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Greta, the Mad Butcher was released in some markets as Ilsa, the Wicked Warden (and in some others as Wanda, the Wicked Warden), so it makes sense that it plays a lot like an Ilsa movie. (It does not however, play like a sequel to Barbara Loden's Wanda, making the latter alternate title a bit confusing.) The opening scenes set the tone for the junky pleasures the movie offers. Ilsa...sorry, Greta, played by Dyanne Thorne, slips into a bath while a group of female prisoners are crowded into a shower. There's a parodic amount of nudity in these few minutes, and had I any semblance of dignity as a viewer, I might have taken offense. (I don't, and shamefully nodded in appreciation.) Of course, this nudity was something of a red herring for us and the prisoners' captors, as one of the girls manages to escape, taking refuge with a kindly doctor played by director Jess Franco. (Franco is introduced with his shirt unbuttoned distressingly low, a move he's not handsome enough to pull off.)
When Ilsa...sorry, Greta, shows up to reclaim the escaped inmate, Franco holds a press conference to voice his suspicions about what the hell they're doing in her so called hospital. Franco is then approached by the sister of the inmate (their meet cute involves her holding a gun to his head) and demands to be admitted into the hospital under false pretenses so she can investigate what happened to her sister, a plan that absolutely has zero probability of going wrong in any capacity whatsoever. Among the many ways this doesn't go wrong at all include lots of sexually-charged torture by Ilsa...sorry, Greta, which are being filmed for sale to a scumbag in a loud boating blazer, being forced to go without pants (the wardrobe resembles the prison garb from Barbed Wire Dolls), and being bullied by another inmate played by the great Lina Romay. Romay does eventually help the heroine, but not before using her face for toilet paper in the movie's most baffling scene. (I suppose a bidet would be more accurate here, actually.)
Perhaps because the first two Ilsa movies were fairly flatly directed, Franco's (unofficial) entry feels a lot more dynamic. The earlier movies, especially the original, were trying to shock and disgust, and felt a little demeaning in the process. (It didn't help that the original was trying to use Nazi war crimes as the basis for cheap thrills.) Here, Franco is obviously getting off on the material, and switches out the ultraviolent tortures of the original for kinkier sequences that seem to be tickling his fancy in particular (the camera admires the participants' nude bodies even more lovingly this time around). Franco devotes special attention to the BDSM power games that colour the villain's transactional relationship with the Romay character, which features a scene where Romay is used as a pincushion. A lot of this is less graphic (in terms of violence) than it sounds, making this entry an easier watch than the others, although there are a few pretty gnarly sequences. The ending, where a cannibalistic attack is intercut with scenes of lions, tigers and leopards gnawing on their prey, has an added punch coming after the (mostly) palatably sexy material earlier in the film.
There's also a certain political charge to the proceedings, as the villain's torture hospital is clearly an extension of the repressive regime that runs the unnamed country in which the movie is set, in which Franco's (the character) pleas for transparency seem laughably futile. The movie also deserves some points for a not entirely politically correct but still sympathetic portrayal of a trans character, who happens to get the best line in the movie. (When another inmate softly sings "Frere Jacques", she complains: "Piss off, you blonde bitch! And you can take your brother, jack him off and shove him up your singing ass!") Of course, much of the entertainment is provided by two very fun performance from Thorne and Romay, who get to be domineering and bullying in different ways, Thorne authoritarian and arch, Romay down and dirty. (Despite her character having a Spanish name in the version I watched, Thorne still does her Teutonic accent, although I suppose there's real life precedent for Nazis fleeing to Spanish-speaking countries in an attempt to escape justice. Thorne also trades her usual peaked cap and blonde hair for a beret and wavier red hair this time around, while Romay sports a super cute pixie cut.) But this also works because Franco seems to rightfully regard authoritarian repression as bad (a low bar, sure, but his film has more conviction than the other Ilsa movies) and gives us an actual protagonist to root for, and because his direction is pretty sturdy by the standards of the genre, even if it's less fluid and hallucinatory than I usually like from him. Come for the sexy shower scenes, stay for the surprisingly committed narrative.
