When Exploitation Turns up the Volume

Read Time:5 Minute, 41 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
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Genre: Cult, Exploitation
Year Released: 1976, Kino Cult 4K 2025
Runtime: 1h 33m
Director(s): Don Edmonds
Writer(s): Langston Stafford
Cast: Dyanne Thorne, Max Thayer, Jerry Delony, Uschi Digard, Colleen Brennan
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS offers up the energy you expect from a follow-up to one of the most notorious exploitation films ever made. This sequel wastes no time shifting its setting, tone, or sense of morality. Instead, it leans harder into the heightened absurdity that made the original so infamous, while also developing its own flavor of desert-soaked chaos. It’s a film that never pretends to be respectable, never hides behind restraint, and never tries to reinvent its own notoriety. It doubles down — proudly and without apology. For viewers who have a soft spot for exploitation cinema, that brazenness is the pull.

Dyanne Thorne returns as Ilsa, a character who doesn’t operate by the logic of any shared universe, continuity, or narrative consequence. She is simply resurrected, relocated, and unleashed again. This time, she runs a harem for El Sharif, a sadistic oil sheik whose operations are built on kidnapping, torture, and control. The film’s willingness to drop Ilsa back into a new regime as if nothing prior happened isn’t a flaw — it’s part of the genre’s charm. These films aren’t interested in realism; they’re created to provoke, to shock, and to revel in their own over-the-top identity.

That disconnect from traditional storytelling allows the sequel to function on its own. It steps away from the Nazi exploitation backdrop of the first film. It shifts into Middle Eastern adventure-exploitation — another set of stereotypes, another controversial sandbox, and another chance for the filmmakers to push shock value as far as they can within an R rating. What emerges is a strange mix of camp, cruelty, and fantasy. The film’s world isn’t meant to reflect anything specific; it’s a theatrical exaggeration of every forbidden element the genre can touch.

Thorne remains the spine of the film. Even when the material veers into the ludicrous, she plays Ilsa with full conviction, balancing dominance with a larger-than-life theatricality. There is something undeniably iconic about her presence — she embodies exploitation’s era-specific blend of antagonism, sex appeal, and spectacle. Whether she’s training new captives, clashing with her superiors, or stepping into rebellion against the sheik, she turns each moment into a performance bigger than the frame around her.

Max Thayer, Jerry Delony, and the supporting cast lean hard into the film’s tone as well. No one here is trying to elevate the material into prestige; they’re meeting the film at its own level. Uschi Digard and Haji — familiar faces to anyone who lives in the world of cult cinema — add an extra layer of personality. The appearance of Satin and Velvet, a pair of deadly topless enforcers, gives the movie its most distinct and delightfully absurd contribution. They’re a distillation of what the sequel aims for: outrageous action, sensuality, and a sense of humor that borders on self-aware without becoming parody.

Like many exploitation films, the narrative is secondary. The plot is functional, designed to carry viewers from set pieces to confrontations, power struggles, and sensational displays. But unlike some entries in this genre that collapse under repetition, this one keeps its momentum. Scenes escalate in strangeness: booby-trapped bodies, vicious punishments, ritualistic training, and abrupt bursts of rebellion. It’s undeniably trashy, undeniably politically incorrect, but also undeniably crafted to be an event — an experience meant to provoke a reaction, whether that reaction is shock, laughter, disbelief, or the strange enthusiasm that comes with loving cult cinema.

There’s also an unexpected production value bump from the original. The desert locations, the larger sets, and the more expansive cast make the sequel feel more ambitious. While the budget still shows its limitations, the crew uses them creatively. It’s not a “perfect” film, but it is a film with a clear intention: to entertain its core audience by embracing every "too much" impulse the genre encourages.

The 4K release from Kino Cult underscores this new life. The film’s grittiness, colors, and textures take on a strangely fitting clarity — preserving a piece of exploitation history with a level of care these films rarely received in their time. Supplementary commentaries from Dyanne Thorne, Don Edmonds, and historians like Kat Ellinger add retrospective value, giving context to the chaos and revealing the odd mix of improvisation, low-budget constraints, and impulsive creativity that shaped the production.

ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS is designed for viewers who appreciate the bizarre interplay of shock cinema, campy performances, and the unapologetically excessive style of 70s exploitation. For anyone outside that niche, it’ll be too much of everything — too loud, too lewd, too ridiculous. But for those who love this era and its extremes, it delivers exactly what it promises: outrageous scenarios, chaos, and the singular pleasure of watching a genre that defies logic but thrives on boldness. This is the sweet spot — imperfect, wild, gleefully messy, and absolutely aligned with the strange magic that keeps exploitation cinema alive decades later. Not a masterpiece, not a disaster — just pure, unfiltered cult energy.

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[photo courtesy of KINO CULT, KINO LORBER]

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