Vintage Pulp

May 11 2020

HITLER’S LITTLE HELPER

Once upon a time in the Reich there was a sadist named Ilsa.

Ilsa la belva delle SS, as it was called in Italy, is better known as Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and it’s not hyperbole to describe this naziploitation effort as one of the most widely reviled movies ever released. And for good reason. It’s significant as an example of just how out there and taboo shattering the sexploitation genre got during the 1970s. The poster was painted by Luciano Crovato, who produced a number of iconic movie promos, including the second and third pieces in this post. We’ll get back to him. If you want to know more about Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS look here. If you dare.

Italy, Ilsa la belva delle SS, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, Luciano Crovato, Dyanne Thorne, Adolf Hitler, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, women in prison, nazis

Vintage Pulp

August 16 2015

A WOLF IN NAZI’S CLOTHING

Dyanne Thorne and company recreate the horrors of the Third Reich—with nudity

Thanks to having stumbled across this interesting piece of Japanese promo art, we’ve finally gotten around to watching probably the most notorious naziploitation movie of all time—Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS. How scandalous is this bizarre Canadian produced b-flick? The Independent Film Journal attested that, “Only the most dangerously sadistic mentalities will manage to sit voluntarily through more than ten minutes of [the film], a graphic, stomach-churning catalogue of Nazi medical atrocities that makes Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like a Sunday picnic.” Well, if there’s one thing we’ve learned doing this website it’s that people will pronounce you morally deficient for daring to decide for yourself. We watched the film—all of it—and while we didn’t feel sadistic or depraved, we did come to the conclusion that it’s terrible.

Naziploitation was a subset of women-in-prison flicks that usually purported to educate the public about the horrors of the Nazi regime, but with profuse amounts of nudity and sex included in the telling. Outside the women-in-prison genre, screenwriters had to come up with rationales for having actresses lose their clothes. Thus they’d include skinny-dipping scenes, pillow fights, shower scenes, and whatever else they could squeeze in to augment the sex. But in prison no reasons are needed for nudity. The women are naked because the jailers want them that way. Full stop. Jésus Franco took the women-in-prison concept to its logical extreme when he had the female cast of Frauen für Zellenblock 9 stark naked and mostly sweaty for pretty much the entire second half of the film.

Ilsa doesn’t go as far as Jésus Franco did on the nudity, but it certainly pushes the violence envelope. In some ways the movie isn’t substantially different from recent hit films like Hostel or Saw, but while transgressive violence in cinema has been perfectly acceptable for at least forty years, sexualized violence has become a serious no-no. It’s on this level

that Ilsa shocks—literally, in fact, as a wicked looking electrified dildo is used on the female prisoners at one point. There are also naked whippings, naked beatings, rapes, castrations, naked pressure chamber tortures, and more. If you are able to remember that it’s just a movie what will strike you is that it’s cheap and poorly acted. Lead actress Dyanne Thorne’s accent is right out of Hogan’s Heroes, which is ironic, because the film was made on the old set of that show.

In the end the question you may have is why make such a movie? Well, it was the ’70s. Thirty years removed from the end of World War II, creators who had never fought in the war were closely examining and re-imagining Nazis not only in film, but in books, tabloids, and even comics. To them it probably seemed a natural progression in shattering old taboos. We imagine the backlash against them must have been terrific. And appropriate too. Yes, Ilsa is bad, bad, bad. But guess what? It’s still just a movie—one that spawned two sequels, actually. Which we suppose could be seen as proof of the worth of the first film, or a blanket indictment of the entire ’70s, depending on your point of view. But we won’t call you dangerously sadistic for checking the flick out. At worst, if you actually do sit through all of it, we’ll call you patient to a fault. Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS premiered in Japan today in 1975.

Edit: We’re writing in 2019 now, and we finally checked out one of the sequels. It’s unreal, and we mean that in a bad way. You can read about it here.

Japan, Canada, Germany, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, Dyanne Thorne, Maria Marx, poster art, cinema, sexploitation, nazis, women in prison, movie review, nudity

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 10

1971—London Bridge Goes Up

After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

October 10

1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again

British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.

October 9

1967—ChÃ© Executed in Bolivia

A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.

October 8

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

October 8

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.

October 7

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).