Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent, smart action film.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Vicious warden Helga (a fierce and fiery portrayal by the scrumptious Malissa Longo) runs the castle penitentiary Stilberg for female political prisoners with an iron fist. Stubborn and recalcitrant new inmate Elisabeth Vogel (a winningly spunky performance by ravishing redhead Patrizia Gori), who's the daughter of a rebel leader, runs afoul of Helga after she finds herself incarcerated in Stilberg. Elisabeth eventually plots to escape from Stilberg in the wake of becoming fed up with being on the receiving end of Helga's endless cruelty and perverse sexual desires.While the plot certainly has all the right sordid stuff when it comes to on the money entertaining exploitation fare, alas Patrice Rhomm's pedestrian direction lets the trite and meandering narrative plod along at a tediously slow pace and totally bungles the climactic attack on the prison by a band of rebel soldiers. Moreover, this film quite simply doesn't go far enough with its scuzzy premise and hence delivers more sizzle than steak. Fortunately, H.L. Rostaine's low-rent script contains just enough sex, rape, whippings, torture, cat fights, and lesbianism to ensure that this movie passes muster as a decent slice of Eurosleaze schlock. In addition, there's a pleasing plenitude of bare distaff flesh on display. Jacques Marbeuf contributes a spot-on slimy turn as disgusting old lecher Doc. The cruddy dubbing provides a wealth of unintentional laughs: One gal speaks with an overdone Southern drawl while another boasts an annoying Bronx whine. Daniel White's varied score alternates between swinging jazz and thudding prog-rock. A strictly okay time-waster.

Having fallen into slight disfavor with the tyrant in charge of a totalitarian regime, "Helga" (Melissa Longo) is sent to a castle somewhere near the town of Spilberg to take charge of a labor camp for female political prisoners. Needless to say she is quite ruthless as she not only takes advantage of the prisoner's labor but also their bodies when they are finished working. Then one day, much to her delight, a new prisoner named "Elisabeth Vogel" (Patrizia Gori) is captured and because she is the daughter of the head revolutionary in the country, Helga becomes obsessed in her desire to possess her. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a standard Women-in-Prison film which suffered due to its apparent low budget as both the acting and the sets were clearly second-rate. Additionally, as far as the actresses were concerned only the aforementioned Melissa Longo and Patrizia Gori were all that attractive. Be that as it may, those who enjoy this particular type of film might find this one somewhat interesting but even so it's nothing to get excited about. Slightly below average.

If some jaded, pervy European businessman had fallen asleep in the foyer of a second-rate hotel in 1977 and had a reverie which mixed his sadly tame S&M fantasies with that morning's newspaper report on revolutions in South America and the piped music in the lobby, the contents of Helga: She-Wolf of Stilberg might be that dream. Available in a boxed-set of Nazi Cult films, Helga in fact isn't set during World War Two nor is there a Swastika in sight; Helga's locale is some sort of dream-space, a banana republic situated in a European landscape.Title character Helga is a rather incompetent version of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, given the job by her dictator president of running a vaguely Salo-like castle keep in which young women, mostly related to opposition and insurgent families, are imprisoned and, under Helga's rule, sexually abused and tortured. True to the flaccid and self-defeating nature of our businessman's fantasies, Helga's attempts to reign over her charges are met with derision and contempt by the prisoners and she is often left crying on her own, her wardrobe of red silk shirts and big-buckle leather belts no compensation for her failure to rule the roost.The film is so incompetent that its repetitions (how many times do the prisoners line up to be chosen by the doctor? And how often does Helga walk down the skanky staircase to the dungeon?) and unmotivated action very much mirrors the droolings of a dreaming mind and its final fantasy of liberation is as feeble as could be expected from a jaded and pervy Euro-gent, perhaps one who is an Anglophile with a penchant for Carry On films, as the comeuppance of Helga reminds one of nothing less than the blanket-bath given by the rebellious patients to Hattie Jacques' matron in Carry on Doctor. That the liberation is called into question by the final shot, where the escaped heroin and her lover are in the sights of a gun aimed by a former prison guard, only goes to show that a tired businessman can, in his dreams, reach an unintended moment of vision bringing into focus the endless nature of the world's nightmare cycles of violence.

Not much to say about this low budget "Ilsa - She Wolf of the SS" rip-off. the women are pretty and seriously degraded just like in Ilsa. If you are familiar with the Women In Prison genre, there are no surprises here. The plot follows the same formula. The inmates suffer violence in various stages of undressed humiliation.Only 2 things to note: 1. for some reason, there is no Nazi regalia like in Ilsa, but new and original fascist-type uniforms for the guards. I guess the film makers had some sort of moral qualms about using historically genuine authoritarian imagery, yet, they had no problems inflicting simulated torture on nude women.2. The lead Malisa Longo is no Dyanne Thorne. Marisa Longo is a softer beauty with less charisma than the hardened queen of WIP films, Dyanne Thorne. However, Malisa Longo was in many more films than Thorne, including other WIP films, like Salon Kitty and Captive Women 4. Longo also worked several times with soft core auteur Tinto Brass.If you have seen all the Ilsa movies and the rest of the more famous WIP and Nazi dominatrix films, you won't go too far wrong with Helga - She Wolf of Stilberg.