#136: Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (Don Edmonds, 1975)

When Don Edmonds, director of Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, was first presented with the Ilsa screenplay and offered the job, he read through it and said, "This is the biggest piece of shit I've ever read." Then, he accepted the producer's offer and got to work. The recently deceased Edmonds was a hilarious guy, and I have the urge to just regurgitate a bunch of Edmonds' quotes in lieu of a review, but I'll restrain myself and give you just a few from an interview he did with the cult film website Digital Retribution. When asked why he made the film, here was his answer: "I was just another totally broke guy in Hollywood and at the time I was offered the film I'd have taken it if he wanted to make a film about a dog pissin' on a flat rock with different camera angles. I know that over the years people have asked me what 'drew' me to the film and the reality is it was the fucking MONEY!! And it was a chance to direct. I'm telling you the truth Chris. In 1972 I was so broke I couldn't make the rent and just barely had money for gas in my beat up hooptie that had bald tires and no oil. So when people want to know about my 'selection' of films they always make the assumption that I had a CHOICE. I DIDN'T!!" And here he is on whether the film's subject matter bothered him: "You know, as to whether or not I was ever uncomfortable doing any of those scenes I can sum that up in one word - NO. I'm a very crazy man, Chris."

Edmonds got his start in show business as a bit actor in episodic TV and youth movies, including such wholesome fare as Gidget, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, My Three Sons, The Donna Reed Show, The Munsters, Son of Flubber, Beach Ball, and Green Acres. His directing career was a lot seedier. Beginning with a couple soft-core sexploitation films, Wild Honey and Tender Loving Care, his filmography covered a variety of exploitation genres, including Nazisploitation (Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS), comedysploitation (Southern Double Cross), Arabsploitation (Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks), kung-fusploitation (Bare Knuckles), a combination of prostitute-murdersploitation and rock-and-rollsploitation (Terror on Tour), a sexploitation/warsploitation hybrid for Troma (Tomcat Angels), and, finally, televisionsploitation (an episode of the USA Network show Silk Stalkings). R.I.P, Don, you degenerate bastard.

What is there left to say about Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS? One of the most notorious, famous, and infamous drive-in exploitation movies ever, Ilsa is a movie more people have heard of than seen, and a lot of people have seen it. I first read reference to it as a kid in horror magazines, Joe Bob Briggs' movie reviews, and interviews with metal bands. The film is so offensive and juvenile that it manages to not be that offensive at all. It's skillfully directed and never dull, and the screenplay is howlingly terrible and therefore pretty damn funny. Some of the acting is atrocious, in the best possible drive-in movie way. The gore and torture are so ridiculously over-the-top that they move beyond squeamishness and become something closer to camp and parody. Also, there is almost never a moment where a fully nude woman is not onscreen. The nudity in this film is both gratuitous and constant, and I have very little problem with that. Ladies and gay men, you also get to see plenty of man-butt and the occasional wang. This film is such a good-natured wallow in bad taste and filth that you can't help catching the fever. The She-Wolf fever.

It's fitting that Ilsa follows Ichi the Killer on this list because both films' primary subject matter is extreme S&M. The films diverge in that Ichi the Killer is very good and Ilsa is a gigantic piece of shit. But, what a piece of shit. Would that all pieces of shit had the zest and pep of Ilsa. Ilsa knows it is garbage and strives to be the sleaziest, funniest, most enjoyable piece of garbage it can be. And it almost succeeds.

Ilsa begins with the almost frighteningly busty Ilsa getting her rocks off in the boudoir with what is presumably her partner. When she finishes, she takes a long gratuitous shower and puts on an SS uniform and has her boy-toy taken away by a couple of sexy but sadistic Nazi babes in full regalia. The trio of anti-Semitic vixens then have the man castrated and de-wanged. You know, for science. Ilsa's lovers are prison camp inmates who get one shot at her Jew-hating vagina before losing their manhood forever. The women have it even worse and are repeatedly tortured in all kinds of disgusting ways to prove Ilsa's theory that women can handle pain better than men and are even more suited at being soldiers in the German military. Ilsa meets her match when blonde, tall American man Wolfe is taken prisoner while studying abroad in Germany. Such an Aryan specimen surely deserves a ride on the Ilsa train before getting his business rearranged downstairs. Unfortunately for Ilsa, Wolfe has a secret weapon. He can withhold his man-seed for hours, and even indefinitely, if need be. He's a redblooded, American fuck machine and Ilsa can't get enough. He's saved from the castration chamber and becomes Ilsa's regular manboy, She plans to make some babies with him when the war is over, creating a race of super Aryans with all the right moves. Wolfe has a different idea, however, and is plotting the overthrow of the camp with his fellow inmates. Can they end Ilsa's experiments in torture and whoop a little Nazi ass? Will they get their revenge?

Ilsa proceeds as you probably expect it to, and I can't really make a case for this being any kind of classic. However, as an unapologetic wallow in exploitation, sleaze, sex, and gore, it's hard to beat. Edmonds found the perfect woman to play Ilsa in Dyanne Thorne, his contempt for the screenplay results in some hilarious line readings, the pacing is swift and Edmonds has a nice way with a camera, the nudity is copious, and it's funny and exaggerated enough that you don't feel particularly dirty afterwards. Also, mad props to the Italian, Mario, for the line "What life is there for a half-man outside this wire?" If you're the kind of person who can watch a film like this and enjoy it, you probably know who you are. I am also one of you. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed, either.

