Scott LeBrun Not really an official "Ilsa" film - in this entry, the character is actually named Greta - "The Wicked Warden" stars the inimitable Dyanne Thorne as the title character. She presides over a jungle prison that houses women guilty of some sort of "perversion": lesbianism, nymphomania, prostitution, etc. A young woman named Abbie Phillips (Tania Busselier) deliberately gets herself committed to this place, hoping to learn of the fate of her sister Rosa (Angela Ritschard)."The Wicked Warden" is a solid exploitation shocker. It's not as graphically bloody as "Ilsa She Wolf of the SS", but it still has its fair share of depravity. Have no fear: Greta / Ilsa is very much the sadist that she's always been. Director Jess Franco doesn't mess around here, as he gets to a shower scene less than two minutes into the movie. Voyeurs will be very satisfied with the level of flesh displayed; many of our female cast members parade around not revealing very much. The story by Franco and Erwin C. Dietrich is appropriately trashy, with just a touch of political subtext and a grim nature.The well endowed Ms. Thorne is quite watchable as always. Supporting her is Francos' longtime muse Lina Romay as Juana, a domineering patient with lots of demands for her new associate. Thornes' real-life husband Howard Maurer also co-stars, and gets to do a sex scene with her. What's neat to see is that Mr. Franco himself has not just a cameo, but another supporting role, as well meaning doctor Milton Arcos.Franco is able to deliver a finale / comeuppance that is pretty damn amusing, especially with the intercutting. It's a perfect resolution for this 95 minute exercise in sleaze.Seven out of 10.

Kaliyugaforkix I like ugly films, that aren't sterile and prettified by superficial gloss. This leads me into a lot of shady areas, because the spotless, empty media we do have is utterly retarded & absolutely everywhere. I'll happily stand for the movies that use this tangibility in entirely negative ways. If something makes me feel like showering after and praying to Jesus while I rock to & fro- mission accomplished. Even if it's repulsive & indefensible, it's still alive. If I'm going to watch movies I want to feel this stuff, not be pillow talked by processed slop. I open like this because this flick is surely one of those shows that makes you ponder taking a pumice stone to your eyeballs. Hallelujah. Make no mistake, Jess Franco is dye-in-the-wool pervert & not shy about it. He obviously has an…affinity for the material that makes for a creepy sort of dedication. He isn't joking with his sick WIP cycle, they aren't easy to laugh off like the others I've seen.The gloriously tacky ILSA series is consistent in its portrait of the inquisitor madam & her devotion to pain- glamorous, beautiful, power loving & sexually insatiable, one moment smooth & pleasing and the next sadistically merciless- but it hops back n forth all through the 20th century, from hot spot to hot spot, drawn to evil like a fly to dung. It helps to jettison any idea of chronology here & just think of Ilsa as a kind of vampire, popping up wherever there's bad vibes to leech on a massive scale; deposed & killed in one era and rising in another to feed again- you can't keep a good woman down. Her first adventure was the exploitation classic SHE WOLF OF THE SS, where Ilsa found herself right at home with the goose stepping jackboots of the Third Reich, then HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS where she frolicked in a desert hellhole, onto the TIGRESS OF SIBERIA which found Ilsa getting up to her old tricks in the gulags of Soviet Russia & finally here- running a banana republic asylum in typical hands-on style. Dyanne Thorne's third reprisal of the blood thirsty succubus is a grind house goody, but only viewers blessed with strong constitutions need bother. It isn't the typical Chicks-in- chains enterprise that a trash mongrel expects, where bad taste is balanced by rival factors like low production values, wooden acting or camp sensibility (HAREM KEEPER).It includes the standard ingredients the genre demands yet takes them so far out that those deflating factors aren't enough to dampen the stench. I've read the charge that this jaunt down debauchery lane might've been a firecracker in its day but the preceding three decades have softened its bite. no no NOAs the movie's titular warden, Ilsa reigns supreme over a mental hospital for deviant women. While the inmates have full frontal romps in filthy public showers with butch lesbo guards leering on, Ilsa relaxes after a long day of depravity at the office, sinking her generous bosoms in a luxuriant bubble bath, inter-cut with a prisoner gunned down while trying to escape sans underwear (no inmate here is permitted the privilege of undergarments- yea, that's the level were on here). This prompts the victim's sister Abby to have herself committed to expose the goings down at Las Palamas before more innocents die at the hands of our sadistic bitch goddess and her lackeys. Predictably, Ilsa's magic touch has transformed the hospital into a den of twisted sex games, a gulag for political prisoners, a snuff movie production house. Got all that?What a gust of foul air. The bottom barrel method captures every sq mm of grime, minimalistic compared to the last two; slow but vicious. They were colourful and this is low-key & subdued: a slow burn. It sure floored me, sneaking the Anchor Bay reissue during my teenage years & imagining the delicious horrors that waited. Finally I would see a Jess Franco movie, one of those reviled raunch-o-ramas; a real test of my mettle. Non stop nudity, acid douches, human toilet paper, electro shock therapy, whippings, beatings, rapes- yeah, we're not in Kansas anymore Toto. Sigh.The constant barrage of dehumanization is numbing & any technical deficiencies just get swallowed up by the atmosphere of jaw dropping mean spiritedness. Just that general atmosphere of extreme human backwardness can hurt your head after awhile. Again, Jess Franco takes the skeleton of old comic book adventures/exotic serials & injects all his usual sexual sickness into it. Dyanne Thorne's hammy accent is not so yuck-worthy when she's holding a plastic bag over someone's skull or jamming needles close-up into flesh; I never feel more like I'm wading through the twisted jerk-off fantasies of a pulp obsessed teenager than during Franco's WIP stuff. It's a cartoon shot with porno flatness to authentically capture the intensity of S&M.After the tongue-in-cheek approach of its predecessor the randy little Spaniard takes the series back to its roots: undiluted in-your-face shock value, with a heavier emphasis on eroticism only un-softened by any of his usual dreamy proclivities, save one scene. What we're left with is a bleak parade of suffering, extreme sleaze only amplified by the crude, dingy realization of the material. Jess puts all other WIP movies to shame: its not light naughty fun; its pervy uncle,goose-you- under-the-dinner table uncomfortable. Standout image here: a woman being calmly asphyxiated by Ilsa, the bag over her face inflated by death rattles as her eyes bulge. Ugh. This will be what stays with me from THE WICKED WARDEN. People with bags over their heads are just plain horrifying; they've been reduced to giant veal cutlets in a special way.

