Ilsa She Wolf of the SS - Lisa's Review

* Spoilers *

When completing the 'Video Nasty' challenge, we watched quite a few movies like this.  It's a case of, once you've seen one you've seen them all.  I struggle with one aspect of this one though.  Who the hell was it made with in mind as the audience?

I would imagine the usual audience for sexploitation movies would be men (forgive me if you find that sexist, but I doubt many women get their jollys from this kind of thing and they're hardly made with drama or storyline in mind).  This movie is full of plenty of naked, beautiful young women, mostly of the large breasted variety, but with the premise of the movie in mind, I would imagine men wouldn't particularly enjoy the subject of the experiments which Ilsa is setting out to prove.  She intends to prove that woman can take more pain than men, to enable the government to take another look at laws preventing women to fight in the war alongside men, (you would think not being allowed to fight in a war would be seen as a good thing, but hey ho).

So, what can I tell you?  Lots of large breasted, naked woman being subjected to humiliation, horrible torture and rape, all to the glee of Ilsa and her equally large breasted, low-necklined officers.  The female officers also seem to like to dole out punishment by way of whips with no tops on... funny that...   Tortures shown include a pressure chamber, a bath of water at almost 89 degrees celsius, flogging, wounds being inflicted and filled with disease ridden maggot or gangrene, an electrified vibrator, insertion of horrid objects... the list could go on.  I would add, most torture shown is being carried out on always completely naked women.    There is also a horrid scene of a young woman standing on a block of ice with a noose around her neck.  Obviously as the ice melts she is slowly hung.  This is the centrepiece on the table while a superior officer who has been sent to visit is having dinner with Ilsa and the other officers.  Everyone loves it and look on in awe as the young woman suffers.

In one scene we do get to 'hear' a rather horrid castration being carried out on an unfortunate male prisoner who was unable to satisfy Ilsa sexually.  She continually rapes male prisoners in the quest for a man who can satisfy her.  What I can't understand about this, is how these men who she is subjecting to rape, can achieve an erection and come at all??  Surely it's not a pleasurable experience?

That aside, we don't see much else of men being subjected to anything.  One is being flogged alongside a woman, but apart from the opening scene showing them side by side, the rest of the scene is concentrated on the naked women and the topless officer doing the flogging.

One man who does feature quite strongly in the movie is an american prisoner who finds Ilsa's achilles heel when he is chosen as one of her companions.  She learns that he can control when he 'finishes'.  As her insatiable appetite has never been satisfied, this evil bitch is suddenly under some kind of spell and from then on seems to follow his every command.

This ability is used to manipulate Ilsa into agreeing to be tied to bed in the finale of the movie.  This enables the prisoners to get together and decide, not to escape like you would imagine, but instead to take revenge on the staff of the camp.  The american and his girlfriend (who is also a prisoner), want to run, but the others set to killing as many staff as they can.  In a very hard to believe scene, a woman that was tortured to near death and is burnt all over turns up in the room to exact her revenge on Ilsa.

We have a twist however!!  A superior that was sent into the camp (who it turns out has a penchant for watersports and has Ilsa pee on him) was actually sent there to destroy it before the allies found it, so all of the remaining prisoners are actually shot dead and the camp is burnt down.  Fun Fact: this camp was actually the same set as the one used for Hogans Heros and they were allowed to use it as they would have to pull it all down after.

The final scene is a soldier telling his superior that everyone is dead and all proof of the camp will be removed so the allies will never know it is there, however, we see the american and his girlfriend standing on a hill in the distance.  Dah Dah Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!

I'm not quite sure what I thought about the movie.  I honestly don't think it was bad enough to tell you to avoid, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it as I don't find watched naked women being tortured for an hour and a half that entertaining.  If you like this kind of movie, you'll no doubt like this one.

I Spit on Your Grave - Will's Review

This is one on the more famous Video nasties, so you probably already know the plot, if you don't allow me to fill you in using only information found on the films posters.

