Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), by Don Edmonds

1975 saw the release of what could easily be called the archetypical Nazisploitation film, Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. That film featured Dyanne Thorne as Ilsa, a Nazi commandant who tortures prisoners at a concentration camp, while also seeking a man who can give her an orgasm. Those who fail in this task--i.e. all of the male prisoners at the camp--are castrated. As you may well expect, She-Wolf is a miserably gruesome watch, with much of the torture that's shown looking pretty authentic, thanks to the filmmakers only showing what they could technically accomplish, and implying the rest. When making the follow-up, which brought Ilsa to 1970s Saudi Arabia, the filmmakers toned down much of the disturbing content in an effort to seek an audience that wasn't comprised entirely of weirdos and perverts. But they still had to appeal to, y'know, weirdos and perverts, because it was still a film about a big-breasted, often-nude Teutonic blonde torturing people in ways that were occasionally erotic. While many consider this mixture of interests to be a failure, I'm of the opinion that the producers of Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks managed to create an atmosphere of camp which both the original film and this film's followup, Ilsa, Tigress of Siberia, were sorely lacking. This is, generally speaking, a feel-good exploitation movie, where it's just one bit of nonsense happening after another. It grows on you after a while.

Ilsa is now the lieutenant of a powerful Middle Eastern crime lord, El Sharif. El Sharif deals both in human trafficking and in drugs, and he and Ilsa's activities have caused them to be investigated by an international commission led by Commander Adam Scott and a pudgy, wimpy German dude named Dr. Kaiser. The pair have a spy planted in El Sharif's palace but she is captured and tortured before they arrive. Despite knowing that the two are spies, Ilsa falls for Commander Scott when he turns out to be a regular sex machine. Eventually her relationship with him causes El Sharif to sentence her to molestation at the hands of a leprous beggar whom she had flogged at the start of the movie. This causes her to help out a group of rebels seeking to oust El Sharif and replace him with the legitimate ruler of this region, his nephew Prince Ali. In the end Ilsa is betrayed by Ali and thrown in his dungeons to await a hideous fate.

I had to piece together aspects of this plot over multiple viewings, because as far as director Edmonds is concerned, story is as secondary and incidental as a hillbilly's napkins at an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet. No, we're here to see sleaze, and they are quite insistent on pouring on that sleaze whenever they can. Gore, dismemberment, torture, cannibalism, pedophilia, and rape are all key themes, though unlike She-Wolf none of it is brought "too far." For all that means. For example, they may talk about letting rats feast on someone's vaginal tissues, but they don't show it. We still get a girl whose breasts are crushed in a vice (which is actually a lot funnier than it sounds) and of course there are the women whose vaginas are outfitted with proximity mines. These mines are tested, by the way, by "the love machine"--a piston-driven mechanical arm that ends with an immaculate pewter dildo. (Might not want to use that too much, pewter can be real nasty on the skin I've heard.) Legit gross-out points to the scene where a girl's legs are eaten by ants--and then there's the guy who buys one of the girls, but says over a pair of pliers, "I don't like the scrape of teeth..."

Dr. Kaiser's arc in this movie is, um. Interesting. On the drive to El Sharif's palace he says, "I hope they do not give me...a sheep's eye. I have been all over the Arab world and it is a common gift to give to foreign guests. But they are disgusting, and I do not know if I could eat another one." Then of course El Sharif feeds him "the eye of [his] most beautiful sheep"--Kaiser's spy. Later, El Sharif sends an underage male prostitute to Kaiser's room, and despite initial resistance, there is every indication that he ended up taking him up on his offer! It's equal parts horrifying and comical, because despite its implications, it's so blatantly glanced over that it feels like a background gag! I have no idea what to make of this. I think it's best I move on. It is noteworthy that the same actor played a Nazi General in She-Wolf of the SS who commanded Ilsa to give him a golden shower. So he's always been a class act.

I don't really even know if I can call this film racist, because while it seems to assert that Arabs are vicious and have a propensity for human trafficking, it's not really something that's specifically dwelled on besides the provision of the setting. There are local people fighting El Sharif for presumably noble purposes, and it's not like the white Europeans are much better, with Dr. Kaiser being a pedophile, Commander Scott leaving Ilsa to die after sleeping with her, and Ilsa being, well...Ilsa. The sleaze is universal, and frankly, after watching movies like The Sheik and The Barbarian, this movie is pretty fair in its treatment of Arab folk. Though that's not saying much.

