Ilsa - The Wicked Warden (USA, German, Swiss, 1977) is the fourth installment in the repellently themed "nazsploitation" Ilsa series that began with Canadian Don Edmond's Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS in 1974. The good thing is that this Franco film does not include any nazis or camps in it, just turkeyish plot in which the Ilsa character Dyanne Thorne runs a hospital that turns out to be, surprisingly, a nasty place in which girls are being tortured and force-showered without the outer world knowing anything about the place! Well credibility has never been Franco's strongest point.
The film has practically all the typical and main Franco elements in it. It has very slow parts that are totally unnecessary to the "plot" or narrative, they are just there to make the film run a little longer. It has the director in a brief role, it has at least two prolonged shower scenes and imaginative attempts to show Franco's wife and sensual actress Lina Romay nude in front. And naturally it has several scenes of violence and sexual sadism, and since the film was produced by the European trash/sleaze king Erwin C. Dietrich (producer of Franco's Jack the Ripper (1976) and the awful Eine armee gretchen that belongs to the most ridiculous celluloid misusages of the whole cinematic history, directed by the producer himself in 1973), it is nothing but greedy sexploitation for the whole 90 minutes.
Another thing that is typical for Franco is that he likes to add some symbolism to his films, as if he really had had something in mind but was unable to, for one reason or another, really deliver the message with the film. I'm talking about the ending that definitely belongs to the most unforgettable endings of the director's colorful filmography and would have worked fine in the more ambitious hands. Now it is just there after 85 minutes of honest exploitation so it is impossible to be taken seriously after the footage that has just been shown. Also, would that world really be any safer or "cleaner" even if the protagonist she-devil was killed?
Due to the ending and its potential, this belongs to the more interesting Franco films. Otherwise it is just as boring, slow moving and gratuitous money-taker as most other exploitation films by Franco, Italy or any other region.
The film has practically all the typical and main Franco elements in it. It has very slow parts that are totally unnecessary to the "plot" or narrative, they are just there to make the film run a little longer. It has the director in a brief role, it has at least two prolonged shower scenes and imaginative attempts to show Franco's wife and sensual actress Lina Romay nude in front. And naturally it has several scenes of violence and sexual sadism, and since the film was produced by the European trash/sleaze king Erwin C. Dietrich (producer of Franco's Jack the Ripper (1976) and the awful Eine armee gretchen that belongs to the most ridiculous celluloid misusages of the whole cinematic history, directed by the producer himself in 1973), it is nothing but greedy sexploitation for the whole 90 minutes.
Another thing that is typical for Franco is that he likes to add some symbolism to his films, as if he really had had something in mind but was unable to, for one reason or another, really deliver the message with the film. I'm talking about the ending that definitely belongs to the most unforgettable endings of the director's colorful filmography and would have worked fine in the more ambitious hands. Now it is just there after 85 minutes of honest exploitation so it is impossible to be taken seriously after the footage that has just been shown. Also, would that world really be any safer or "cleaner" even if the protagonist she-devil was killed?
Due to the ending and its potential, this belongs to the more interesting Franco films. Otherwise it is just as boring, slow moving and gratuitous money-taker as most other exploitation films by Franco, Italy or any other region.