Its origional title was "The Rape and Revenge of Jennifer Hill" and the tagline is "This woman has just cut, chopped, broken, and burned five men beyond recognition…but no jury in American would ever convict her!"

Up to speed? Good.

***Spoilers (such as you can have for such a simple plot) follow****

First of all; The poster lies - Jenifer is attacked by (and takes her deadly revenge on) only 4 men.

After moving into a rented lakeside house for the summer to write her first full length novel, author Jenifer Hill orders a grocery delivery from the local store. They are delivered by a walking cartoon character (and  town simpleton) Mathew:

Mathew

So, what with him being a half-wit, and her being nice to him, he gets a crush on her, the fact she had a thin shirt on and no bra helped too...

Mathew immediately tells his only 3 friends, Johnny, Stanley and Andy (who Own the local fueling station, hang out at the local fueling station and hang around at the local fueling station, respectively) about the new girl.

One sunny day, when Jennifer is out sunbathing in a drifting rowboat in the lake, Stanley and Andy start harassing her from her speedboat and drag her to shore.

What follows is one of the most unpleasant hours of cinema I have ever seen.

It becomes quickly apparent that Johnny has orchestrated Jenifer's capture, so that Mathew can lose his virginity, she is stripped and held down, but when Mathew is reluctant, he is demoted to leg holding duty while Johnny rapes her.

The rape is, an I'm sure I won't find much opposition this time, horrific, we see most of it while the camera is trained on Jennifer's face, and I have to offer kudos to Camille Keaton at this point, who does look genuinely humiliated, terrified and pained.

That said, when she is allowed to go free, I found myself thinking "is that it" - not because here ordeal wasn't horrific, but because it wasn't as horrific by movie standards as I had expected.

Unfortunately , for the next half hour or so, we see her tracked recaptured, raped and beaten again and again - even once she reaches the "safty" of her rented home from home; Mathew is eventually coerced into taking his "turn" (although can't preform under the conditions) and things get so bad that she offers to give the last guy a hand job, just to avoid being raped again.

When they are quite finished, Mathew is sent back into the house, to kill her - which, again, he cannot bring himself to do, and so he lies.

You may have noticed that up until this point my review has been lacking its usual sarcastic edge, usually only absent when the movie was good; make no mistake, this movie was not "good" - it's just that the subject matter does not lend itself to snark. 

Rest assured that the following half hour of the movie is outright stupid, Jenifer's revenge involves (separately) seducing the members of the gang and killing them. 

When this works with Mathew (Who she actually sleeps with again - not sure I buy that) I can accept it; he's a retard; However I'm not entirely convinced that Johnny would be so easily fooled. I get that you have to be at least a bit lacking in the head department to think that raping someone is a good plan. however that same person came onto me, ran be a bath, got in it with me and started masturbating me, I'd like to think alarm bells would go off - I'd also like to think that when she (quite rightly) chopped my dick off, I'd notice before I saw the blood, not just think that the hand-job was "so good it hurts" . Further, one of the guys only dies because he after realizing that Jennifer is out for revenge, he literally grabs onto the outboard motor of a speedboat she is driving!!!

Another problem with the kills is the order of them. The castration of the leader should by rights have been the dramatic climax of the movie; both for the fact that he was the leader, and the obvious 'symbolism' (if you can call it that) of castrating a rapist  - instead he's the second kill, which then gives the feeling that the other 2 are more or less "clean up" and that the peak has passed.

All in all though, killing order and extreme stupidity aside, it's fairly competently made, and (With the exception of the characiture that is Mathew) reasonably acted, so if you think you might enjoy 20 mins of setup, 40 mins of a woman being raped and half an hour of stupid people dying in stupid ways, knock yourself out.

No really... do!

Body Count: 4

Boob Count: 1 pair

Animal Body Count: 0

Most memorable Death: Turns out an outboard motor isn't a great ladder...

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