A Nazi medical camp is the final stop for many prisoners of war and it’s run by a sexy yet cruel Kommandant known as Ilsa who personally carries out experiments to test her theory that women can withstand more pain than men.  

Judging a Book by its Cover

-You don’t think this movie is going to go overboard with the Nazi imagery do you?

-Ilsa is apparently worse than Hitler if we’re to believe the tag lines.

-Is that uniform standard issue?  Not that I care.

The most dreaded Nazi of them all!

Directed by Don Edmonds

Starring Dyanne Thorne, Gregory Knoph and Tony Mumoloc

A high ranking official known to many in the Third Reich as simply Ilsa runs a medical camp which has a large concentration of female prisoners so that she can use them as guinea pigs for her medical experiments.  In order to help the Aryan empire, some women are injected with various deadly diseases while others are tortured in ungodly ways to test their pain thresholds like in the classic giant, purple, electric vibrator scene.  Go read that again because that is a scene in the movie.  Ilsa also follows through on her strict penalties of death for anyone who breaks her rules…or fails to satisfy her in bed.

“I’m totally not looking at your bewbs.”

The film does relent at times to at least push the story a bit further before bringing another round of boobs and despair.   A new delivery of females prisoners also has a German-born American POW called Wolfe dropped off at the camp.  Ilsa takes a liking to him and he goads her into taking him as a lover while not knowing that her appetite is rarely satiated and usually ends very poorly for men.  Wolfe has an ace up his sleeve though, he can keep himself from…from…you know…  Yeah.  Wolfe teams up with another male prisoner to come up with an escape plan to get these poor women out of this hell hole though Wolfe’s part is mostly to keep the Kommandant happy and distracted until the time is right.

“Seriously, Ilsa, I just got here. Where’s the romance?”

If you couldn’t tell by now, the movie rarely pulls punches when it comes to either the violence or the sexual depravity involved on screen.  Women are of course the target for both the sex and the violence.  Prisoners are shown in various stages of undress…hell, Ilsa’s two henchwomen are nude or at least topless a good portion of the time.  But oftentimes the titillation is short-lived like when watch those same two topless henchwomen whip a couple of female prisoners to death.  There are many a scene that go from “yay” to “nay” in a hurry.  The naughty stuff gets pretty weird and excessive as the film goes on too, ramping up the “nay” with the odd fetish or two, so for those of you who like golden showers, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!

That’s totally what you think it is.

Ilsa is not just a great example of a sexploitation film (which likes to mix sexuality and violent imagery) but it’s one of the most prominently known films in the obscure “Nazi sexploitation” subgenre which means lots of sex and swastikas all over the place.  Taking place in a prison camp, the film also contains elements of the also obscure “prison sexploitation” film.  Basically the movie attempts to shock the audience over and over repeatedly with lurid sex scenes followed by incredibly intense scenes of cruelty, torture and/or abject humiliation.  That last sentence sums up the first five minutes of the film and I even left out some graphic information, so you’ll definitely know if this movie is for you or not really fast but be prepared to be uncomfortable all the way up until the final credits.

Hanz went on to become a librarian before he was tried for genocide. Franz became a school teacher before he was tried for genocide. Greta was killed in the war before she was tried for genocide.

TL;DR

Story: 9 – Prisoners of war in a Nazi medical camp run by a buxom, sex-crazed woman plot their escape from their own personal Hell.

Blood: 9 – While some of the effects are dated, there are certainly many cringe-worthy scenes that are still effective today.

Nudity: 10 – While there are only a few actual sexy scenes, if you want nudity, you got it every few minutes.

Overall: 9 – It’s crazy to imagine a film like this being made now (although if Tarantino wants to throw in a bunch of softcore porn throughout Inglourious Basterds, it might be close?) but the filmmakers didn’t relent one bit and pushed that sexploitation button as much as they could.

Trivia

-It was filmed using sets Hogan’s Heroes which the television producers allowed them to use when they learned that the sets would be burnt down, saving them the trouble of destroying the sets themselves due to the show being cancelled.

-It won Best Alternative Release at the 1985 AVN Awards.

-The film went on to birth THREE sequels!

“I see nothing–NOTH…” *gurgle*