If you want uncut sleaze as only the '70s can deliver it, this is the film to watch. It's the one Ilsa movie I've bothered to go back to, and despite the change in tone, it is the most watchable of all of them in terms of content and lack of boredom. There's always something happening--whether you like it or not.

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Book Club of Desolation #9: Weasels Ripped My Flesh! (2012), by Robert Deis et al.

Even if I was a man, I wouldn't get men. I didn't get men when I did feel like I was a man. That's why I turned out not to be one.

I don't claim to get women, either. I don't claim to get humans. That's why I'm a shitty writer. Well, ordinarily, I would say that. Apparently, there's not great necessity to understand human function to be a good writer. I mean, the business is chiefly based around lying, and I like to think that I'm decent at lying when I do have to say I know people. And that lying, I think, empowers me. And I like the fact that writing gives me infinite power. It gives me the chance to use my imagination and it's meant that exact thing to billions of humans throughout history.

It means that writing has a lot of variety to it. I respect that variety, deeply, and I've tried to read everything. I like a lot of "good" books, and also, as you know, a lot of weird shit. I recently discovered I like some Westerns. I had a chance to read this thing called Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires, which appears to be a political brochure talking about anxiety in Argentina in the '70s which turns into Fantomas fanfiction. The Book Club of Desolation has brought me to a lot of these books, and I started to plan out this month's event, to follow up on the conclusion of Spookyween. I propose thus to the reader a BOOKVEMBER, where the Book Club of Desolation will meet weekly for a month to discuss this great variety in literature. We need to get to something that I never would have checked out before now, because I have mixed feelings about it, even after reading a full volume of it. Get your deodorant ready, bros, because we're diving into the Armpit Slicks--Men's Adventure magazines.

Don't get me wrong, the Men's Adventure genre had pulled at me for sometime, because to be frank, I find that shit hilarious. I've had regrets about passing up 100 Mack Bolans for a dollar at a garage sale. Lord knows that would be a fun piece for this site. And I'll probably end up checking out that Donald Westlake pseudo-James Bond novel at some point. But I will say this, and this is the only time I say it: the lure here is purely an ironic one, or, in more/less pretentious terms, an anthropological one. Most of the content on this site that I appreciate I enjoy unironically. If I'm going to be reading Men's Adventure, though, it has to be because I want to poke fun. For some time, I've known about the original "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" story, which I learned about through the film of the same name. It was convenient of Robert Deis, Josh Alan Friedman, and Wyatt Doyle to entitle this book after that famous story, so that people like me could strike the motherlode with a good intro primer for the Men's Adventure genre. And despite what I may end up saying about this book, I owe all of those fine gentlemen much, because stories like these are valuable and worth preserving. The variety of literature and art is worth preserving if framed in the right context. And yet, also, hanging it out in the air to dry, as it is, for everyone to form their own interpretations--that's important to me too. I guess I should just present this book rather than pass judgment on it--though, incidentally, I will also pass judgment on it.

Usually when I do a short story collection I want to examine each story on its own to the best of my ability. However, there are a lot of stories in this book, and so in general I'll be talking about the book as a whole. There are some common threads between the stories, and the book in turn presents more than just the stories, so it in turn has to be looked at in layers. We'll start with the stories.

I was able to pin down about four basic categories for the stories contained in this book: Killer Creatures, Sociological Studies, Adventure, and Woman-Haters. All of these overlap and interact in some ways, so they're not hard definitions. Killer Creature stories are the namesake of the book and this one has some good ones. It's satisfying to read the original "Weasels" story (which would inspire Zappa who would inspire Schiff), and it's also nice to know that I live in the same universe as a formally published story called "Monkey Madness." These stories probably inspired the wave of animals-gone-berserk movies in the '70s and '80s, like (just off the top of my head) Frogs, Dogs, Strays, Slugs, Grizzly, and Squirm--to say nothing of Jaws. This was seen by some as an opportunity to resurrect the good ol' giant monster flick, leading to movies like Island Claws and Food of the Gods. I'll probably delve into those soon enough with a collection of cryptozoology-themed Men's Adventures put out by the same team. The Killer Creatures are a blast, and it's a good idea to open with one. It drew me even if later elements shoved me back out. Plus, the editors included a master list of all of the animals that have been featured in this kind of story: it included the obvious ones like ants, lions, crocodiles, tigers, sharks...but also anteaters, lemmings, newts, badgers, and iguanas. Excellent.

