(1966)
Directed by Michael Reeves
Starring Barbara Steele, Ian Ogilvy, John Karlsen, Mel Welles

This film has the honor of being the first movie from the young up-and-coming director Michael Reeves, who would only direct two more features, the last one being the incredible Witchfinder General, before dying of a supposed accidental overdose of barbiturates. The cinematic world lost something special that day.

The She-Beast has all the makings of a great gothic film. Filmed in a setting of a real town is better than anything Hollywood could have created. You have a pretty standard but effective story about a witch returning from the grave to make good on the curse she put on the town two centuries before. Plus, you have Italian horror icon Barbara Steele in the lead role. So how could you go wrong?

I found the biggest problem with this film was the humor completely takes away from any seriousness of the film. Sure, some great horror films have some silly humor thrown in there to break the tension but I just thought there was way too much humor here, causing the film to be more of a wacky slapstick than horror. And I just happen to like my gothic tales a little more on the serious side.

Not to say that it doesn’t have its merits, mind you. Once you realize the kind of film that it is, the cast is fun to watch, especially the wonderful Mel Welles and a very young Ian Ogilvy. Of course, horror icon Steele always make a strong presence in any film that she’s in. It’s even more amazing that she only worked 1 day on the film. That is the sign of some very smart producers who are trying to get the most out their limited budget, as well as a craft director to be able to work around that. The original title of the film was suppose to be Revenge of the Blood Beast, which I think is a much better title.

The basic story tells of a witch who is killed by the local townspeople who have had enough of her torment. As would have it, before she is put to death, she curses the town and the townspeople, that she will return and kill their descendants. Now, two hundred years later in present day, when Ogilvy and Steele show up, they end up crashing their car into the same lake where the witch was killed. But once they’re rescued from the water, Steele’s body disappears and is replaced with that of the dead witch. After which, Ogilvy joins forces with the odd Count von Helsing, played by character actor John Karlsen. The younger fans today might know him as the “evil old dude” from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But here, his character’s family had been fighting the evil in Transylvania for centuries, to try and bring his wife back to him.

After what seems like hours of wacky car chase sequences as they are running from the police, in some slightly under-cranked filming, Ogilvy’s character and von Helsing guy get the witch’s body back to the lake to give her a proper exorcism. But this merely consists of dumping her in the water once before she disappears. Seconds later, Steele appears in the water, and everything is right as rain. Or so we think. The film’s ending is so anti-climatic, that there’s no real payoff. We know it’s not over, but are only given a brief evil smile from Steele at the very end. Left me kind of flat.

But the real highlight of this film is the version we watched, which was the newly transfer for this new DVD from Dark Sky Films (when it was first released on DVD). It comes from its original scope aspect ratio from the rare 35mm vault materials. And it looks wonderful. This movie had been released on video on the Gorgon Video Label, which really looked like crap, so this is a very welcome upgrade, no matter what you might think of the actual film itself. The film was very dark in some spots where you couldn’t see anything. All of the night sequences in the film were filmed day-for-night. So maybe in the video transfer, they made sure that it was dark, meaning you can see shit! But the Dark Sky disc looks fantastic. Sure, now you can tell that it’s actually daylight during the night sequences, but at least you can still see what is going on.

The disc also contains an audio commentary by David Gregory, producer Paul Maslanksy, actors Ian Ogilvy & Barbara Steele (who shows up a little later during the film). Maslanksy was a producer who started in the horror genre, giving us titles like Castle of the Living Dead, Death Line and Race With The Devil, before moving onto comedies, like the Police Academy movies. For me, this commentary was the highlight of the disc. We hear tons of great stories about many different people in the industry, from Christopher Lee, to Roger Corman, to Mel Welles, and many more. Very entertaining as well as informative. Which is just what a commentary should be.