disgusting, overrated, pointless

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Boring

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

About the only "astounding" thing that you're bound to see in this film is the astounding incompetence that prevails.Well, OK, sexy Shirley Kilpatrick as the "She-Monster" was pretty astounding, too. Especially in that skintight, metallic spacesuit of hers. Yeah. It looked like that she-monster had literally been poured into her outfit. Zowie! And, actually, another astounding thing about this dumb Z-Grader was that Director Ronald Ashcroft filmed the frickin' thing in a record 8 days on an $18,000 budget. And, believe me, every single one of those dollars shows quite conspicuously in this particular production.As the story goes - Nat and Esther, a pair of Hollywood kidnappers, abduct heiress Margaret Chaffee and then take over the country home of geologist, Dick Cutler, where they plan to hold Margaret until her ransom money is collected.In the midst of all the commotion at Cutler's place, an alien spacecraft crash-lands in the woods nearby. From the burning wreckage emerges a seductive, blond, alien-beauty in a glowing spandex outfit, high-heels, fresh lipstick and incredible eyebrows.As it is soon discovered by the occupants of the Cutler home, this "she-monster's" touch is deadly (in the strictest sense of the word).The Astounding She-Monster is "bottom-of-the-barrel" Z-Grade movie-making all the way, featuring an alien who not once utters a single, solitary sound, or word, throughout the entire course of the story.Trivia notes - During filming, Shirley Kilpatrick's costume ripped, and since the film was done on such a low budget and on a tight schedule, she couldn't get a new one - This is why she walks backwards as she leaves the room.This film is listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made.

Astounding She-Monster, The (1957)** (out of 4)Low-budget mix of sci-fi, horror and crime has made this one of the most loved cult movies from that golden era where no-money meant entertainment in this genre. Three crooks kidnap a rich girl and then take another hostage inside a small cabin in the woods. Their plan is going great until a female alien lands on Earth with the ability to kill just by a simple touch. Fans of this type of material are going to get quite a few kicks out of this one as the film features some of our faves including Robert Clarke (THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON), Kenne Duncan (NIGHT OF THE GHOULS) as well as Shirley Kilpatrick as the title monster. Rumor has it that Kilpatrick, a good looking alien, later changed her name and took the lead role as the overweight psycho in THE HONEYMOON KILLERS but your guess to the truth is as good as mine. As one would expect with a film like this, we got stupid day for night scenes, bad dubbing, silly narration, poor special effects and a questionable story but all of them makes for some cheap entertainment. Apparently the movie was shot for $18,000 and it looks it. The performances aren't anything to write home about but they are good enough for this type of material. Speaking of the narration, it really seems like he's on some sort of bad acid trip because his speech goes in and out so much that he certainly seems drugged. The alien itself is done with some bad special effects but she's at least a nice looker. Fans of high budget Hollywood movies aren't going to find any charm here but if you enjoy stuff like TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE or ROBOT MONSTER then dig in and enjoy.

Saw this at my neighborhood theatre when I was seven. It not only scared me, it stayed with me in an eerie way, which I'll explain momentarily. The movie features one of those rare feminine monsters (think about it - how often were monsters women?). As I expounded on in my comments for 'Terror from the Year 5000', female monsters always frightened me much more than normal monsters and this was the first one I ever saw. To disturb my poor eight year-old psyche further, the glowing she-monster here was so shapely that I found myself feeling, um, stimulated in a certain way while simultaneously feeling stark terror! The look of her really did scare me but, unlike with most monster movies, I was unable to bring myself to close my eyes when she would appear.Around this time in my life I was taking guitar lessons at the local conservatory of music and my teacher just happened to be a nice looking woman (actually, probably a teen, but at eight who can tell the difference?). One night, while sleeping, I had a dream and the astounding she-monster made an appearance in it and for some reason she turned out to be my guitar teacher. But she was every bit as deadly and when she started toward me I woke up terrified. For the next eight years or so, this glowing apparition made intermittent appearances in my dreams and always woke me up when she did. It stopped somewhere around age seventeen (thank heaven).You would think that I would have avoided watching this source of personal nightmare, but you'd be wrong. The fact that she made appearances in my dreams just added to my fascination with this movie and I have watched it at every opportunity throughout my life. Naturally, as time marched forward, those opportunities became fewer and fewer until they stopped completely (for me) in 1984 - the last time it was run on a late-show that I know of.Recently, I was able to obtain a VHS copy. After doing so I began to wonder if there were any others who have as strange a connection to this film as I. I began with a Shirley Kilpatrick google search that eventually led me to a forum where the film had been earnestly discussed and I read through all the posts of that thread. One poster revealed that he had made a tradition of watching 'The Astounding She-Monster' once a year and another poster asked him why. Of all movies, why this one? His answer truly struck a chord within me - he said that when he watches this movie, the entire outside world disappears for him. Further, he describes how the film seems so existentially dreamlike - all that running around, ending up back in the same place over and over.Exactly right. I know just what he's talking about and for a long time I lived it repeatedly in my sleep. And by the way, I watched it last night and shivered when she appeared at the window the first time.

