Who payed the critics

Dreadfully Boring

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

1st watched 8/28/2014 -- 3 out of 10(Dir-Mike Reeves): So so horror movie about a resurrected witch causing problems in modern day Transylvania kind of bores the viewer and creates a lot of improbable occurrences in the course of the movie. The movie starts with a count recalling an incident from a long time ago where a pre-determined witch is placed on a piece of equipment called "The Chair" where she is impaled and dipped multiple times in a local lake before expiring(one of the most elaborate & gruesome penalties portrayed on film for sure). Of course, the She Beast, is rather gruesome also in this foreign production and obviously portrayed by a man(late in the film you get a look at the legs and you can tell). We are then presented with a young couple newlywedding in Transylvania(of all places), who eventually are driven off the road into the lake putting to rest the female(apparently). The male then hooks up with the count -- who we find out is the famous killer of Dracula, Van Helsing, and attempts to exercise the witch out of the newly deceased bride before she kills everyone in town. Mel Welles -- from a "Little Shop of Horrors" fame -- plays a drunkard, bumbling, extremely moral-less hotel manager who gets in the midst of everything. Initially, the husband, gets rather annoyed when Helsing suggests that what's happened is this exorcism, but eventually believes it. Barbara Steele & John Karlson play the husband and wife team that are just a pawn for this inevitable semi-shockfest. The movie was supposedly an Italian/Yugoslavian production but it was obviously intended for English-speaking audiences and is somewhat light really compared to the stuff that comes out nowadays, but was probably pretty rough back then. Despite this -- the movie just doesn't pull you in, and is pretty slow midway thru so the shock doesn't really do anything. A definite miss in this genre, bypass it.

Modest Italian horror flick starring Barbara Steele as a new bride honeymooning in Romania and who unfortunately ends up possessed by the spirit of one of the ugliest witches ever committed to film. The homicidal witch is executed by the townsfolk in the 1700s and has been waiting patiently to return. Once she is back in the flesh, she goes on a new murderous rampage in our time. The movie is intermittently creepy but largely boring, with a very small cast and not much going on beyond the witch (all too obviously played by a man) wreaking havoc. The bride's young husband (Ian Ogilvy) and a descendant of Dr. Von Helsing do their best to capture the reincarnated witch and restore the young bride. Will they succeed? The only reason to recommend this low-budget quickie is to see Steele, best known for "Black Sunday" and one of the sexiest and voluptuous screen actresses in history. She has a pretty decent, if abbreviated, nude sex scene early on. I think it may have been trimmed for U.S. viewing. Unfortunately, once her character is transformed into the witch, which happens early on, we see nothing of her until the very end. She could have used a lot more screen time, and made this trifle more watchable.

It is the mid 1700's in Eastern Europe near the Carpathian Mountains (the home of a certain Count Dracula) and evil is rampant. A horrendously ugly witch has been snacking on children (minus the ginger bread) and the townspeople have had enough. They don't wait for the Count Von Helsing to return to properly dispose of her, and she puts a curse on them that is sure to come true. 200 years later, some British tourists, newly married, visit, and the witch sees the chance to get her revenge in her watery grave, literally calling them to plunge through the barrier between the road and the lake. The husband manages to get out, but when they rescue his wife, she is the image of the evil witch. The current Von Helsing heir must bring the witch back to life to free the wife, and of course, before you can break into a chorus of "Defying Gravity", this witch's itch for revenge against her killers scratches enough corpses to keep the local coroner busy for weeks.There have been many views of witches in cinema over the years, and this witch makes Margaret Hamilton's western witch in Oz a beauty queen. She is closer in ugliness to Angelica Huston's child-hating witch in "The Witches" (which witch is which?) but certainly not as comical. The comedy goes to some rather randy locals, one of whom gets beaten up by the husband after he is discovered peaking in on the newlywed's wedding night. In a sense, this comedy is tasteless, because it is trying to make perversion funny. That part of the film reminded me of both "Fearless Vampire Killers" and "The Vampire Happening", a Z-Grade horror film where the perversion runs rampant. Of the cast, only Barbara Steele (in the small but pivotal role of the bride) is worth mentioning because of her popularity after the brilliant "Black Sunday". The movie is actually quite attractive looking, somewhat scary, yet not good enough to be considered for a cult following.

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"