The film stars Dyanne Thorne in the title role, who is loosely based on Ilse Koch, a convicted war criminal and overseer at the Buchenwald concentration camp.

[1] Upon its release in early 1975, the film was immediately met with widespread controversy and critical derision, with Gene Siskel calling it "the most degenerate picture I have seen to play downtown".

The film's infamy eventually evolved into a considerable cult following, with the character of Ilsa becoming a pop cultural icon ubiquitous with "strong, aggressive" female authority.

She conducts sadistic scientific experiments designed to demonstrate that women are more capable of enduring pain than men are and should therefore be allowed to fight in the German military.

Though dismissive and dehumanizing of the majority of her wards, she becomes enamoured by the presence of Wolfe, a blond-haired and blue-eyed prisoner who, unlike his compatriots, resembles the Nazi Aryan ideal.

Wolfe, a German American student who had been studying in Berlin before the war broke out, tells his cellmate Mario, one of Ilsa's former victims, that he has the ability to ejaculate at will, allowing him to have sex with incredible endurance and skill.

The impressed general awards Ilsa the Iron Cross for her efforts, while forcing her to fulfill his nascent urolagnia by giving him a golden shower.

As he brags that the Allies will never know what happened, Wolfe and his fellow escapee watch from atop a nearby hill, the sole survivors of the camp.

[4] Dunning was inspired by historical records of wartime medical experiments on unwilling human subjects, but also sought to add a female villain.

[5] Nicknamed “The Bitch of Buchenwald”, Koch was accused of several war crimes, including an experiment in which she had the skin of tattooed prisoners removed to make furniture.

Friedman was a veteran exploitation filmmaker, having produced numerous “roughie” sexploitation films, as well as Herschell Gordon Lewis’ seminal Blood Feast.

[6] The series had ended in 1971 and the show's producers gave permission for the film to be shot there once they learned that the climax of the movie called for the set to be destroyed, thus saving the cost of having it demolished.

During editing, David Friedman decided to place a notice before the film's opening credits in order to add an air of legitimacy and hopefully tide potential censorship and condemnation as well as accusations of Pro Neo-Nazism.

[9] The Independent Film Journal wrote, "Only the most dangerously sadistic mentalities will manage to sit voluntarily through more than ten minutes of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, a graphic, stomach-churning catalogue of Nazi medical atrocities that makes Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like a Sunday picnic ... Theatres catering to the lowest possible grade of audience could make a bundle of dirty money.

"[12] Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader described the film as "self-conscious Canadian-made camp", which "wasn't notorious until it was fiercely denounced in the high-profile media".

The character is a quintessential pop cultural depiction of sadomasochism and hypersexuality, with Schubert writing that "The uniform, the beautiful and harsh appearance, the fierce pride and the cold cruelty are all features of the dominatrix, who is here, quite literally, a 'castrating bitch.'