BaronBl00d Strange, depraved vision of Jess Franco's concerning Ilsa, that wicked, blouse-popping sadist of the famous/infamous series starring statuesque/bosomy Dyanne Thorne. This time around a young girl gets into a hospital run for women who suffer from sex-related diseases such as lesbianism and nymphomania. It seems she had a sister admitted a year ago and wants to find out what has happened to her even though she knows no patient has ever left. The film takes place somewhere in South America where a government is fighting rebels. Well, you get what you might expect from a series like this: lots of nude girls, lots of perversion, lots of sadism, lots of sleaze, and generally a sick/guilty feeling having seen it. There are many scenes which are downright disgusting such as one dealing with the use of a plastic bag, another with pins and a human pin cushion, shock therapy, a night with the boys from the local prison, and the grand finale where Greta(Thorne) is out to lunch with the girls. Franco is a decent director in terms of piecing a film together(despite what the subject matter might be). He can draw scenes out for suspense. He can also shock which he does well too. The acting was decent overall. Thorne is way over-the-top, but hey who cares once they see her? She is the personification of voluptuousness wearing her strained military blouse and high boots with red hair this time round. Ilsa, the Wicked Warden is a unique look at what film can do...and perhaps should not do.

MovieCriticMarvelfan Three things are certain in life: Taxes, death and the fact that Jess Franco makes horrible films. This was absolutely an abomination. Thats saying something for a making that has made his money by making soft core porn cannibal flicks and Ilsa is no different.Man where I do start? Horrible acting, almost no script. Dyanne Thorne is back as Ilsa wearing an incredibly fake wig and she herself doesn't look like shes into it like in the other films.She runs a prison camp and tortures other girls although in this case she now has a lesbian fun toy , a change from the other Ilsa flicks when shes interested in men.The movie doesn't have almost no shock value, and the movie is basically a set of soft porn scenes, mostly taking place in the shower, and in Ilsa's "study".The acting is horrendous, during one scene a prisoner gets shock treatment yet her reaction is absolutely pathetic, all she does is roll her eyes in disgust. LMAO.The movie then ends with Franco pathetic trademark a stupid cannibal scenes that is fake and not gory.Franco, is the one the worst wannabee horror directors I've seen. I've seen the comment on him calling him absolute pathetic but after seeing this movie and the one called "White Cannibal Queen", I can now confirm what those people have said about him.