The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 15 - The She Creature

In the 1950’s the nature of the moving going audience changed – where as earlier everybody went to the movies, with the development and popularity of TV a lot of families just decided to stay at home. However one group continued to go in large numbers – teenagers – who had different tastes – they liked monster movies – and companies like American International went into overdrive to provide the supply.

‘

This film hitches on the1950’s brief interest in hypnotic regression – before people were talking about aliens doing things to them under hypnosis people were accessing past lives spawned by the book then movie The Search for Bridey Murphy. I’ll leave off commenting on the plausibility or lack thereof of the whole thing, suffice to say that it was a hot topic 1956 or so.

The thing is, hypnosis, in as of itself, does make gripping cinema – so I’m guessing that at some point a memo came down from the studio to the people working on this film “insert monster”. Which of course they did.

The story concerns a creepy hypnotist (and are there ever any other types?) who has made the leap from small time carnival sideshows to the upper crust fancy cocktail circuit. His act is to regress the very buxom Andrea (Played by Marla English ) and she then talks in a British accent for a while. It develops that she is something of a psychic prisoner of the CH – why we don’t know and never learn. She does mention more than once that she hates him.

There is another hypnotist who is skeptical of the creepy Hypnotist (hereinafter CH) but while he is the male lead he really does very little other than put a pipe in his mouth from time to time and be skeptical. He seems to develop something of a thing for Andrea but he’s so bland we really can’t be sure.

So that the audience won’t go to sleep with all these folks saying “sleep sleep” (is it a surprise then that the only really successful film to use hypnosis as a plot device was the silent The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari? I’m not sure) – the she creature shows up a couple of times and kills folks.

The actual she creature is fun to look at and has become a b-movie icon over the years but she really isn’t in the film enough her connection to Andrea is a bit thin (she is supposed to what Andrea was 300 years ago! What wait? Huh even 300 years ago the She Creature would stand out)

The rich guy who’s party it was, Played by Tom Conway who reminds you of George Saunders because he was George Saunders brother, teams up with the CH and they write a book and do the circuit and earn a lot of money – for some reason the CH stays with the Rich Guy and doesn’t leave even when he has a lot of scratch – I suspect because they didn’t have another set to use (low budget cinema making plot points out of shortages since 1921).

There’s a bit with a dog that barks a lot – but it’s filler so we'll just pass it on by.

In the end the CH oversteps and is killed by the she creature who then retreats back to the sea. To be honest what happens after that is a bit fuzzy – but it seems nobody has a happy ending.

Rather dull and plodding with an iconic monster that seems like it was jammed into the film at the last minute this film isn’t awful as say Manos it’s not really that good either. Which is a failing of monster movie – if you’re going to do one, do one big.

Enjoy with canapés and a dry martini with olives.