Best movie of this year hands down!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Horror fans who think they are in for a treat seeing that this Barbara Steele-starring movie is another Italian production - just like the acclaimed "Black Sunday" - will be in for a big disappointment. Steele is hardly in the movie, for one thing. But even if she were in more of the movie, it probably wouldn't have helped much. This is a real sluggish affair. It's slow-moving, and there is precious little that could be considered "horror". What little horror there is happens to be really badly directed, so much so that I'm sure even audiences in 1966 weren't spooked. It doesn't help that the horror is complimented by a surprising amount of comic relief material, which isn't the least bit funny. Even at a mere 78 minutes in length, this movie is quite tough to sit through.

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+

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"

In the '60s, a zany oldster (an aristocrat, a Count Van Helsing, the senile descendant of the exorcist whose deeds had been chronicled by Stoker) reads violent histories of medieval Transylvania, where witch—hunts were business as usual, the casual hobby of the backward natives headed by a grim cleric. When a Western young couple arrives in those remote Transylvanian lands, stamped by the Bolshevik rule, Count Van Helsing approaches them, like all these exorcists do, and he begins talking about witches. The young couple takes a room at an inn.Mrs. Steele plays a young English wife, 'Veronica'.One doesn't need to know beforehand about Mrs. Steele, in order to notice her in a movie. She can speak for herself. She deserves her considerable fame. In the bed scene, we see no more than a bit of Mrs. Steele's nice tits.The innkeeper is a libidinous, a voyeur, he spies on the English couple, Mrs. Steele and her lover, while they are doing a love scene. So, the innkeeper is a voyeur; in fact, so is the director—and the viewer. The innkeeper almost finds thus his death, being beaten atrociously and severely punished for his indiscretion by the slick lover of Mrs. Steele; but he recovers, of course. You see, they used to beat people for spying on Mrs. Steele.A monument of bad directing, bad writing and bad acting, LA SORELLA ... is a violent comedy, also a movie from the nice Mrs. Steele's youth.