Read This: The ongoing controversy of Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS
“In the 1970s, we had a feeling of safeness. We really thought the horrors that Ilse Koch was part of were behind us,” Dyanne Thorne said in 2011. She would know, too, as she played a character inspired by Koch in four films, beginning with 1975's Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS. That notional safeness may never have existed, but the illusion of it was decidedly shattered a few weeks ago when a band of Nazis unmasked themselves in Charlottesville, where they heiled themselves into an act of domestic terrorism that left one protestor dead.
A new piece in MEL Magazine exploring the film’s origins and bizarre resilience in culture touches on the topic of Nazisploitation and how it resonates in the wake of an event like Charlottesville. How should we view this sort of filth—intentional as it may be—in an era when prominent those threats are surfaced seemingly constantly online and in the real world?
The answer is complicated, but, the article maintains, we can still view the film appreciatively. Despite its “myriad continuity errors, profound tastelessness and historical inaccuracy,” the character of Ilsa remains a shocking subversion on the roles women typically play on film, even to this day.