Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia is a sexploitation "Men in prison" style of film that was produced in Canada in 1977. It is the third sequel of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.
Premise
Dyanne Thorne repeats the title role, but this time Ilsa (referred to as "Comrade Colonel") supervises a 1953 Siberian gulag that mentally and physically destroys political male prisoners towards the fall of Stalinism.
Plot
Ilsa supervises a gulag with such aids as the burly Ivan and his impaling pole, and Leve, a mad doctor of electroshock and psychological torture. Each night, Ilsa's four aids drink heavily and wrestle each other for the privilege of being among the two that Ilsa takes to her bedroom. There, they either engage in threesome action or whisper sweet nothings while their Comrade Colonel, wearing only riding boots, whips them. As for the two losing aids, they are still comforted by Ilsa's two female assistants, although they are usually so beaten up that the assistants eventually settle for lesbian action with each other.
Upon hearing Leve's treatment (displaying Stalin's picture while applying electrocution) won't break the new prisoner Andrei Chikurin, Ilsa has Andrei brought to her cabin where she tries seducing him. Her words don't help and the sight of her naked busty form only makes him insult her attractiveness. He is therefore taken into the man-eating tiger Sasha's cage. While this distracts the guards, rumors of Stalin's death cause a rebellion. Sensing the jig is up, Ilsa has the camp torched. Ivan and Leve shoot everyone in sight, including their fellow comrades. During the chaos, a fellow inmate sneaks Andrei a shovel, which he uses to kill Sasha and get out of the cage. As the sadistic hierarchy escape the destroyed gulag and post-Stalin Soviet Union altogether, Andrei sees his dead friends and vows vengeance on Ilsa and her followers.
The film then relocates to Montreal, 1977. Andrei manages the visiting Russian Olympic hockey team. After playing in Montreal Forum, the team visits "Aphrodite," a brothel where the prostitutes parade on a runway to funky 1970s rock. Andrei, who declines being serviced, waits in an adjacent lounge.
"Aphrodite"'s manager is none other than Ilsa, who runs it from a remote mansion. Despite the 24 year gap, Ilsa and her aids neither look older nor reformed. Besides recruiting prostitutes, Ilsa has local mob bosses tortured until agreeing signing over their businesses, only to end up in airtight containers inside a frozen lake.
Thanks to "Aphrodite"'s closed-circuit television, Ilsa spots Andrei and sends two thugs to bring him in. When Andrei arrives, Ilsa shows him Leve has updated his brainwashing methods with state-of-the-art technology. The technology breaks the wills of prospective Aphrodites in isolation booths, forcing them to have hallucinations of their greatest fears. After a demonstration, Leve straps Andrei in, and even Andrei is surprised when it reveals that through all of his revulsion for Ilsa, he is actually attracted to her. His greatest fear is a hallucination of being castrated by a psychedelic Ilsa.
Using this knowledge, Ilsa repeats her attempt from the gulag, only this time Andrei is chained naked to the wall, and Ilsa not just displays herself nude, but actively rubs her naked busty form against his body. Alas, Andrei just closes his eyes and concentrates. It is suggested he succeeds to fight his body and maintain his flaccid form. After Ilsa gives up, Andrei spits in her face.
In response, Ilsa decides to make Andrei's hallucination real in front of her men and women. However, when the hockey players finish up and can't find Andrei, they fear he may be defecting. The Russian embassy is contacted and they trace him back to Ilsa's mansion. Russian mobsters are called in for the rescue. Just seconds before his castration, the rescuers storm in with ski masks and submachine guns. Leaving Ilsa's women alone, they exchange fire and fists with Ilsa's men. While Ilsa grabs her money briefcase, Ivan grabs his trusty pole and impales his way out. Andrei, who is left alone, unties himself and makes his alliance known by wearing clothes from a dead rescue team member.
Outside, Ivan and Ilsa are the only ones in her group who manage to escape, thanks to Ilsa's snowmobiles. However, Andrei jumps Ivan. He is soon dropped to the ground, but so is Ivan's pole. Ivan, who can't resist driving back to fight, gets impaled on his own pole. Meanwhile, Ilsa accidentally crashes down. Andrei soon arrives on Ivan's snowmobile, but decides to ignore her bribe attempt and desert Ilsa and her money briefcase all alone in the middle of the Canadian cold desert.
Differences from the earlier movies
While the first half of Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia is purely set-up meant to connect the film to the earlier installments, the second half of this film is great Canadian fun with a spy/action flair. LaFleur, who indulged his audience with recognizable Montreal locations and gratuitous Canadian references in Mystery of the Million Dollar Hockey Puck, once again makes Ilsa a proudly Canadian film that must have pleased Montreal film-goers at the time.
Despite claims that this film is the least interesting in the series, Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia isn't totally exempt from exploitation film craziness. Some of the more notable occurrences include a great scene with a gasoline-filled waterbed, and a killer snow plow that does away with an embassy spy. Also fun is the way the film degenerates into complete anarchy for the climax. Oddly enough, this is also the only film in which Ilsa doesn't die at end, yet it is also the final Ilsa film ever made.
The most obvious difference between this and the other Ilsa films is undoubtedly the type of torture that Ilsa, the Wicked Warden and her minions dole out. While the other films in the series focus exclusively on physical torture: whipping, asphyxiation, hot needles, poison ants, multiple castrations, and even an exploding diaphragm, this Ilsa is specifically concerned with destroying Andrei not physically, but mentally. The fear of electroshock and brainwashing can be found in many Canadian films, like Jean-Claude Lord's Mindfield, and can be traced back directly to horrific events in Canadian history, such as the Duplessis Orphans. The addition of Leve to Ilsa's brood changes the entire dynamic of the picture from gratuitous torture sequences to a struggle for free will.
As further proof, Ilsa films usually feature a scene where she is finally "tamed" by the hero's lovemaking. This time, though, Ilsa is the one who tries to use sex (twice!) to psychologically break Andrei, equating her seduction with his submission to Stalin. Andrei uses the second opportunity to spit in her face.
