Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS

The textbook example of Nazisploitation, and a cornerstone of the 1970s sexploitation cinema, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS dramatizes the atrocities performed by a sadistic commandant (Dyanne Thorne) at a German concentration camp. Ilsa uses male prisoners as sexual playthings and women as subjects of medical torture, then brutally executes all who fail to satisfy her unholy desires. Despite being condemned by film critic Gene Siskel as “the most degenerate picture I have seen…a textbook for rapists and mutilation freaks,” Don Edmonds’s orgy of violence became a runaway success, immortalizing Thorne as a grindhouse goddess and inspiring three sequels and a host of imitations, none of which could rival the shocking depravity of the original.