ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS

Ilsa works for the cruel sheikh El Sharif and, specifically, she is in charge of providing him with women who will fill his harem or be sold at auction. But El Sharif's shady dealings do not please the American government, particularly the management of petroleum resources. So, Commander Adam Scott sends one of his agents to infiltrate the harem to spy on the sheikh's moves. Suspicious of some decisions, Commander Scott decides to go to El Sharif's palace with Dr. Kaiser. A year after "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS," Don Edmonds brings his successful creation back to life and directs "Ilsa, She Wolf of the Desert." It doesn't matter if the cruelest kapo played by Dyanne Thorne was dead at the end of the first film; Edmonds pretends nothing and reintroduces the character in another historical and cultural context. Ilsa has become the right-hand woman of a cruel and extremely libidinous sheikh and is tasked with procuring (often kidnapping) women to fatten up El Sharif's personal harem. This is the simple pretext for staging a new naziexploitation film that, by necessity, loses the "nazi" prefix but retains all the necessary elements of exploitation, being a member of the genre. Here, Edmonds has a few more coins and it shows in the more carefully crafted presentation of the work, while at the same time, the extreme component of the previous film is slightly reduced to avoid another X rating from the MPAA, settling for an R this time. The result is that there is still a lot of violence, but in a less extreme tone than the previous film. In compensation, however, the eroticism increases, less bound to gratuitous morbidity and more focused on the nudity of the very shapely women who populate the film. The story is only a pretext to showcase sadistic and imaginative tortures and busty girls who either enjoy or suffer, depending on the case. In fact, the parallel story of Commander Scott and his espionage plans appears intrusively in the first part and is only a narrative device to retrace the previous film in the second. In the end, the audience of Ilsa wants Ilsa and her cruelties; it doesn't matter to build around her spy complexities and state crises. Breasts and blood, nothing more. And indeed, from an exploitative point of view, "Ilsa, She Wolf of the Desert" offers a lot, starting with the absurd tortures that include carnivorous ants, breast compressors, poisonous spiders, eye extractions, and leprous lust. But the highest point is reached by the ingenious vaginal bomb! Essentially, explosive plastic is inserted into a woman's vagina, which is triggered by the pressure of the penis during intercourse, causing her abdomen and everything around him to explode. Absurdly brilliant, right? But among the cult scenes, it is necessary to mention the initial fight between Ilsa's two assistants (two black girls, lesbians, topless, and all oiled, played by Tanya Boyd and Mailyn Joi) against a traitor who takes so many beats that he becomes a mask of blood before being castrated by hand by the two and thus turned into an eunuch. The cast is slightly superior to "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS," always with the fascinating Dyanne Thorne taking center stage, supported by hard actor Jerry Delony playing El Sharif, Max Thayer ("Planet of the Dinosaurs," "Steel Eagle") as Commander Scott, and Russ Meyer's muse Uschi Digard ("Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"; "Super Vixens") giving shape to one of the harem prisoners. Technically and visually speaking, we are a step above "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS," but we are still facing a film that lacks the subversive power and importance of the previous one, resulting in a simple re-proposal of a consolidated imaginary, without any novelty. Fans of the genre will undoubtedly enjoy it.