The Top Five Chicks Of Exploitation

Exploitation movies often revolve around women. Sometimes, they are the protagonists. Movies like Cleopatra Jones and TNT Jackson revolve around strong, butt-kicking women. In other films, they are the victims, the woman in distress. Marilyn Burns being chased by Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is "tough" only in the sense that she is able to take a lot of punishment and keep screaming. While the scream queens have their own charms (and healthy lungs), I've always been partial to the women who could chew up and spit out their foes...and look hot doing it. Here are my top five women of exploitation.

1. Pam Grier: The number one slot was the easiest to fill. Pam Grier combined amazing looks with a powerful on-screen charisma, no matter what the role. Her characters are almost always tough and independent, traits that Ms. Grier seemed to naturally embody. While she has had memorable performances since the Seventies, including her roles in Jackie Brown (1997) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), she made her greatest impact starting with The Big Doll House (1971) and ending with Friday Foster (1975). Whether playing a tough jail bird (The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage), a woman in search of vengeance (Coffy, Foxy Brown) or a gladiatrix in ancient Rome (Arena), Pam is a welcome sight in any movie.
2. Claudia Jennings: Coming to the world's attention in the pages of Playboy, Jennings was in a handful of movies, but made a lasting impression. Beyond her obvious beauty, she was a pretty good actress. She was believable as an action star and had good comic timing. She was particularly good in The Great Texas Dynamite probably her best role (although I also have a soft spot for her post-apocalyptic sword wielding babe in Deathsport...plus, you get to see David Carradine in a loin-cloth...so appealing...). Unfortunately, just as she was getting starring roles, Jennings was involved in a fatal car crash, dying at age 29 in 1979.
3. Caroline Munro: This brunette bird from Britain made a splash in the Seventies. After appearing in bit parts in a few films, as well as serving as the corpse of Mrs. Phibes in The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again, she made a break-through at Hammer Films. While at Hammer, she had a supporting role in Dracula AD 1972 and co-starred in the underrated Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. With her sultry good looks and enthusiastic performances, she was great playing a scantily clad slave-girl in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and a scantily clad native of Pellucidar in At the Earth's Core. With her stunning figure, it is no surprise that "scantily clad" figures in the description of most of her cinema wardrobe. As the Seventies ended and her career was winding down, she had her best role - and one that proved she had talent to go with her looks - 1980's Maniac.
4. Susan George: While she only starred in a few exploitation films, Susan George was great in all of them. She always conveyed a sexuality that was barely contained...or, often, not contained at all. The groovy, if slightly warped Mary from Dirty Mary Crazy Larry...the horny Southern belle in Mandigo...the flirtatious wife of Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs...whatever role she had, George oozed sex. While not a stunning beauty, she had a sunny attractiveness. Her big eyes and cute smile (if not quite so cute teeth; hey, she's British) helped her portray characters who would be fun to hang out with...and possibly get involved in a high-speed chase with. She also is a good actor, particularly adapting to the character contortions Peckinpah put her through in Straw Dogs. And, she always seemed to be having fun with her roles, something that makes for appealing characters and an enjoyable viewing experience.
5. Dyanne Thorne: Although really only known for four movies - the Ilsa pictures - Thorne is an icon of exploitation. Even people who have never - and would never - see Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS would recognize Thorne's voluptuous figure in her SS uniform...with the top mostly unbuttoned, of course. While not much of an actress, she did have something that a good exploitation queen needs: screen presence. Thorne made her heartless, ice cold, sex kitten characters seem both dangerous and desirable. Although her film career never progressed beyond the sex and violence trade, she did make a lasting impression.

Now, if only there had been a women in prison film starring all of five of them...with extensive shower scenes. for the drams, of course...it's always about the drama.

Exploitation December - Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976)

Fans of exploitation movies are familiar with Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The movie that introduced the world - or, at least those parts of the world that don't mind saying "one ticket for Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS please" - to the amazing Dyanne Thorne (see image below as to what was amazing about her), Ilsa spawned imitators (a whole series of Nazisploitation films) and a few "sequels." None are exactly sequels; Ilsa comes to a nasty (and generally fatal) end in each movie. But great boobs and cartoonishly executed sadism never really dies, does it?

Dyanne Thorne had enormous talents. Yay, I've mastered the single entendre.

Harem Keeper is the first Ilsa sequel and the best movie of the series. It has a coherent, if bare-bones, story, a better overall visual style and doesn't have the disturbing Nazi stuff. Instead, we get disturbing ethno-cultural stereotypes. Right, because that's much better...

The delectable Sharon Kelly realizes exactly what kind of movie she's in...and reacts accordingly.