It starts off with an idiotic voice-over and a cheap-looking galaxy which couldn't evoke awe out of a three year-old. In this funny intro ("BLACK void of NIGHT") we are informed that other planets have noticed that Earth is close to destroying the entire galaxy so they send a meteor(?!) to Earth. The implication is obvious: we Earthlings are to be punished before we commit "cosmic suicide". Fair enough, I thought. Why should we live if we are about to destroy the entire galaxy with a nuclear explosion? It just wouldn't be right. The prologue also informs us that an ancient galactic explosion had a power "so tremendous it didn't have the sense to compute its enormity". Well, I am sure that the explosion's power would have had the sense to compute its enormity had it been a sensible enough power, but, alas, clearly it hadn't.Happily enough, the inane narration continues after the main titles, but someone else takes over; a narrator who quite possibly has a word or two to say about class-struggle. Cut to a woman driving off in a car. By this time the narration isn't simply of a scientific, intellectual, and informative nature as it was in the galactic intro: now it is smug, self-confident narration, full of disdain for the rich woman driving off in her fancy car. Is the narrator jealous of the upper-class? Maybe, but I doubt it: when the woman gets kidnapped a minute later, the narrator revels in her unfortunate situation, but is kind enough to give her advice; he tells her that there is "no use to struggle, Margaret" and comforts her with those gentle but oh-so true words: "Being kidnapped could be termed almost normal for a wealthy socialite". Not only normal, but also to be encouraged, judging from the voice of the not at all socially envious narrator. Having heard those words, both the viewer and Margaret sigh in relief, realizing that kidnapping is just part of the bigger picture in the daily routine of a rich person. I was certainly relieved to hear this, for the excitement was getting too much for me at this point what with my worries about Margaret being dragged off like that by a couple of 50s B-movie thugs. The narrator certainly laid my worries to rest, and I will always be grateful to him for that (as will Margaret). We are then introduced to a geologist - and movie's brave hero - taking a walk in the woods with his faithful dog, Lassie. He witnesses a very cheap special effect in the sky and is shocked by how low-budgety it looks. But that shock doesn't get the dramatic treatment it deserves; instead, he tells Lassie that he never saw such a colour in the sky before - light grey, namely. Later, when our hero reaches his cottage, he tells Lassie this again, but Lassie is too well-mannered to tell his master that he is repeating himself. Even the narrator steers clear from pointing that out to him, or at least gently warning him not to say it a third time. A scene later, we get to see the astounding she-monster: she is a rather cute little thing in a very tight costume and looks like Spock's bastard daughter. She moves very gracefully, like a ballerina, and has an ethereal kind of dignified quality which is so rare in blood-thirsty hostile aliens. Yet there is something about her behaviour which suggests that she will soon kill off some gangsters. She strolls in the woods, observing the flora and fauna. She is so enchanted by what she sees that she probably doesn't even notice how the animals appear only in stock-footage, while she is eternally damned to this director's camera only. I would also put my money on her not realizing that the animals are enjoying day-light while she has to content herself with night-time. To show the viewer and the animals that she is benevolent, she kills a snake. With this violent but necessary gesture she has shown her galactic masters that they made the right choice in sending her to destroy Earth: one dead snake, 500,000 trillion other creatures to go. She was on her way. Cut to the gang who kidnapped Margaret. They are lead by Kenne "Horse cock" Duncan, the Robert Mitchum of B-movies. In his tow are a drunk middle-aged blonde who probably showed her breasts in a couple of early blue movies, and a trigger-happy guy who likes to engrave his name in other people's furniture; his other hobbies include bad acting, and being the first to die in cheap Z-movies. Meanwhile, our tireless, loyal narrator no.2 tells us what we all have been dying to hear: that all of these characters will somehow join together to form a unified plot; for a while there it looked like we would have three different plots (all for the price of one!): a gangster movie, a happy geologist/Lassie-come-home movie, and a alien-she-beast roaming around the countryside killing off defenseless snakes movie. The human part of the cast congregates in the geologist's cottage, while the half-Vulkan part waits for a dramatically opportune moment to quit roaming the forest aimlessly and involve herself more actively in that unified plot which we were promised. The events in the cottage are too numerous to fit in this humble review; let's just say that the human characters waste no time with pointless discussions about the re-distribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Eventually the astounding she-creature threatens everyone and they run out of the cottage. A little later they come back to the cottage. Even more later, they again abandon the cottage, running for their lives. After that, it's back to the cottage for more of the fascinating goings-on. A while later, it's again time to run away from the cottage. And after a while after that, guess what? It's back to the cottage.