Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia

The first half of the movie is set in Gulag 14 in Siberia.Here,Ilsa(Dyanne Thorne)devises grotesque tortures for the prisoners,feeds their pieces to her pet tiger,and gets friendly with the guards.For the second half,it is 24 years later and she is running a chain of high class whore-house with the emphasis on torture."Tigress" is pretty lame-not as nasty as previous installments-and also quite dull.There's some gore,plenty of soft core sex and silly dialogue to keep the viewer entertained,but this is nothing in comparison to "Cannibal Holocaust","Forced Entry" or even "Ilsa-She Wolf of SS".However if you consider yourself a fan of low-budget sleaze you can give this film a look.5 out of 10.

I loved the other three, but it's easy to see why Jess Franco's Ilsa the Wicked Warden was picked as the third movie in the trilogy, and this one was forgotten. Nowhere near as shocking as any of the others. The best part of the movie is the starting when they're actually in Siberia (most of the movie takes place in like Canada or something). The deaths at the Siberian camp are entertaining, but the chainsaw/arm-wrestling scenes is cut under the title, The Tigress. Over all its a pretty boring action movie.

ILSA, THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA, is the third film in the ILSA series I've watched and my favourite yet. That's not to say I particularly enjoyed it, but I am pleased to report that it doesn't just focus on senseless and sleazy torture like the previous movies in this series. Instead, it has an actual plot for once, alongside action sequences to recommend it.

The storyline sees Ilsa now working at a remote Siberian prison camp where the inmates are routinely abused and killed (including by a tiger in one memorable moment). She sets her sights on one particular Russian agent, but he manages to escape her clutches when the camp is overthrown. Later, Ilsa and her chums are holed up in Canada, where she once more runs into the agent she's obsessed with punishing.

There are a few torture and gore scenes in this film but they're relatively tame and if not tame then at least unrealistic. Most of the film seems to have been devised as a softcore flick, with tons of sex scenes involving Dyanne Thorne in various states of undress. She's certainly an arresting beauty, and her charms just about carry the film, at least until an arresting shoot-out at the climax which is handled adroitly. ILSA, THE TIGRESS OF SIBERIA is no classic but at least it's less offensive than the previous outings and has a better story.

This is part of the Ilsa series (I think it's number 3). Apparently, the owners of this film would not sell the rights when the rest of the Ilsa movies were re-released on DVD a while ago. As a matter of fact, the only reason I have it is a friend of mine gave me a VHS copy of it that seems to be vintage (I don't even know if it has been released on DVD or another VHS run in a long time. Finding it may be kind of rare). It has its moments, but isn't as good as the rest of the Ilsa movies. It's basically the same type of story (Ilsa is sadistic and has sex a lot), and wasn't as coherent as the Ilsa stories (which sends it down in my opinion). I think that the writers put two different Ilsa stories they were working on together and decided to release it to make a quick buck.

The plot is that Ilsa is the Commandant of a Gulag in Siberia during the tail end of the Stalinist period. Ilsa enjoys two things, torture and sex (for those of you who have seen the other Ilsa movies, this should come as no surprise). She sets out on "re-educating" an author who has been sentenced there for writing criticisms of the Bolsheviks, but finds that he is a tough nut to crack. All hell breaks loose after Stalin dies and the guards have to destroy the gulag and escape. After this, things get goofy. Fast forward to 1976. The writer is now working as a security guard for the Soviet men's hockey team while they're at the Montreal Olympics. He is recognized at a brothel by Ilsa (who is now the head of an organized crime syndicate) and kidnapped. Ilsa decides to go through round two with the torture, but uses some new technology.

All in all, it was kind of lack luster. The biggest problem was that the script was really weak (the major weakness should have come out through the description of the movie). I also learned from this film that there are two identical lakes in Siberia and Quebec (they used the same damn hole in the ice in two separate scenes). Dyanne Thorne's performance is pretty much the same as in her other Ilsa movies, but this film just didn't live up to the rest. Sure, there's a lot of sex and torture, but somehow it really doesn't soothe the palate. I gave it a 3 because it did have some fun parts.

I don't see what the big deal is here...Almost all the other reviewers seem to hate this film, and I don't really get it. After the goofy, uninspired HAREM KEEPER, and the pretty dull sleaze-fest WICKED WARDEN, I was pleasantly surprised with TIGRESS. It's no masterpiece by any means, but this one had some inventive torture and a decent amount of tits-and-ass. This one has the mammoth-mounded Ilsa playing baby-sitter to a bunch of Russian traitors in the first half of the film, and a Canadian whorehouse madam in the second half. Yes, the story is definitely a little disjointed, almost playing like 2 different films, but I think this one had a good balance between sex and gore, and enough sleazy humor to make it an all-around worthwhile and entertaining entry. Definitely worth checking out if you like the series (or sleazy exploit cinema in general), but you may have a hard time finding it - I don't believe that there is a DVD release as of yet (at least not in the States), so start scouring those old mom-and-pop video stores. Regardless of what the other guys say, I like this one - 8/10