The She Beast was a really nice surprise. I have learned not to expect a lot from films on the 50 Tales of Terror budget set, but every once and a while you get a little gem that makes it worthwhile. And honestly, with the possible exception of The Sadist, this is the best I've come across in the 30+ I've seen thus far (Disc 9 and counting). It's a good mix of legitimately bothersome horror and off-kilter/almost campy comedy, most of which I assume was intentional.
After a pretty cheap looking credit sequence (see above - at first I swore they just used a crumpled paper bag for the back-drop), we are told we are in Transylvania. You know what that means! (If you said "witches," you and The She Beast are on the same wavelength.) We flash back 200 years ago, to an incident where a witch killed a child and was tracked back to her cave by angry townsfolk. And this is one nasty looking witch, with a really melty-looking face... really, she's more like a troll. Anyways, they capture her and slowly kill her with an iron spike to the chest and then dipping her in and out of the the town lake on some catapult looking thing until she drowns. It's rather barbarous, and pretty disturbing right off the bat - along with the gross face, she just screams like a banshee.
Flash forward to the present day. Newly married couple Veronica (Barbara Steele!) and Phillip (Ian Ogilvy) have decided to honeymoon in Transylvania (?), but are having car trouble (or don't want to drive anymore, or something). So they talk to some weird guy - pretty much all of the five people you meet in this village are weirdos, but in a funny, entertaining way - who directs them to the only hotel in town. Unfortunately, it's run by this pervy drunk guy who peeps in their window late at night when they are trying to enjoy their honeymoon. So Phillip knocks out the hotelier, and when they leave the next day, hotel guy has sabotaged their car! While driving away, Phillip crashes into a late, and only he gets out alive. A "good samaritan" truck driver pulls Veronica's body from the lake. But when Phillip comes to, they uncover the body and it's the nasty witch from the introduction! Apparently, Veronica's body has been possessed, and the only way to save her is to perform an elaborate exorcism. (This according to old man Van Helsing (long story) who is milling about the town and happens to know about these sorts of things.) But it won't be easy, as the witch is up and causing havoc before Phillip and Van Helsing can get their exorcism stuff together! Will they be able to rescue Veronica? Or will the vicious witch take her revenge on the town that killed her 200 years ago? Tune in to find out!
So the main thing that stuck out to me about The She Beast is its tone, which just sort of straddles the line between horror and comedy (bearing in mind that this was before "horror-comedy" was a thing). It's hard to think of the supporting cast as anything but comedic. The Van Helsing character is just too goofy to take seriously - he's introduced to us just swinging on a swing set (for some reason - you don't often see a lot of elderly men on swing sets), and he lives in a cave. And the hotelier is so over-the-top drunk and pervy that you end up laughing at just about everything he does, save the attempted rape. But that's just the sort of film it is. It trucks along, kind of being a comedy, but then can switch to something more disturbing without warning. Bottom line, the tone is enjoyable - I laughed a lot, but there were times where I was maybe not outright disturbed, but at least disconcerted. The witch's screaming, for instance, was actually troublesome to me. So while it's not a tonally balanced film, the different feel from scene to scene helps move things along.
It seems like a decently made film too. I've since read a lot about director Michael Reeves - his biggest achievement being Witchfinder General with Vincent Price. But I've never seen any of his films. The She Beast has ensured that I will be checking out his other work. Which shouldn't be hard - he only has three others. Although interestingly, he's worked with legends in all four. Barbara Steele here, Price in Witchfinder, Boris Karloff in The Sorcerers, and Christopher Lee in Castle of the Living Dead. That's not bad. But the 50 Tales of Terror transfer doesn't do the film any favors - it's muddy looking (and obviously from a tape); and check out this exquisite framing:
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| There's a person off to the right too. They are having a conversation. |
But despite the poor transfer, it's decently shot, has a good uniform look, and flows pretty well. Apparently, there is a Dark Sky DVD out there (from 2009) that is significantly cleaned up, and is an anamorphic transfer to boot! It's on my Amazon wish list, for the next time I have $12.00 burning a hole in my pocket. Or I just want to buy something to make myself feel better.
If you are a Barbara Steele fan, beware. Despite getting top billing, she's just not in this film all that much. The story goes she was paid $1,000.00 for a day of work. That seems about right. She gets possessed by the evil witch about a half-hour into the thing, and isn't really around for the rest of the film. She's fun while she lasts, but it's certainly not a role with a lot of screen time.
Overall, I really dug The She Beast. It's a great example of why I like doing this daily horror movie thing. It seems unlikely that I would have checked it out otherwise... But The She Beast is a really fun and occasionally scary film that I will certainly revisit some day. I like it!
I would recommend this film.
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