Greta, the Mad Butcher (Franco, 1977)
Greta, the Mad Butcher was released in some markets as Ilsa, the Wicked Warden (and in some others as Wanda, the Wicked Warden), so it makes sense that it plays a lot like an Ilsa movie. (It does not however, play like a sequel to Barbara Loden's Wanda, making the latter alternate title a bit confusing.) The opening scenes set the tone for the junky pleasures the movie offers. Ilsa...sorry, Greta, played by Dyanne Thorne, slips into a bath while a group of female prisoners are crowded into a shower. There's a parodic amount of nudity in these few minutes, and had I any semblance of dignity as a viewer, I might have taken offense. (I don't, and shamefully nodded in appreciation.) Of course, this nudity was something of a red herring for us and the prisoners' captors, as one of the girls manages to escape, taking refuge with a kindly doctor played by director Jess Franco. (Franco is introduced with his shirt unbuttoned distressingly low, a move he's not handsome enough to pull off.)
When Ilsa...sorry, Greta, shows up to reclaim the escaped inmate, Franco holds a press conference to voice his suspicions about what the hell they're doing in her so called hospital. Franco is then approached by the sister of the inmate (their meet cute involves her holding a gun to his head) and demands to be admitted into the hospital under false pretenses so she can investigate what happened to her sister, a plan that absolutely has zero probability of going wrong in any capacity whatsoever. Among the many ways this doesn't go wrong at all include lots of sexually-charged torture by Ilsa...sorry, Greta, which are being filmed for sale to a scumbag in a loud boating blazer, being forced to go without pants (the wardrobe resembles the prison garb from Barbed Wire Dolls), and being bullied by another inmate played by the great Lina Romay. Romay does eventually help the heroine, but not before using her face for toilet paper in the movie's most baffling scene. (I suppose a bidet would be more accurate here, actually.)
Perhaps because the first two Ilsa movies were fairly flatly directed, Franco's (unofficial) entry feels a lot more dynamic. The earlier movies, especially the original, were trying to shock and disgust, and felt a little demeaning in the process. (It didn't help that the original was trying to use Nazi war crimes as the basis for cheap thrills.) Here, Franco is obviously getting off on the material, and switches out the ultraviolent tortures of the original for kinkier sequences that seem to be tickling his fancy in particular (the camera admires the participants' nude bodies even more lovingly this time around). Franco devotes special attention to the BDSM power games that colour the villain's transactional relationship with the Romay character, which features a scene where Romay is used as a pincushion. A lot of this is less graphic (in terms of violence) than it sounds, making this entry an easier watch than the others, although there are a few pretty gnarly sequences. The ending, where a cannibalistic attack is intercut with scenes of lions, tigers and leopards gnawing on their prey, has an added punch coming after the (mostly) palatably sexy material earlier in the film.
There's also a certain political charge to the proceedings, as the villain's torture hospital is clearly an extension of the repressive regime that runs the unnamed country in which the movie is set, in which Franco's (the character) pleas for transparency seem laughably futile. The movie also deserves some points for a not entirely politically correct but still sympathetic portrayal of a trans character, who happens to get the best line in the movie. (When another inmate softly sings "Frere Jacques", she complains: "Piss off, you blonde bitch! And you can take your brother, jack him off and shove him up your singing ass!") Of course, much of the entertainment is provided by two very fun performance from Thorne and Romay, who get to be domineering and bullying in different ways, Thorne authoritarian and arch, Romay down and dirty. (Despite her character having a Spanish name in the version I watched, Thorne still does her Teutonic accent, although I suppose there's real life precedent for Nazis fleeing to Spanish-speaking countries in an attempt to escape justice. Thorne also trades her usual peaked cap and blonde hair for a beret and wavier red hair this time around, while Romay sports a super cute pixie cut.) But this also works because Franco seems to rightfully regard authoritarian repression as bad (a low bar, sure, but his film has more conviction than the other Ilsa movies) and gives us an actual protagonist to root for, and because his direction is pretty sturdy by the standards of the genre, even if it's less fluid and hallucinatory than I usually like from him. Come for the sexy shower scenes, stay for the surprisingly committed narrative.