Wow! Such a good movie.

As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

"Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia" is an okay entry most of the time.**SPOILERS**Running the Gulag 14 prison in Siberia, Ilsa, (Dyanne Thorne) uses her various torture methods to keep the prisoners in line. When the list of new recruits shows up to begin their punishment, she has an excuse to use her methods once again, using them to rule the camp with an iron fist. Finding that prisoner Andrei Chikurin, (Michael Morin) is unbending in his stead, she tries to ever-amounting forms of torture to break him, but when news comes of the camp's impending closure, she tries to eradicate it and all evidence of what happened, leaving him for dead. Escaping without her knowledge, he finally accidentally comes across her years later as the head of a prostitute-house ring in Montreal, and once she finds out that he is a former prisoner of her camp, she tries to tie up her loose ends once and for all.The News: This one wasn't all that bad, and did have some good points. The fact that there's some really nice sleaze moments in here when necessary is a great plus. The nudity in here is really nice, coming close to the original in terms of quantity, and that's not a bad sign. From the inventive sex scenes with her herself, where she sometimes takes on two at once in raunchier scenes than anything else would showcase, and the fact that the later half of the film is about a prostitute ring is the perfect catalyst for much more of it. The scenes in there, from the intense massage to the undressing and the actual scenes of them all going at it in there are pretty much what has come to be expected in these kinds of scenes. There's only the feeling that none of this comes off as sleazy as it did before, since none of it is really dirty or disgusting, as it was in the past, or merely showing it because it could. That's also the main difference with everything in the film, as it features the same stuff but none of it is dirty or sleazy as it could've been as they're not presented in that light. The torture scenes in the Gulag part are actually really great and brutal, and again, not as graphic as what came before in the series, come off as very cruel; and creative. The tiger pit is the greatest idea, where a cage above the pit with the snarling creature below leads to some really tense scenes before the inevitable happens, and the dunking in the ice water between two points spread out on the ice is sheer genius. The later scenes aren't that great, as the ones in the house are great in theory but produce really cheesy scenes when they're fears are realized through the virtual-reality program. These are so far removed from the tone of the film that it's hard to really understand their inclusion, or why they're really fears at all when done so cheaply, taking the sting right out of the sequences. It does make up for them with two really nice action scenes, including an incredibly fun sequence in the prison where they close it down and remove all traces of the prison, where they round up or shoot the prisoners, torch the remains and everything else, and the struggles and opportunities at fighting back while with the fire are really fun and action-packed. The finale, a confrontation at the house between the operatives and the guards is bloody, violent and really fun, being quite long and actually features a lot of good stuff about it, which ends the movie on a high note. All these things combined, this one turns out rather nicely.The Final Verdict: While not the greatest entry in the genre, this one does get very entertaining at times and is a decent cap to the series. Give it a shot if you're a fan of the series or have an urge to see this one, but the fact that it is so different from the other ones in the series is something fans have to get over.Rated R: Full Nudity, Graphic Violence, some Language and a few mild sex scenes

The Ilsa series apparently has something of a cult following, which is unsurprising as sleazy stuff like this is often well liked. I can't say I'm a part of that following and in fact have only seen one Ilsa film (Jess Franco's Ilsa, The Wicked Warden) and dint like it much. I can't profess to be a big fan of this entry either, although I do have to say that I enjoyed it more than my first taste of Ilsa. The thing I liked most about this film is the way that it doesn't follow the familiar sleaze plot line. Initially it feels like it might do as we focus on a Russian prison camp in which the prisoners are treated badly and often killed at the hands of it's warden. Things go wrong for Russia in the war and the wardens flee to Canada, where Ilsa starts up her own brothel and later comes back in contact with one of her rivals during the 1976 Olympics. The film is hardly genius, but I get fed up of seeing people brutalised in sleazy prison camps so the change of setting seen in this film is certainly very welcome. Director Jean LaFleur does not exactly go easy on the sleaze, however, and the film does feature some really gory moments - including several scenes of death and torture, most of which are quite inventive and the fact that the film features actual Siberian tigers is to its benefit also. There's nothing included in this film that hardened sleaze buffs won't have seen many times before; but this is better than a lot of similar films at least.

This is part of the Ilsa series (I think it's number 3). Apparently, the owners of this film would not sell the rights when the rest of the Ilsa movies were re-released on DVD a while ago. As a matter of fact, the only reason I have it is a friend of mine gave me a VHS copy of it that seems to be vintage (I don't even know if it has been released on DVD or another VHS run in a long time. Finding it may be kind of rare). It has its moments, but isn't as good as the rest of the Ilsa movies. It's basically the same type of story (Ilsa is sadistic and has sex a lot), and wasn't as coherent as the Ilsa stories (which sends it down in my opinion). I think that the writers put two different Ilsa stories they were working on together and decided to release it to make a quick buck.The plot is that Ilsa is the Commandant of a Gulag in Siberia during the tail end of the Stalinist period. Ilsa enjoys two things, torture and sex (for those of you who have seen the other Ilsa movies, this should come as no surprise). She sets out on "re-educating" an author who has been sentenced there for writing criticisms of the Bolsheviks, but finds that he is a tough nut to crack. All hell breaks loose after Stalin dies and the guards have to destroy the gulag and escape. After this, things get goofy. Fast forward to 1976. The writer is now working as a security guard for the Soviet men's hockey team while they're at the Montreal Olympics. He is recognized at a brothel by Ilsa (who is now the head of an organized crime syndicate) and kidnapped. Ilsa decides to go through round two with the torture, but uses some new technology.All in all, it was kind of lack luster. The biggest problem was that the script was really weak (the major weakness should have come out through the description of the movie). I also learned from this film that there are two identical lakes in Siberia and Quebec (they used the same damn hole in the ice in two separate scenes). Dyanne Thorne's performance is pretty much the same as in her other Ilsa movies, but this film just didn't live up to the rest. Sure, there's a lot of sex and torture, but somehow it really doesn't soothe the palate. I gave it a 3 because it did have some fun parts.

The first half of the movie is set in Gulag 14 in Siberia.Here,Ilsa(Dyanne Thorne)devises grotesque tortures for the prisoners,feeds their pieces to her pet tiger,and gets friendly with the guards.For the second half,it is 24 years later and she is running a chain of high class whore-house with the emphasis on torture."Tigress" is pretty lame-not as nasty as previous installments-and also quite dull.There's some gore,plenty of soft core sex and silly dialogue to keep the viewer entertained,but this is nothing in comparison to "Cannibal Holocaust","Forced Entry" or even "Ilsa-She Wolf of SS".However if you consider yourself a fan of low-budget sleaze you can give this film a look.5 out of 10.