#135: Ichi the Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001)

The following opinion may be a little hard to explain, but Ichi the Killer, a film containing extreme violence, beatings, rapes, drug abuse, bullying, cruelty, sexual perversity, and torture, is one of the most exuberantly energetic and hilarious films in prolific Japanese madman Takashi Miike's extensive filmography. Scenes in which I normally take no pleasure, such as rape, women being beaten severely, and drawn-out scenes of intense physical torture, take on a more complex, perverse meaning in this film. Nearly every character is a sadist, masochist, or combination of the two and an active participant in his/her fate. These are people with intensely strange sexual appetites and desires, freely choosing their roles and getting off on it. Well, a few people get tortured and killed against their will, but they knew the risks as members or associates of the yakuza.
A very strange, hard-to-categorize film is a fairly average description of most Miike movies, but this one is especially nuts. From the beginning, when a yakuza bodyguard is verbally berated for suggesting placing a guard outside the boss's door and a peeping tom masturbates to a prostitute taking a beating from her pimp only for the movie's title to slowly rise up out of his ejaculate, you know you're not getting a traditional Japanese gangster movie. The boss of the Anjo gang is missing (should have listened to the bodyguard), and the sickly and easily startled next-in-command orders the rest of the gang to find him. The search team is led by the charismatic Kakihara, a bleached-blonde sadomasochist with a heavily scarred face, including two slits on the side of his mouth where smoke from his cigarettes escapes in two separate puffs. Kakihara's not your average yakuza seduced by money and outlaw status. He has chosen his line of work because it presents a greater opportunity to inflict and receive intense pain. Kakihara continually pushes the pain threshold and his search for punishment is getting more and more extreme. Meanwhile, a bizarre man named Jijii is pulling the strings of a nervous young man named Ichi, reminding him of the severe bullying he received in high school and pushing him to murder several yakuza members by comparing them to his bullies. Ichi doesn't want to kill, but goes crazy when the memories come back. He dresses up in a fairly Batmanesque superhero costume with blades in his shoes and murders the shit out of some gangsters. He has some weird rape fantasies of his own and develops a sadomasochistic/voyeuristic relationship with a prostitute and her violent pimp. Meanwhile, rival families are conspiring against each other, sadists and masochists are finding each other, a little boy starts idolizing Ichi, and Kakihara realizes Ichi may be the one to give him the ultimate release.
Miike presents this material in a heavily stylized, energetic sprint that never lets up for the film's two-plus hours. Somehow, it doesn't get exhausting and instead reveals more layers for each character. I'm usually not a fan of hyper-stylization, but Miike is such an intensely personal, inventive filmmaker with such a varied skill set that he always wins me over. He picks the techniques that best match the tone and feel of his story and never uses stylistic tricks just because he can. He's as equally capable of a meditative pace and classical Hollywood and Japanese storytelling as he is extreme shock and gore and sexual depravity and flashy editing and camera tricks. He will try anything and is unafraid of pushing his characters and stories as far as they will go. He's funny as hell, too.
It's hard to explain what's funny about this movie, but I'll try. In one scene, Kakihara slices part of his tongue off in graphic closeup as tribute for torturing a rival gang member without permission. After he finishes the job, his cell phone rings and he answers it, casually having a chat as his mouth gushes blood. In another scene, a rival gangster is cornered at his apartment. He is stuck inside his TV stand, with his head in the busted-out television screen. Some recently arrived members of the gang look at the early arrivals quizzically. "He was already in there when we got here, we just taped him up," one says. In another scene, the boss's girlfriend falls for Kakihara when she sees him stretching the skin of a club owner's cheek. She grabs the other cheek and starts stretching it, the club owner howling in pain. She begins moaning in pleasure. "I want to be your woman," she tells Kakihara, digging her fingernails into the man's cheek. Okay, maybe you have to see it, not read it, but these scenes and many others had me laughing. If this kind of black humor appeals to you, you'll be happy to know the film is loaded with these moments.
(By the way, the woman playing the boss's girlfriend was Miss Singapore and a contestant in the Miss Universe pageant. I wonder how a country that banned chewing gum feels about one of its prominent representatives appearing in one of Miike's most infamous films.)
So is this ultra-violent gangster/horror/action/gore/sex comedy ultimately a heartwarming tale of how none of us are truly alone, no matter how bizarre our tastes and proclivities? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's just an adolescent provocation, a collection of fucked-up people doing fucked-up things in deliberately offensive and stomach-turning ways. And is there something wrong with me for enjoying it so much? Am I a masochist, too? I doubt it.
I first saw this film on the big screen at an Alamo Drafthouse midnight show. I ordered a beer and some chips and queso while watching it and made the mistake of wiping my eye, accidentally wiping salt from the chips and a bit of spicy queso on my eyeball. It stung like mad for 20 minutes and sporadically throbbed for the remainder of the screening. Watching it again from the comfort of my home last night and not accidentally wiping salty, spicy food particles on my eyeball at any point, I have to admit I strongly preferred the pain-free viewing experience.
In conclusion, all church youth groups and scouting troops should screen this film at your next gathering. You'll love it.