The She Beast (1966)

In the year 1765, the people of the village of Balbrash in Transylvania capture & execute by drowning a hideous witch named Bardella, who before dying swears revenge on them. Two centuries later, a couple arrive into the town, then under Communist control, & stay at the local inn. During the night the couple, Philip & his wife Veronica, notice the innkeeper in the window spying on them. Philip confronts the innkeeper& knocks him out before he & Veronica leave. But while driving, they discover to their chagrin that the man had tampered with their car. Narrowly missing a truck, they crash into the nearby lake where Bardella had died centuries before. Philip is rescued from the submerged car but Veronica is nowhere to be found. However, she is not dead. Instead her body is possessed by Bardella, who manifests herself in the woman's body & proceeds to attack the townspeople. Philip recovers & seeks the help of Count Gustav Von Helsing, the last of the famous family of monster hunters, in order to defeat Bardella & get Veronica back.Michael Reeves was for a brief time in the 1960s considered the wunderkind of British horror. After stepping in to direct some scenes for the Italian-shot Castle of the Living Dead in 1964, his skill impressed the producer Paul M. Maslansky (who would later produce the Police Academy series) so much that he gave Reeves the chance to make a film on his own with his support. Reeves called in his old school friend Ian Ogilvy to give him a starring role, roped in a few other friends from continental cinema & managed to get Barbara Steele, then a big genre name thanks to Mario Bava's Black Sunday, in to give some name value, raised the cash himself & proceeded to make Revenge of the Blood Beast.Revenge of the Blood Beast (known in some places as The She Beast) is something of an oddity in 1960s horror – a horror film that tried to copy the format of the European horror genre of the time & even more unusually at the time, an attempt to merge horror with comedy. It should have worked but Reeves writes a real stinker of a script & some of the actors treat the film as an exercise to go over the top in racial clichés – Mel Welles plays the perverted innkeeper to such an extent that you want to strangle him & the actor playing the witch is so one-dimensional that all they do is to run around & scream at the top of their lungs while attacking random people. The cops in the town are real Keystone Kops material – they give a driver a two year prison sentence for running over a chicken, charge a corpse with obstruction of justice simply for being a murder victim & leave their weapons in the wrong place (although they shine a mistake by leaving a pistol for John Karlsen in the prison van). The car chase that occurs in the final ten minutes (of an otherwise 78-minute film) with Ian Ogilvy & Karlsen being chased by the idiot cops over the countryside & with motorbike riders coming from the damndest directions is probably the low point due to its sticking out like a sore thumb. Stars Ian Ogilvy & John Karlsen do pretty well in their roles but they are the only ones. I have seen some pretty cheap Italian horror films over the years but this 1965 effort is pretty bad. Although it does have some limited unintentional humour value if you like to laugh at such things.

I was interested in "The She Beast" because it was Michael Reeves first solo effort as director/writer, released in 1966. Most people reading this know that he went on to work with Vincent Price on 1968's "Witchfinder General" (aka "Conqueror Worm") before he died of an accidental overdose in early '69 at the too-young age of 25."The She Beast" is about a hideous witch in modern Transylvania who is resurrected via the drowning of man's wife (Barbara Steele). The husband teams up with a ghoul-slayer to destroy the witch and, if possible, resurrect his wife.This is a decent spooky mid-60s flick for the Fall season -- nothing great or even really good, but decent. What particularly works is the hideousness of the witch. On the downside there's an attempt at slapstick comedy with the police chase that doesn't fit. Regardless the film is worthwhile for Reeves' fans.GRADE: C+

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.

Michael Reeves is the man who left the horror-loving universe baffled with one pondering question: what if … ? Would this young and obviously multi-talented genre director would have delivered many more horror classics if he hadn't passed away at the age of 25? He probably would have. His last film, "Witchfinder General" starring Vincent Price, is widely and righteously considered as one of the greatest period pieces ever accomplished. Anyone who directs such a film at the relatively tender age of 25 is bound to deliver several more masterworks. Reeves' other film "The Sorcerers" is perhaps slightly less memorable and overwhelming, but nevertheless a modest little gem for horror fans to discover. "She Beast" was his first achievement as a director. Quite frankly, this isn't a good film at all… "She Beast" tells a typically Gothic horror tale that starts in the 18th century, in a small Transylvanian village terrorized by a hideous witch that kills little children. After yet another vile murder, the villagers organize a lynching mob and drown her in the town's lake. Two hundred years later, the British lad Philip and his lovely wife Veronica are driving through the Transylvanian countryside on their honeymoon. Nearby the lake, Philip loses control over the steering wheel and crashes the car into the water. He manages to save himself quite quickly but, instead of the lovely Veronique, the hideous witch emerges from the lake with a vengeance. Philip, with the help of a descendant of Dr. Van Helsing, must find a method to exorcise the witch's evil spirit without killing the body of his beloved wife. The plot of "She Beast" is very routine and derivative, which is exactly what Michael Reeves must have thought as well, as he tried to flavor it with misplaced comedy. Especially during the final act of the film, when Philip and Van Helsing are confronted with the dimwits from the local police, the film is stuffed with dumb slapstick situations and wannabe humorous interludes. The chase sequence, for example, is extremely overlong and actually belongs more in a Benny Hill sketch. Barbara Steele, already a couple of years passed the high point of her career, is scandalously underused! She's only in the film for a good 15 minutes, albeit with a glorious almost nude scene, but then she gets replaced by an anonymous actress wearing the – hands down – ugliest make up in history of horror cinema. As illustrated on the DVD cover, the hag has a swollen face and terrible dental hygiene, and the weird thing is that she already looked like that before she was killed by villagers in the 1800's! Reeves' regular Ian Ogilvy is decent enough as the worried husband and there's an interesting role for genre veteran Mel Welles as a voyeuristic innkeeper. Not very recommended, except of course if you want to see everything Barbara Steele has ever starred in and/or you want to see the other work from the director of "Witchfinder General"