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.

Salo - Lisa's Review

*** SPOILERS ***

I'm at a bit of a loss this week as to how exactly to review this movie as I have no want to give a blow-by-blow account of it, thats for sure.  The fact I am feeling more than a little ill today also would make me want to avoid even thinking about it, never mind reviewing it.

So, what can I say.  Having read a bit about the movie, it seems that the absolute and utter depravity we see on screen from start to finish is in actual fact a very political message about facism, with the 4 main characters (a bishop, a president, a duke and a magistrate) representing different sections of our society.  The bishop - religion, the president - political leaders, the magistrate - the legal system and the duke - nobility.  Well that was all very much lost on me I'm afraid.  To me it just appeared to be an excuse to be shocking, to show as much depravity as possible and get away with it under the usual screen of proclaiming it as 'art' with an important message.  Bollocks!  It truely felt to me, like a few people sat in a room and wrote a list of what they could get away with depicting onscreen.