The She Beast

This film suffers from a case of not knowing what it wants to be. It starts off as a horror film about a murderous witch and continues in that mode by utilizing one of the best horror actresses of the time in Barbara Steele (as "Veronica"). Unfortunately, rather than using her talents to any great extent the director (Michael Reeves) completely omits her character for almost half of the film and decides to focus more on her husband "Phillip" (Ian Ogilvy), the innkeeper "Ladislav Groper" (Mel Welles) and "Count von Helsing" (John Karlsen) instead. And while they all performed adequately there seemed to be a noticeable void without her presence. To make matters even more strange, the movie then detours from being a horror film to a comedy with the local Transylvanian police bumbling around like the Keystone Cops. And then at the very end, Barbara Steele is reintroduced and immediately brings back a bit of horror into the production. Now, it's okay to have a little humor in a horror film. However, too much humor (as in this case) tends to water down whatever tension has been built up and generally creates an uneven feel to a movie. And I think that is what happened to this film.

Barbara Steele is my all-time favorite actress, and I also have utmost respect for director Michael Reeves for his directing the brilliant 1968 horror classic "Witchfinder General" with the matchless Vincent Price, my favorite actor of all-time, in the lead. Reeves' "La Sorella Di Satana" aka. "The She-Beast", however, was quite disappointing. Steele's performance partially saved the movie, of course, but she had far too little screen time and therefore she couldn't save the entire film. One aspect, which is both annoying and kind of funny about this film is the fact that it is a typical product of the cold war. In one scene, for example, a hammer is dropped and falls on a sickle, forming the communist symbol.

In 17th century Romania, a murderous witch is captured and brutally lynched by local villagers. 300 years later English newlyweds Veronica (Barbara Steele) and Philip (Ian Ogilvy) are spending their honeymoon in Romania, near the lake where the witch was executed. When having a tea, the couple get to know the elderly Count Van Helsing, a descendant of the famous Van Helsing family, and learn that the haunted lake is still a dangerous place...

I am a huge fan of Barbara Steele and of horror in general, and "The She-Beast" is certainly the weakest film with Steele I have seen so far. However, the movie is in some parts unintentionally funny, and even though it is not very suspenseful, a film featuring Barbara Steele is never a complete waste of time. Ian Ogilvy's performance is not too convincing in this one, fortunately he did a way better job starring in "Witchfinder General" two years later, a film for which I will always respect director Michael Reeves, who was certainly a promising and great talent for the Horror genre, a talent which was sadly wasted by his early death in 1969. "The She-Beast", however is certainly not Reeve's highlight, but a rather dull movie, which can be fun to watch at times, but doesn't deliver the suspense or eeriness a horror flick should. It is certainly no must-see, but if you want to watch it anyway I recommend to watch a few other films with the great Barbara Steele (such as "The Pit And The Pendulum", "Black Sunday", or "Castle of Blood") as well as Michael Reeves' "Witchfinder General" first. All things considered, "The She-Beast" is a bit disappointing, but watchable (if only for Steele), and worth the time if your're a fan. 5/10

Michael Reeves' official directorial debut – after his stint as an assistant director on CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1964; his modest contribution here is, erroneously, sometimes exaggerated by his cultists) – is, likewise, an Italian production of the Horror variety. Filmed under the title of REVENGE OF THE BLOOD BEAST and officially released in Italy as SISTER OF Satan (although, LAKE OF Satan, is apparently yet another name attributed to it over there!), the film's best-known moniker is SHE BEAST – which is how it has been released on DVD, first by the budget outfit Alpha and, more recently, by the more respectable label Dark Sky Films.

Even though Reeves' entire cinematic output consists of merely four titles, he managed the enviable feat of working with one genre icon apiece: Christopher Lee in CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD, Barbara Steele in SHE BEAST, Boris Karloff in THE SORCERERS (1967) and Vincent Price in WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968), his last (and, undoubtedly, best) work. Actually, the contribution of Barbara Steele – the then-reigning 'Scream Queen' of Italian horror movies, ever since her breakthrough dual roles in (yet another legendary genre director) Mario Bava's BLACK Sunday (1960) – to the film under review amounted to just one 22-hour day of the 18-day shooting schedule; her agent at the time, David Niven Jr., only alerted her of this clause on the day before she came on the set and, although she was a trouper, Steele had a major falling-out with producer Paul Maslansky…although, judging by the cordial and lively Audio Commentary on the Dark Sky DVD, any animosity between the two has long since faded away! Joined in this discussion is the film's nominal lead and veritable Michael Reeves mascot, Ian Ogilvy; they had been schoolmates in their teenage years and Ogilvy would go on to star in all of Reeves' directorial output.

The film opens with a witch-hunting sequence that anticipates the more notorious ones in WITCHFINDER GENERAL; the victim of the 'trial by water' (or, more exactly, stake through the heart!) has to be one of the ugliest female monsters to appear on celluloid and, in fact, was actually portrayed by a colored dancer sporting heavy – and highly effective – make-up…with hideous tooth-work and shriek-laden voice to match! Incidentally, one of the actor's winding down activities on the set (according to Ogilvy) was trying to hitch rides from passing cars in full "She Beast" get-up…obviously, to the stopping drivers' eternal chagrin! The cast also includes three other moderately familiar names of the period: John Karlsen (as the modern-day eccentric witch-hunter Count Von Helsing {sic}!), Mel Welles (as a boozing lecher of an inn-keeper) and Lucretia Love (appearing – in one of two surprisingly racy scenes in the film – as an innocent villager assaulted by Welles, just before he gets his own comeuppance from the rampaging titular creature); curiously enough, the other brief spot of nudity is provided by La Steele herself, during a night-time lovemaking scene with husband Ogilvy, that is witnessed by 'peeping tom' Welles – who is subsequently beaten up within an inch of his life by the understandably incensed guest!

