Amazon.com video review:
Prolific Spanish sexploitation legend Jess Franco's entry into the
Ilsa sweepstakes is actually a knock-off called Greta, the Mad
Butcher. A red-tressed Dyanne Thorne is the (what else?) sadistic
warden of a Latin American political prison posing as an institution for
sexually disturbed women, but despite the name change she's still the arch,
statuesque Joan Crawfordesque dominatrix with big hair, a bigger bust, and
a Nazi growl. Franco muse Lina Romay is Greta's smoldering, often naked sex
slave, a willing masochist who falls in love with a new prisoner (who just
happens to be an undercover agent searching for her missing sister) and
finally turns on Greta in a ferocious cannibalistic revolt. In between are
the usual women-in-prison tropes (catfights, long showers, floggings, and
electroshock interrogations) and a few new twists, including a perverted
game of pincushion sex and a violent gang rape organized in the spirit of
"experimental therapy." It doesn't quite reach the threshold of violent
sadism established by Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, but it's no Girl
Scout picnic either. Franco brings his unique sensibility to the Ilsa genre
and provides a modicum of craft to the film, making it by default the most
accomplished of the otherwise bluntly directed series. --Sean
Axmaker