The Sociological Studies are what they sound like--reports or inside stories about scandalous topics. They vary in quality and, as you may expect have not aged well. Stories about the horrors of Beat culture will be amusing--racism-laden tales bashing Calypso music won't be. I can't properly gauge the lesbian expose stories, of which there are several. These are the literary equivalents of Mondo movies. They are tedious, offensive, and have aged badly, albeit not as badly as some of the other pieces. Have I mentioned this book doesn't support modern values yet...?

The Adventure stories I found to be somewhat boring, though there was a story that was done pretty professionally by Harlan Ellison, shriveled prick through he was. I should say here that if you can imagine the narration from a Something Weird B&W release, you can imagine the prose style of most of the stories in this book. Hardboiled into oblivion. Throw in war stories played straight and you've got me snoozing, and throw in racism and you've got me mad. I don't know what else to say about these ones.

And then we come at last to the Woman Haters. Man, these were a hard sit, but in the trainwreck sort of way. I really had difficulty putting these down even though they were some of the most monstrous stories of the collection--I blame my immunization to such things on having watched so many exploitation movies. Some of these really do give you insight into the sick fucks who were behind a lot of this. I got excited for "Grisly Rites of Hitler's Flesh Stripper" only to be disappointed (when I shouldn't have been) that it was merely an excuse for a nameless, faceless sexy lady to be repeatedly raped and mutilated by a Nazi for x number of pages. While these stories are offensive to basically everyone, sexism is their most prominent issue. And yet there's always something that's compelled me to look into the sick side of our culture, and I know it's not a unique trait. In this case, I don't think I have an explanation for it. I am probably a bad person in my own right.

But, to defend myself somewhat, I do want to step away from the layer of the stories and instead look at the book itself. The editors feature introductions to many of the stories, along with several introductions to the book as a whole--this is also seeded with interviews from some of the guys responsible for the big content of this market, including Mario Puzo. All of this is loaded with a rich history of the genre, showing how fast-moving of a market it was. It's easy for a modern reader to view this material as the Kindle porn market or clickbait "news" sites of the time. And like any sort of "bottom barrel" market, it's an important part of history, because people aren't reading "art," they're reading this stuff. Of course, that won't stop us from writing "art," as well as also writing "this stuff" to pay the bills. Such is the life. Take Mario Puzo for instance: he wrote trash, and yet an adaptation of one of his novels is considered by some to be the best film ever. I'll always walk on the artsy idealistic side of things, but man, do those cynical, realist, "economist-type" writers get the big breaks...

So naturally, the editorial stuff is going to be great for history lovers. The third layer, then, is the art: the team has lovingly reproduced hundreds of vintage covers, pages, and ads from several decades' worth of magazines. This is pure eye candy for fans of the hilarious. Thrill to the things that made your grandparents and great-grandparents hot on the forehead! It's nearly impossible to believe that these images were once printed and sold, and yet more importantly it makes one wonder what will be considered trash-treasure in the future, which we take for granted today?

This is a book where the actual content would fall apart without context. The book itself is so well put together that it's worth getting for the notes and images. It creates a historicity for a genre that we can't take straight anymore--even if the values live on (we need look no further than to our modern politics for that). Deis, Friedman, and Doyle deserve recognition for their work, and to top it all off, Mr. Deis himself signed my copy. If you can survive the horrors of Wanton Witch, you can make it with this one. Try it out if it's your speed. All I can say for now is that I'm hyped for this cryptozoology book.

Bookvember continues next time with a look at English sci-fi...of a very particular brand.

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Image Source: New Texture

Women's Prison Massacre (1983), by Bruno Mattei

"I'm not a part of this performance. I represent the captive audience. And what I want to know is: how can you suffer it? It makes me wanna throw up!"

Bruno Mattei was an international man of mystery. Many of his films will end up here eventually: SS Girls, Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, and Zombi 3 have entered the ranks of some of my favorite movies of all time. As associate of Lucio Fulci, and a partner of the infamous Claudio Fragasso, Mattei explored genuine and heartfelt low-tier art in the context of extreme bottom-budget trash filmmaking. His movies aren't emotionally riveting, but they often tend to be comedic boons to all who watch, carrying sincere aesthetic interest. Of course, he made plenty of shit, just as his fellow cinematic superstar Jess Franco did in addition to his own great films.  

