Page 39 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

In reference to this question, some historical documentation is needed to back up the
historiography of these films. To begin with, at least one film (albeit one of the American films)
makes a direct recourse to historical verisimilitude. Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS begins with a title card,
while on the soundtrack we hear a recording of one of Hitler's Nuremberg speeches. This title card
is problematic, for it brings to the fore the representation of history that these exploitation films
utilise:
The film you are about to see is based on documented fact. The atrocities shown were con-
ducted as 'medical experiments' in special concentration camps throughout Hitler's Third
Reich. Although these crimes against humanity are historically accurate, the characters
depicted are composites of notorious Nazi personalities; and the events portrayed [sic] have
been condensed into one locality for dramatic purposes. ... We dedicate this film with the
hope that these heinous crimes will never occur again. [Signed] Herman Traeger, producer.7

The creation of Ilsa as a composite figure cuts to the heart of exploitation cinema, particularly
historiographic exploitation. Rather than a biographical portrait, even a fictionalised one like
Schindler's List (USA, 1993, Steven Spielberg), Ilsa and the Italian films discussed here reduce the
historical complexities of the Holocaust into its most base and readily accessible form. If we contrast
Ilsa with Max in Il portiere di nottte, what is missing in the former is any of the subtleties of Dirk
Bogarde's ambiguous performance in the latter: while not a 'sympathetic' or even remotely likeable
character, Max is absolutely 'human' in his pettiness and in many respects embodies the Hannah
Arendt description of Eichmann as 'the banality of evil'. Ilsa, on the other hand, is a cartoon
depiction of'composite' Nazi personalities, specifically Use Koch. Robert Wistrich gives this summary
biography, which is worth quoting at length:

Known as the 'Bitch of Buchenwald' for her sadistic cruelty and power-mad behaviour
towards prisoners under her supervision, Use Koch was the wife of Karl Koch, Commandant
of Buchenwald. ... A powerfully built, formidable nymphomaniac ... [she] was especially
fond of horse-riding exercises [and] like[d] to ride through the camp, whipping any prisoner
who attracted her attention. Her taste for collecting lampshades made from the tattooed skins
of specially murdered concentration camp inmates was described as follows by a witness at
Nuremberg: 'The finished products (i.e. tattooed skin detached from corpses) were turned
over to Koch's wife, who had them fashioned into lampshades and other ornamental house-
hold articles.'8

Even this 'historical' description of Use Koch, from a historical encyclopaedia-type book, reduces
the complexities of a real person into its most sensational elements in order to convey the extreme
behaviours of those who ran the concentration camps. But other characterisations of Use Koch also
appear in some of the Italian sexploitation films too. For example, in L'Ultima orgia, Alma, the camp's
lascivious second-in-command, proudly shows off a pair of gloves made from a baby's skin, and,
more 'historically accurate', a lampshade made of human leather to preserve a beautiful tattoo. In the

25