Tweet
Released by: MVD Visual
Released on: April 19th, 2016.
Director: Patrice Rhomm (as Alain Garnier)
Cast: Patrizia Gori, Malisa Longo, Dominique Aveline, Richard Allan
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Directed by Patrice Rhomm (as Alain Garnier), the same man who wrote The Devil's Nightmare and Else Fraulein SS, 1978's Helga: She-Wolf Of Stilberg (which has also been released as Bloody Camp) was produced for Eurocine but at times it feels very much like an Alpha France movie. Why? Well, Rhomm had ties to the French adult film industry of the time, having directed Marilyn Jess in two features (Les Bidasses Et La Baiseuse and Gamines Experts) in 1979, and on top of that, well, there's the cast. Particularly the male cast - top billed Dominique Aveline and Richard Allan were essentially omnipresent in Alpha France's output in the seventies, it's almost impossible to find one of the production company's smut fests from this era without finding one or both of these men doing their thing in front of the camera. Helga: She-Wolf Of Stilberg, however, is not a porno movie. It comes close at times, as Eurocine productions are wont to do, but it stops before it hits XXX territory.
The plot, such as it is, really doesn't deviate from the tried and true 'women in prison' formula, except that there really isn't a prison per se, so much as there is a beautiful mansion with some sort of holding cell area set up in the basement. But before we get to that, the film sets things up, sort of. We voyage into a boardroom of sorts where a President Steiner and his cohorts are subjected to the rantings of a woman named Helga (Malisa Longo) who insists on doing everything that she can to warn them about the dangers of the rebel army currently doing whatever it is that they're doing in the area. Thankfully a high ranking rebel, Elizabeth Vogel (Patrizia Gori) has recently been captured so Steiner decides to put Helga in charge of the prison facility in which she shall be kept.
From there, the action shifts from the boardroom to said prison, the aforementioned mansion that we learn is named Stilberg. Here Vogel and countless other disposable female prisoners are held against their will and subjected to everything female prisoners are subjected to in women in prison movies - showers, beatings, lesbianism… all that good stuff. And Helga? Well, she fits right in. This place seems to be Heaven on Earth for our stern titular MILF. She gets to indulge all the kinky sadism she's had to keep under wraps all those years, and there's nothing the inmates can do about it! And the guards, well, they're just as bad, particularly Hugo Lombardi (Dominique Aveline), who is just as bad, if not worse, than Helga herself. Vogel's only hope lies in the form of a guy named John (Richard Allan), who loves her so much that he's willing to risk life and limb to bust her out of the place…
Smutty softcore action and intrigue abound in this cheap Ilsa knock-off. Malisa Longo is actually decent enough in her Dyanne Thorne inspired performance. It's clear she's not trying to do much else besides play Ilsa, but she does it well. She's attractive but definitely stern looking - some will recognize her from a few Tinto Brass movies she's appeared in over the years (Salon Kitty, Miranda and Snack Bar Budepest) or from Fulci's Cat In The Brain. She's well cast here and does just fine in the part, never too shy or reserved to make it work. Patrizia Gori was, likewise, no stranger to Euro-sleaze, having popped up in the notorious Cry Of A Prostitute, Naked Exorcism, Hallucination Strip and the aforementioned Else Fraulein SS. Alpha France and Erwin C. Dietrich starlet France Lomay pops up here too, as does Jess Franco regular Pamela Stanford, both in supporting roles as prisoners. There really are a lot of familiar faces in the cast, and then there are the porn stars - Aveline and Allan appear alongside Alban Ceray, a prominent French woodsman who kept working well into the 2000's. Jacques Marbeuf, Jean Cherlian (who appeared in Claude Chabrol's Innocents With Dirty Hands three years earlier), Jess Franco regular Olivier Mathot and busy porn star Carmelo Petix also appear.
The movie is nicely shot and makes good use of its French locations. The mansion where it all plays out is gorgeous and really well photographed. The action scenes are lackluster but amusingly so, while the plot is…. meandering and slow. There's plenty of sleaze here, lots of skin on display and a decent amount of degradation is evident throughout. Unfortunately the movie is repetitive and slow, bringing nothing new to the genre. This is the very definition of 'by the numbers.' It's passably entertaining and occasionally amusing but instantly forgettable.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Helga: She-Wolf Of Stilberg arrives on DVD from MVD Visual in a perfectly nice looking 1.66.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Colors are a little flat in some of the indoor scenes but they look great when the action takes place outside in the daylight. Mild print damage shows up here and there but it's never really distracting. Skin tones look okay and the image is free of any obvious edge enhancement, even if eagle-eyed viewers might spot some mild compression artifacts here and there.
The disc includes both English and French language options in Dolby Digital Mono format but no subtitles, so unless you speak French, the English track is the way to go. The audio quality is decent enough, the levels are properly balanced and if any hiss or distortion creeps into the mix, it's minor and not really a problem. Subs would have been nice for the French track though!
There aren't really any extras on the disc outside of a static menu and chapter stops but once the movie ends, if you let it keep playing some alternate scenes are hidden away there, about ten minutes worth, some of which is alternate title sequences.
The Final Word:
Helga: She-Wolf Of Stilberg is moderately interesting thanks to the cast, and to its credit the film is nicely shot and has some great location photography. It's a shame then that the story never even tries to be anything memorable or original. MVD Visual's DVD release looks decent enough, but the lack of subs for the French track and the absence of any serious extra features are both disappointing… much like the film itself.