Apart from Welles, the American side of the production is represented by producer Maslansky and second-unit director/uncredited co-screenwriter Charles B. Griffith; film connoisseurs will immediately associate the first with the POLICE ACADEMY franchise and the second (like Welles himself) with the earlier days of the Roger Corman stable. Despite both Maslansky and Griffith having worked on some intriguing fantasy stuff (CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD itself, 1972's DEATH LINE, 1975's RACE WITH THE DEVIL and 1977's DAMNATION ALLEY, as well as two 1957 Corman productions, NOT OF THIS EARTH and THE UNDEAD respectively), unfortunately, it is their comedic vein which comes to the fore here in a truly misjudged and overstretched climactic "Keystone Kops"-type slapstick car chase (seemingly needed to pad out the running time to feature-length)! This not only involves an uncredited Maslansky himself – as one of three bumbling local cops, anticipating the similarly inept pursuing duo in Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)! – in a couple of mildly amusing pratfalls, but also the faintly surrealistic and completely illogical presence of an unknown motorcyclist that insistently reappears throughout this sequence!

Notable actors: Barbara Steele! Ian Ogilvy! Mel Welles!

This is the least serious Barbara Steele sixties horror film you'll sit through, and I'll tell you right now that if you are a Barbara Steele fan be warned as she disappears halfway through the film. I thought I was getting some sort of deal where Babs was possessed by some undead witch, but the witch is played by someone else! I want my money back...I'd be saying if I'd actually paid to watch this.

Babs and her equally snidey, sarcastic husband are on holiday in Romania, clearly there just to make fun of the locals and the communist regime everyone is under (over and over again, throughout the film). They end up at some terrible hotel in the middle of nowhere and meet "Ex" Count Van Helsing, descendant of the famous vampire killer, who tells them the story of a witch who cursed the area before she was drowned in a lake. Not interested, the couple retire to bed for some filthy squeezy, only to find that the hotel owner is watching them. One serious assault later, the couple head off, crashing into the aforementioned witch/lake. A truck driver fishes the two out of the lake and drives back to the hotel, which had me guessing rightly that this must be a very low budget film. Turns out that the guy is okay, but Babs seems to have been replaced by that horrible witch we saw being killed at the start of the film. The rest of the film details the husband and Van Helsing's attempt to get rid of the witch's spirit and bring back Babs...and (sigh), this involves a lot of slapstick comedy.

That's the thing with this film. It whips from out and out horror, like the witch rather bloodily killing a guy with a sickle, to Keystone Cops type car chases and for me doesn't gel too well. It's almost got the same atmosphere as the Fearless Vampire Killers, which isn't a good thing in my book. I know Michael Reeves has got a cult following for The Witchfinder General (and for dying so young I guess), and as a first film a lot of it works, but the comedy seems too forced for me.

Nice Italian cinematography, mind you.

An English couple are vacationing in Communist Romania... don't ask me why. After a bad run-in with a local innkeeper appropriately named Groper, they run their car into the lake. The man (Ian Ogilvy) is saved, but pulled up with him is not his wife (Barbara Steele), but a 200-year old witch named Vardella.

Now, the first thing you might be asking is this: why would Dark Sky Films, distributor of some of the finest gems in horror and exploitation, release a film that has been in the public domain for years and not very widely praised? There's a very good answer to that: because Dark Sky, among their many other talents, takes one man's trash and turns it into another man's treasure. They somehow uncovered an original print, and have given us the film in beautiful widescreen with a very nice, crisp picture... and if that isn't enough, they tracked down Ogilvy and Steele for an exclusive audio commentary. (Also, if you're like me, you'll appreciate the subtitles.) Can you beat that?

Seriously, though, the film isn't even bad. The characters are interesting and the story has a smooth flow. Really, it's the characters that sell this film. VonHelsing is an interesting modern incarnation of his namesake. The Romanians have a great comedic value with their communist jokes. After one man is found dead, a policeman turns to another and asks, "Is he talking?" The other says, "No, he's dead." So the first one says, "That's obstruction of justice." And then shortly after we get a chase scene that some critics have frowned on for its silliness, but I wonder if they hadn't been paying attention -- the cops were hilarious throughout the film.

Writer/director Michael Reeves has to be given plenty of credit for this. In his early twenties when he made this (before moving on to his masterpiece, "Witchfinder General"), it's a good tale in the same vein as later Hammer Horror stories. The only real complaint I have is the top billing for Barbara Steele, who only appears in the film for maybe fifteen minutes. I understand her popularity at the time, and she's something of a horror icon, but it's a bit misleading to make her so prominent in the advertising.

Thank you, Dark Sky, for taking what was a film dead in the water and reviving it. Modern horror fans may find it a bit slow and bulky, but anyone who loves the classics will find this appealing with plenty of good scenes and grisly visuals -- eye gouging, impalement... witches beware! A truly enjoyable experience.