User Reviews

If some jaded, pervy European businessman had fallen asleep in the foyer of a second-rate hotel in 1977 and had a reverie which mixed his sadly tame S&M fantasies with that morning's newspaper report on revolutions in South America and the piped music in the lobby, the contents of Helga: She-Wolf of Stilberg might be that dream. Available in a boxed-set of Nazi Cult films, Helga in fact isn't set during World War Two nor is there a Swastika in sight; Helga's locale is some sort of dream-space, a banana republic situated in a European landscape.

Title character Helga is a rather incompetent version of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, given the job by her dictator president of running a vaguely Salo-like castle keep in which young women, mostly related to opposition and insurgent families, are imprisoned and, under Helga's rule, sexually abused and tortured. True to the flaccid and self-defeating nature of our businessman's fantasies, Helga's attempts to reign over her charges are met with derision and contempt by the prisoners and she is often left crying on her own, her wardrobe of red silk shirts and big-buckle leather belts no compensation for her failure to rule the roost.

The film is so incompetent that its repetitions (how many times do the prisoners line up to be chosen by the doctor? And how often does Helga walk down the skanky staircase to the dungeon?) and unmotivated action very much mirrors the droolings of a dreaming mind and its final fantasy of liberation is as feeble as could be expected from a jaded and pervy Euro-gent, perhaps one who is an Anglophile with a penchant for Carry On films, as the comeuppance of Helga reminds one of nothing less than the blanket-bath given by the rebellious patients to Hattie Jacques' matron in Carry on Doctor. That the liberation is called into question by the final shot, where the escaped heroin and her lover are in the sights of a gun aimed by a former prison guard, only goes to show that a tired businessman can, in his dreams, reach an unintended moment of vision bringing into focus the endless nature of the world's nightmare cycles of violence.

Vicious warden Helga (a fierce and fiery portrayal by the scrumptious Malissa Longo) runs the castle penitentiary Stilberg for female political prisoners with an iron fist. Stubborn and recalcitrant new inmate Elisabeth Vogel (a winningly spunky performance by ravishing redhead Patrizia Gori), who's the daughter of a rebel leader, runs afoul of Helga after she finds herself incarcerated in Stilberg. Elisabeth eventually plots to escape from Stilberg in the wake of becoming fed up with being on the receiving end of Helga's endless cruelty and perverse sexual desires.

While the plot certainly has all the right sordid stuff when it comes to on the money entertaining exploitation fare, alas Patrice Rhomm's pedestrian direction lets the trite and meandering narrative plod along at a tediously slow pace and totally bungles the climactic attack on the prison by a band of rebel soldiers. Moreover, this film quite simply doesn't go far enough with its scuzzy premise and hence delivers more sizzle than steak. Fortunately, H.L. Rostaine's low-rent script contains just enough sex, rape, whippings, torture, cat fights, and lesbianism to ensure that this movie passes muster as a decent slice of Eurosleaze schlock. In addition, there's a pleasing plenitude of bare distaff flesh on display. Jacques Marbeuf contributes a spot-on slimy turn as disgusting old lecher Doc. The cruddy dubbing provides a wealth of unintentional laughs: One gal speaks with an overdone Southern drawl while another boasts an annoying Bronx whine. Daniel White's varied score alternates between swinging jazz and thudding prog-rock. A strictly okay time-waster.

DUBBED

I saw the 93 minute version, which some of the make out scenes appear to be shortened. It has sadistic warden Helga (Malissa Longo) refusing to listen to her superiors, prefers to break protocol by allowing unethical practices to be practiced such as Doc (Jacques Marbeuf) bribing guards/soldiers bottles of wine to allow him to have his way with some of the female prisoners inside of a barn. And Helga gets turned on this as she sometimes looks up from above. Until one day the soldiers brought in a new prisoner, the daughter of a rebel captain, a redhead named Elisabeth Vogel (Patrizia Gori). At first she resists despite Elisabeth being desirable by both Helga and by some of the superior guards. But it was not long she finds out that she and her friend Jenny can use their sexuality as their advantage in means of escape. If there is any reason to watch this as it is predictable but to see the nudity as it also shows full frontal of some of the women prisoners, and that is it.