By being a Bruno Mattei movie, Women's Prison Massacre is already at risk, and is, in fact, doubly screwed: yep, it's part of the Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser. I have only seen one Gemser Emanuelle film, and that was Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle in America. That movie had a scene where someone masturbated a horse. Scrubbed my computer after that one. You can expect that I had some degree of apprehension when wading into one of Mattei's cracks at the series, which, by the way, is a series much in the same way that all of the various in-name sequels to Fulci's Zombi (like Mattei's Zombi 3) are a series. However, I learned quickly that I would not be led astray, for lo and behold, this movie opens with a woman giving a monologue about how she calls herself "The Mantis." THE MANTIS. The Mark of Mattei is upon us. Joy to the world!

The usual Bruno stuff is here. There's at least one person with crazy eyes. People are simultaneously offended and excited by sex, of which there is a lot. The editing and effects make most of the violence cartoonish. And, naturally, everyone speaks with the ludicrous intensity of a Grant Morrison comic. "I hope...you can prove that claim!!" the warden mugs, after her guards torture some lesbians. "Can you not...prove the contrary?!?" Emanuelle snaps back.

Speaking of Emanuelle, Mattei's protagonists (or "protagonists") are always awesome--the post-apocalyptic hippie bikers from Rats, Zantoro from Hell of the Living Dead, and especially Hans Schellenberg from SS Girls are all impressive slabs of perplexing OTT ham whose dub actors should be given monuments. Emanuelle, of course, is not a Mattei original, but she keeps a badass stony face and makes us feel bad for her when she gets tortured. In this one, she's a reporter who was supposed to investigate the titular prison, but, of course, ends up becoming a prisoner in it, which one must admit is rather the twist, assuming this is the only movie involving a prison that one has ever watched. There are weird cutaways from the prison scenes to who I think is either the owner of the prisoner or Emanuelle's boss, who is shady and very pro-death penalty. Then, there are some male prisoners who end up in the women's prison, who give us zingers like this:

Prisoner 1: "If I didn't have these cuffs on me, I'd stick that gun up your ass!"
Prisoner 2: "No, that's too easy--and he might enjoy it! That'd be a real shame, huh?"

Unfortunately, I can't properly convey how the delivery is both inappropriately casual and unnecessarily dramatic. Like I said--monuments, please.

Actually, the male prisoner subplot leads into this movie's very important message: don't use a vehicle transporting prisoners to lead a raid on a terrorist organization. It's okay, though, because surprisingly the prisoners do not escape, and as far as I know the terrorists do not return to the movie. The convicts are instead placed in the women's prison, despite the fact that all of them are rapists. In addition, despite this fact, they are portrayed as jolly, goofy comedians, at least until they very easily kill a guard and seize control of the prison. However, with a few gruesome exceptions, there is naught but more cartoonishness ahead. The disturbing stuff (which should be obvious enough) is scored with proto-techno/post-disco beebops, and intercut with scenes of a Nazi forcing a woman to dance with a blow-up doll. It can be a really upsetting movie--I'll be the first to admit that I'm triggered by depictions of rape, and so I did have to fast forward quite a bit in that second half. And, trust me, lots of particular words with certain histories to 'em are thrown against the ladies, because it's a Women in Prison movie. That's something you just gotta blink over, I'm afraid. Ultimately, if you feel prepared or are content skipping around, the surrounding scenes are sweet 'n' surreal.

I have to admit, I'd rather watch SS Girls or Hell of the Living Dead than this, which is also how I feel about Rats: Night of Terror. But this is still definitely a favorite. And hey, it really is two movies in one: after all, it ends with a sped-up recap of all of the ostensibly important events.

So yes, there was some suffering. But for things like that, I didn't throw up.

P.S. Claudio Fragasso was 2nd unit director on this. I'm guessing he worked with Laura Gemser before, but I like to think that this was the movie where Fragasso just said, "Someday I'll make a movie about vegetarian goblins. And I want you to make the costumes for these goblins." Then she winked at him: "I have some potato sacks which'll do the job just fine."