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Despite their initial attempt to capture the attention of the audience, ‘The She-Beast’ main appeal rests on the fact that it crudely showcases the skillset of British film director Micheal Reeves. Hasty film completists have written off this movie as a campy disaster, however, when analyzing faulty misfires of the horror genre, it is clear that the shoddy setup and prankster sensibilities dominate everything else, forcing the movie to shine brighter than other films in the same genre. With the money he saved from beginning the shooting in Italy, where the producers tricked the consulates into believing they were filming a documentary for a lower rate, Micheal Reeves was able to further stretch the budget. In addition, he had the liberty to carelessly cast his primary school friend Ian Ogilvy as the main role without any protections in place.
The lazy plot revolves around a Romanian witch (or perhaps a female demon since the ichor spewing facial makeup resembles something out of a Captain Planet show) from medieval times. She is able to take over the body of an English traveler’s wife (Barbara Steele) to kill the descendants of her assassins. The titular scourge, however, is supine for all but 15 havoc-wreaking minutes; in turn, he is forced to step aside for a string of convoluted situations, many of which are inane attempts at character development and cringe satire. One character is an oily, rotund, beer-swilling, peeping tom commie mechanic who grumbles incessantly about the ‘capitalist pig’ British tourists in Eastern Europe. Weirdly, he becomes particularly annoying during the process. His imminent death is uncontested. Suffocated by the sickle, we cannot help but grin as the witch carelessly daintily tosses the sickle atop the Warhammer to its perfectly perpendicular resting place.
Even though the final product was overly comical in nature, Reeves Bulk refused to embrace over-the-top style violence. Instead, he infused the sword fights and dialogues with exceedingly dry bouts of brutality a unique style that came incredibly close to perfection in Witchfinder General. The charms of this particular film come from these perverse visual details that do not, in any way, include the core monster of the story or the overpoweringly ridiculous motifs. This includes how Reeves decides to savagely doom his characters with Dutch angles, using them in the most benign settings, or his audacity to dolly out from close-ups that reveal startlingly benign characters. Even at 22 years of age, the director was experimenting with compositions in delightfully deviant manners, while it’s sad that he did not have control over even the most basic forms of composition.
Witchfinder General, the last movie Michael Reeves made before succumbing to a drug overdose, is arguably one of the best films ever made. One of its many achievements certainly is how it captures Vincent Price’s performance alongside Corman and Hammer’s gruesome charm blended with Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock’s psychologically disturbing works. She-Beast can be seen as one of the early tries that were never successful, but two years later, Reeves would realize that without fully committing to the essence of horror like his counterpart Corman had, there was no way to craft a narrative suitable for his outstanding visuals. It is questionable whether there is any merit to watching this premiere at all. But it is very possible that Reeves would not have been able to make Witchfinder General without at least having learned something from the mess that was She-Beast.
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