Ilsa Tigress of Siberia,

Siberia 1953. Two-armed men hunt another through deep snow. The escapee is killed with a lance through the throat to the obvious pleasure of an attractive woman clothed from head to foot in furs sitting on a large stallion. She brings the blood soaked body back to Gulag 14 a men’s prison camp where we witness the crushing of his head to mash by a giant hammer. This sets the scene for the third sequel ‘proper’ to the Ilsa franchise Ilsa Tigress of Siberia (1977). Of course that means leaving out the Jess Franco’s Ilsa the Wicked Warden (1977), which as I previously said was not originally made as part of the Ilsa franchise. But fans of Dyanne Thorne will not be disappointed as she plays the Ilsa character in all four films.

 

Covered from head to foot in furs with her legs wrapped around a large stallion....

This time Don Edmonds is absent from the director’s chair, in his place is Jean LaFleur whose day job as a co-writer of documentary shorts perhaps that explains why the film is divided into two parts that almost seem like two separate films!  Its produced by the low budget American B-movie director Roger Corman. The first part as I have already explained is set in a Siberian prison camp, a place with the sole intention is to  brainwash anyone who disagrees with Joseph Stalin’s communist regime. There are various punishments administered for disobeying the fur clad Comrade Colonel as Ilsa is addressed in this movie. They include arm wrestling over a chain saw where one of the contestants looses his complete hand and wrist, and where prisoners are dropped into a pit and fed to Ilsa tiger that certainly seems to enjoy the meal. Another punishment is where a prisoner is lowed into ice-cold water until he freezes to death, one of whom we see affixed to a tree to be used as a signpost to the camp!  Ilsa spends her free evenings indulging in sexual orgies with her Cossacks where we get to see why Thorne was chosen for the part! All is hunky dory until the fall of Stalin and then the camp has to be burned to the ground to eliminate any evidence of the atrocities that took place there and Comrade Colonel and her chosen henchmen make there escape.

 

Ilsa shows off her greatest attributes.

We now move on to the second part of the film. It is 1977 and we are in Montreal Canada and Ilsa and her men are running a whorehouse. Taking advantage of the services on offer are three men who are part of a visiting Russian hockey team. Just to explain that one of these men is the link between Gulag 14 and Montreal. Andrei Chicurin (Michel Morin) was the only prisoner at the camp that Ilsa was unable to break and he managed to escape when the camp was abandoned. When Ilsa realises whom one of her clients actually is she takes great pride in humiliating him all over again.

 

He will never look the same again!

The first half of the movie set in Siberia is what we have come to expect from this grindhouse series of movies, lots of blood, torture and naked bodies, but the section set in Canada could be any sexploitation movie. But saying that I can’t help admit that along with the other films, especially my own favourite She Wolf of the SS (1975), this one is politically incorrect entertainment at its best with Dyanne Thorne, and her ‘great’ Russian accent, always a joy to watch. The final scenes where we see Ilsa sitting in the middle of an ice field burning her money to keep warm is a joy in it self. Still for those of you that dislike Ilsa films you are safe in the assumption that no more will ever be made!

The End.