WATCH NOW
The She-Beast is likely to receive more attention as an auteurist’s footnote rather than a horror film. People remember this as the feature-length debut of British filmmaker Michael Reeves. While even the most devoted fans of the director seem to dismiss it as a campy, disorganized starting point, it, like many other films depicting failed attempts at grabbing the attention of the horror genre, serves a purpose to emphasize the insatiable urge to pounce at the chance of being able to schoolboy mischief. Reeves filmed She-Beast on a shoestring budget in Italy, where producers bribed the local consulates into thinking they were making some sort of documentary in order to obtain lower fees on filming rights, as well as penned and directed the ghoulish train wreck of a screenplay himself under the pseudonym of Michael Byron. Lastly, he threw his childhood buddy and would-be TV star Ian Ogilvy into the head role without any safety padding.
This film is a patchy narrative of a Romanian witch/daemon who possesses a traveller’s wife to kill her descendants. The ‘main villain’ in the film usually appears on screen for only 15 minutes and to cover the remaining 1 hour and 15 performs clumsy satire alongside character development that is to put it lightly, senseless. The rest of the movie shows a series of bamboozling events that fail to capture any sense of suspense or even entertainment. The rest is done by a character that can only be described as a chubby, stagnant, beer encapped marvel of a mechanic that laughs at British tourists while grumbling about capitalism. To put it bluntly, as this hack of a character meets his end, a sickle, we cannot help but to smirk as we witness the wretched witch tosses the object of death atop a hammer.
A key component of the charm of Witchfinder General is how Reeves ignores the out-of-hand violence, and while it’s certainly grotesque at times and interspersed between very mundane snippets of exposition and conversation, it dryly offsets the entire product. The deeper enjoyment of the film has to do with its rather subtle visual touches, like the mutilation of the resident monster or the overpowering camp motifs. These include Reeves’ inexplicably clever Dutch angle defenestration dooming his characters in the most benign scenes, or the diabolical close-up dolly-outs from innocuous objects or intruders. He was doing clever things with film grammar even in his early twenties, and at such a young age, it’s a shame he didn’t have the competency for the most rudimentary aspects of composition.
Michael Reeve’s final film before dying from a drug overdose, Witchfinder General has been considered by some as a film that some may call an achievement. This film has many successes, including the way in which it was able to tame Vincent Price. The film also blends aspects of Roger Corman’s film and Hammer’s films with the blood and gore of Polanski and Hitchcock. She-Beast serves as an example of an unsuccessful attempt at this. It took Reeve two years to see that he had to take horror seriously unlike Corman, if he wanted to tell a proper story that matched his visuals. The question of if this premiere is worth seeing is debatable. It is, however, plausible that Witchfinder General could not have been made without first learning from She-Beast.
The DVD cover states that the film comes “from extremely rare 35mm vault materials”, while the inner sleeve is less clear on its source. Though the DVD gets rid of the aspect ratio problems from previous versions, it is hard to believe that even basic restoration work was not done. The hues take a hit due to the excessive pinkish tint in the print and when She Beast is brought back, the lighting gets more dim and the already poor contrast drowns a number of scenes in black. Apart from scratches and a few blemishes, there is one frame a celluloid bubble that is discolored and lasts for several frames. This is more than enough for Quentin Tarantino’s grindhouse heart to pop out with joy. The mono audio track has socially suffered, but time has been good to it. The score by Ralph Ferraro in particular is stunningly well-preserved.
It may be true that there is only one particular attribute to note, but it is quite astounding: The trio of audiovisual commentary which features producer Paul Maslansky and head performers Ian Ogilvy and Barbara Steele. There are plenty of recollections of the rushed, shoestring-budgeted production, such as how Steele’s footage was shot in a single day to minimize the actress’s fees. Ogilvy mocks his own uneven contribution, and his own rather shabby performance, as a good sport, and all three of them remember, rather endearingly, Michael Reeves’s youthfully energetic and irritable character. Here is one example of where the level of commentaries provides as much entertainment as the film itself.
The She-Beast will most likely scare anyone with an irrational fear of rubber masks, however, it is a must-watch for those obsessed with the movie’s actual beast which is none other than the director, Michael Reeves.
For More Movies Like The Blood Beast Terror (1968) Visit 123Movies.
Also Watch for more movies like:
