Friday, March 19, 2021

HELGA, SHE WOLF OF STILBERG (1978) **

Helga (Malisa Longo) wants to be taken seriously by her male bosses, who rule a small country with an iron fist.  They give her a job presiding over a women’s prison, and she quickly takes to it like a duck to water.  There, she dishes out torture, punishment, and (sometimes) pleasure to the captive cuties.  Things get complicated though when Helga takes a shine to one of her model prisoners. 

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg is an odd Women in Prison movie.  It wants to ride the coattails of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (Longo even looks like Dyanne Thorne a little), but it lacks that film’s conviction to depravity and disgustingness.  Heck, it doesn’t even have the heart to be a real Nazi flick as the bad guys all wear knockoff swastika symbols on their armbands.  The various scenes of whipping, torture, and rape all seem tame and halfhearted for the most part too.  Many sequences start off promising, but end abruptly, while others just sort of fizzle out.  There are quite a few scenes of people going for a roll in the hay (both literal and figurative), although it’s nothing that will fog up your glasses or anything.

I might have felt a little differently if the version I saw had subtitles.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss much as there is very little here in the way of actual plot.  Because of that, I had to rely on the exploitation elements to carry me through.  While the nude scenes and torture sequences are plentiful, they just never really go for broke. 

Longo is quite lovely.  She has a good masturbation scene that like most everything else in the movie starts off steamy but has no payoff whatsoever.  That’s kind of how the whole movie is though. 

Also, in addition to not being subtitled, the version I saw didn’t even have opening credits.  Just a long shot of a sword while library music played.  Weird. 

AKA:  Girl Slaves.  AKA:  Helga, the Leather Mistress.  AKA:  The She Wolf of Stilberg.  AKA:  Bloody Camp.

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