Dyanne Thorne, who starred in one of the most notorious sexploitation movies of the 1970s, “Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS” — a head-spinning mix of Nazi fetishism, sadism and female empowerment that is still talked about by grindhouse film aficionados as well as by more serious scholars — died on Jan. 28 in Las Vegas. She was 83.

Her husband, Howard Maurer, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Ms. Thorne began in show business as a singer and comedian before veering into risqué movies like “Sin in the Suburbs” (1964) and a version of “Pinocchio” decidedly not for children (1971).

The release of “Ilsa,” though, in 1975, elevated her to an entirely different level of fame, at least among moviegoers of a certain stripe. The film and her character, a Nazi doctor with a taste for sex and torture, became cultural touchstones of sorts, inspiring, among other things, songs by several rock bands.

The movie, directed by Don Edmonds, begins with Ms. Thorne’s character having sex with a prisoner and then presiding over his castration, her frequent punishment for those who do not satisfy her. “This was the sweetest actor in the world that they castrated,” Ms. Thorne told the website Horror Cult Films in 2011.