Ilsa runs Sheik Sharif's (Jerry Delony) harem. A new shipment of women has arrived, all kidnapped from the West. They include Nora (the gorgeous redhead Sharon Kelly; for more of Ms. Kelly's work, check out Alice Goodbody; in the Eighties she "graduated" from exploitation movies to hardcore porn.) as the sole heir of the "chain store king of the United States" and Inga, a "Scandinavian love goddess" played by Uschi Digard. Uschi showed up in some of Russ Meyer's films, as well as a other exploitation films in the Seventies and was a popular softcore model at the time. Both were in She Wolf in minor roles. At the same time, American diplomat Dr. Kaiser (Richard Kennedy channeling Henry Kissinger) arrives from the US with Adam Scott, a CIA officer masquerading as Kaiser's assistant (Max Thayer), to negotiate with Sharif for more oil. There's some political back and forth, a sub-plot about the CIA spying on Sharif, etc. None of this plot gets in the way of nudity and depravity; just didn't want you to think this was going to turn into an episode of Firing Line.

As the film progresses, we are introduced to Haji (a Russ Meyer regular) who plays a belly dancer/American spy who is found out and tortured. This leads to some yuckiness (her awesome boobs are squished - a true crime against humanity - and her foot is eaten by ants), but also leads to the introduction of the most insanely disturbing idea in the film; an explosive diaphragm to be used for political assassinations. After Haji breaks under torture, Ilsa test out the device on her. For some reason, this requires strapping Haji to an auto-intercourse machine. I guess, Ilsa wanted her to...wait for it...go out with a bang. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...please remember to tip your waitress.

Uschi Digard makes that tee-shirt look very happy.

In short order, Scott seduces Ilsa, Sharif orders Ilsa to kill Scott, she fails to obey, Sharif has her raped by a leper to teach her a lesson, Ilsa frees Scott, the two lead a revolt, release Sharif's imprisoned nephew, Salim, who takes over and Ilsa subjects Sharif to death by vaginal bomb (also killing the attractive and frequently topless Su Ling). Scott is horrified that Ilsa would sacrifice an innocent girl for revenge (now he's horrified!?!?) and refuses to intervene when Salim has Ilsa imprisoned in the dank cell he was kept in. The final scene shows him throwing her crumbs of bread, while she wastes away. The End.

But, do we really watch a movie like this for geopolitics, palace intrigue and an insightful look into the sad life of a harem girl? Heck no! We want scantily clad (or unclad) chicks and ultraviolence, both of which are in abundance. The "training" of the new arrivals involves some welcome girl-on-girl action with Dyanne Thorne screaming "Lick, bitch!" in a bad German accent. We get to see force feeding (some guys like more meat on the bones and what better way then using a funnel to mash gruel down a woman's throat?), a slave auction, and some medical mayhem (including a gross as heck silicon ass injection ...I do not like needles). There are some scenes that are just disturbing because of what they don't show. One slave girl has her teeth chiseled out because her new buyer doesn't like the "scrape" of them. We just hear clicking and see bloody teeth falling to the ground. This works better - as far as being disturbing - than the more explicit gore sequences, which are laughably fake. To balance out the violence, there is a lot of nudity and all of the women (with the exception of the fat chicks...unless that's your thing...no judgement here) are pretty hot. One point to make: the amount of sex and violence on display is on par with an episode of Spartacus. 40 years ago, if you wanted to see this kind of imagery, you had to trek to a sleazy theater in a run-down urban wasteland. Now, you can just check out basic cable. Of course, the acting and technician proficiency is inferior to what you'll find in the better sex-and-violence shows out today; but, it is amazing how much the grotesqueries of the past are standard fare today.

A magazine cover from 1959. Note the cultural sensitivity...

Much of the imagery comes straight from pulp and men's magazine covers from the Fifties and Sixties, capturing that sense of lurid and ludicrous adventure. While Scott is a one-dimensional hero (he doesn't have much to do, except turn Ilsa do his side with the power of his American penis..."USA! USA! USA!") he does have the jut-jawed look of a pulp adventurer. The harem setting is common to exploitative stories of the last few hundred years, with the lusty, barbaric "Turk" ravishing the fair-skinned women of Europe. The film also incorporates Western stereotypes of the Middle Eastern petro-states as being run by sadistic monsters, who are using their oil wealth to "rape" the West, an idea that had great resonance during the Oil-Shock Seventies. There is also a very low-brow, grindhouse reflection of Edward Said's Orientalism at work here, with the audience being set up both for titillation and revulsion, playing off of culturally ingrained views of the Arab-Islamic world. A final bit of cultural stereotyping; in the end, the local rebels and slave girls need two white, American/Europeans (Scott and Ilsa) to lead them to freedom; or, really a potentially less oppression autocracy.

So, is Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks worth seeing? Yes...but...you really have to enjoy movies that are pure exploitation. This film is nothing more than excuse to alternate between scenes of female flesh and gory special effects. This is not a movie with themes. That it reflects complex cultural ideas only serves to show how deeply ingrained those ideas are.

The 19th Century image of the harem.