Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg (1978) Review
Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg (1978) Review
For someone who isn’t a fan of the genre Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg proved surprisingly watchable. It’s not a great film but then, like most of its genre bedfellows, it’s not a bad one either. On paper Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg reads like your standard women-in-prison sexploitation flick and it is, only it’s actually tamer in execution and better made and acted than most – not that fans of this genre are looking for reasonable acting.
Helga (Malisa Longo, Fulci’s A Cat in the Brain) is almost a support player in her own movie with centre stage given to hostage, and her main squeeze and bargaining tool Elisabeth Vogel (Patrizia Gori). Helga runs castle penitentiary Stilberg for no other reason than to fulfill her sexual urges taking advantage of the female political prisoners held at her facility.
Unlike her counterparts in the genre Helga actually seems rather gentile, as opposed to a vicious dominatrix, spending her time flouncing around and attempting to be a man in a man’s world. Vogel is the daughter of a rebel political leader and proves to be just as tough and rebellious as her father as she plans an escape from the brutal circumstances under which she is kept against her will.
There are no Nazi’s, as if often the norm for the genre, but instead soldiers from an un-named South American republic. The soldiers actually look like soldiers, beefy, men’s men, rather than the skinny, and generally, unappealing men that we are fobbed off with. It’s usually it’s just the women that are the eye candy in sexploitation films so it’s nice to have some man candy too, for a change, to oggle over.
There’s nothing different in the overall premise – domineering female with a huge sex drive that forces female prisoners to be her concubine – but it’s all a little too gentile when compared to other sexploitation flicks. It lacks the explicit grotesque nature of many of this ilk, which is both a blessing (for me) but a curse for those wanting that bit more.
