, if not charm.

Aftermath

The success of Ilsa ensured that there were various follow-up films that showed the character Ilsa with limited continuity in different roles: In Ilsa - harem guard of the sheikh ( indexed since December 18, 1982) as a guardian of an Arab harem and in Ilsa - The tigress (indexed since October 29, 1983) as the commander of a gulag or, after Stalin's death, as a brothel boss in Canada. The similar Jess Franco - (S) exploiter Greta - House Without Men with the same leading actress was also marketed as an Ilsa film in the USA. It is the most commercially successful of around 20 films of a similar design made in the 1970s, mostly in Italy, probably due to the leading actress, the denser atmosphere and the clever combination of genre elements.

Ilsa and her “colleagues” have an interesting role in terms of film history, as they were the first female leading roles to be authoritarian and violent.

Within the double-feature horror film Grindhouse by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez , between the two films a. a. advertised with a trailer created by director Rob Zombie for a fictional film called Werewolf Woman of the SS , which is largely a direct parody of the original Ilsa trailer.

literature

  • Florian Evers: Picture puzzles of the Holocaust . LIT-Verlag, Münster 2010, pp. 51–73.
  • Lynn Rapaport: Holocaust Pornography: Profaning the Sacred in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. In: Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies . Vol. 22, Br. 1, Fall 2003, pp. 53-79
  • Barb Serfozo, Henry Farrell: From Sex-Vixens to Senators — Representations in Nazi Porn and the Discourse of the American Right Wing. In: Journal of Social and Political Thought. Vol. 1, No. 1 (1996), pp. 1-23, online
  • Marcus Stiglegger : Sadiconazista. Fascism and Sexuality in the Film Gardez! Verlag, 2000 ISBN 3-89796-009-5
  • Marcus Stiglegger: Sadiconazista - Stereotyping the Holocaust in the exploitation cinema , at ikonenmagazin.de
  • Darrin Venticinque, Tristan Thompson: The ILSA Chronicles . Midnight Media, Huntingdon, UK
  • Nazisploitation: the Nazi-image in low-brow cinema and culture / ed. By Daniel H. Magilow ... - New York: Continuum, 2012. - ISBN 978-1-4411-1060-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Interview with Dyanne Thorne on Wicked-Vision.com