The She-Creature

source: The She-Creature

Another film brought to you by Ed Cahn.He did actually lens a few films that were watchable for the right reasons.This isn't one of them.This quickie was made to cash in on the "Bridey Murphy" reincarnation craze. Professor Lombardi (Chester Morris)hypnotizes Andrea(Marla English)sending her back through past lives.All the way back until she was a sea creature from the pre historic days.This creature is under his control and kills wantonly.While the creature suit is a fondly remembered favorite, it isn't enough to save this bomb. Chester Morris acts like he's ready to foreclose on the mortgage to the orphanage.A very far cry from his Boston Blackie days.The bags under his eyes looks like luggage.He spends most of his time looking grim and drooling over Marla's supine body.Her acting is confined to holding her breath and trembling. Frankly, Lance Fuller as the hero is scarier than anything in this picture.He acts as if he's only visiting this dimension for a short time. He appears to act as if his lawn furniture has come to life and he's not sure if it is reality or he's still stoned.Probably needs just a little more time to stare thoughtfully into the camera...I swore the deck chair just winked at me. Ron Randall as a policeman does the worst Humphrey Bogart impression I've ever seen.For a better & funnier Bogart act check out Anthony Carbone in Creature From The Haunted Sea.Tom Conway who played the Falcon is in this as well.One of the doctors in a scene was played by one of the villains who starred in a majority of the Three Stooges reels.I kept expecting Moe & Curley to show up.Spread out!!One actor does a Foster Brooks drunk act years before Brooks.Not nearly as funny either. Forget the plot.If you have to watch this beast do so only for the unique "acting" abilities of the cast.

The She-Creature is typical of the stuff American International were making at this time and is one of their better efforts. A series of murders are the result of a rather nasty prehistoric monster that keeps coming up from the ocean. This is actually a woman in a past life, under hypnosis. As more killings take place, the hypnotist gets the blame for the murders but the monster kills him at the end and everything returns to normal. The monster suit looks surprisingly quite good and was the responsibility of Paul Blaisdell, who designed and played a lot of the monsters in these sort of movies. The movie has quite a good cast: Chester Morris, Falcon actor and sci-fi/horror regular Tom Conway (Cat People, The Atomic Submarine), Cathy Downs (The Amazing Colossal Man, Missile To the Moon), Lance Fuller (This Island Earth), Marla English (Voodoo Woman)and Ron Randell. The She-Creature is worth watching, especially if you are a 1950's sci-fi/horror fan. Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

A woman in a hypnotic trance allows a worker of psychological magic to bring forth a she-creature from the sea that kills to makes his predictions of death come true. The movie put me in a trance! Slow does not describe the pacing of this film. It moves not at the pace of a snail but more like the weathering effect on mountains that takes thousands and thousands of years. The film, despite its lethargic, morphine-injected story-telling, has its finer points(And no, I am not talking about Marla English here .....yet!). First of all, I liked Chester Morris in his role. I seem to be a minority here, but I thought this was a rare opportunity to see a pretty good actor from a bygone era. Morris essayed the role of the Bat in The Bat Whispers in 1931 as well as played Boston Blackie numerous times. Sure, he's a thick slice of ham, but a fun slice of ham to watch....to a degree. After awhile the lines with little conviction and the overly tight-lipped face get to be a bit of a strain. But at the very least he has some acting skill...which cannot be said of too many others in the film. Yeah, Tom Conway can act...sometimes, but his role is of little importance and he has little to do. The scene where he is ...well, not to give it away...shall we say "taken care of" is a real hoot as it looks just so unbelievable. Lance Fuller? I've seen walls create more depth of character than he musters in what can only be called a "dead" performance. He's alive, but sometimes you just don't know for sure. He registers almost no emotion, no conviction in his lines, nor does he illicit any feeling from the viewer toward him. The rest of the actors are not much better. The guy playing the Polish butler was absurd as was the policeman with the tough guy routine. What about Marla English? She plays the hypnotized girl that allows the She-creature to rise from the sea. Well, she is not much of an actress, but what she can do to a sweater....certainly one of the higher peaks...points of the film. The she-creature? Well, it's nothing horrifying. Nothing terrible, yet the costume created by Paul Blaisdell deserves its admiration. It is a creative outfit like nothing else I have ever seen. But the monster walks/hobbles through the sand with the agility of an octagenarion, thus creating no menace but rather a burning desire for a tube of ben gay and a bottle of geritol!

Directed by Edward (50 movies a year) Cahn and written by Lou Rusoff (who also penned Dragstrip Girl, Cat Girl, Runaway Daughters, Apache Woman, Oklahoma Woman, and Girls in Prison; hmmm, I notice a violent femme pattern here), the She Creature is notable for Albert Kallis evocative poster, Paul Blaisdell's terrific prehistoric "she" monster (complete with scaly hooters), and the mesmerizingly gorgeous Marla English in what appears to have been her last role. Actually, it's hard to call this a "role" as she spends most of her time in a trance lying on her back. Also spending the movie in a trance is Lance Fuller, though he's supposed to be fully conscious. Fuller's acting expressions range from "gee that's a tight sweater" to "gee that's a tight dress" to `gee my pants are tight.' The snidely-whiplash villain, Dr. Carlo Lambardi, is played by Chester Morris with the seriousness of a man passing his 15th kidney stone. But the real villain, is the She Creature! Sort of. The She Creature, while looking cool, is about as menacing as Lobster Themidor. No one seems to notice that, while bullets can't stop her, she can be outrun by a snail on crutches. Instead, in Z-movie tradition, folks just stand around and get clobbered to death. The movie's budget must have been as tight as English's sweater because bullets don't even leave dust marks on the monster's Victoria's Secrety bosom. Shot on location in Malibu! Whatever happened to Marla?!?!

This 1950's horror flick, starring Marla English (she was a poor man's Elizabeth Taylor) had much potential, but unfortunately that potential was wasted. The She Creature, a creation of fabulous monster maker Paul Blaisdell, was actually a scary looking creation. For some inexplicable reason the makers of this movie did not show the creature very often. The plot is pretty predictable; Marla portrays Andrea, a young woman under the spell of a slimy hypnotist/con man, portrayed by Chester Morris. Tom Conway is his usual hammy self as a man who is bankrolling the evil Dr. Lombardi. Of course we have to have a young hero to come save the beautiful maiden, and that part was played by Lance Fuller, in a drop dead dull performance...did the man have botox injections in his face, or what? He never changes expression throughout the movie. This movie was made when the whole Bridey Murphy reincarnation phase was popular, and the makers of the film want us to believe that we apparently didn't evolve from apes, but we evolved from some weird half lobster, half reptilian creature from the ocean...don't ask. The movie plods along with various killings that are orchestrated by Dr. Lombardi to get publicity for his show...again, the premise had promise, but it just seems to drag on and on. The Creature rarely appears, and when it does, the killings are more funny than scary. This isn't the worst of the 1950's monster movies, but it could have been so much more than what it was, which is a shame.

I went into this film expecting nothing good of it whatsoever; my only interest in seeing it coming as a result of the fact that I'm a fan of the little known 2001 remake - but to my surprise, this actually is a fairly decent film...if you can forgive it's many shortcomings. The film is clearly what would be called "Z Grade Horror" - the production values are low, the acting is largely terrible and I wouldn't be surprised to find that the script took less than a day to write...but actually there's some original ideas in the film that help to save it. The plot revolves around a hypnotist named Dr. Carlo Lombardi. He claims that he can prove reincarnation exists by regressing his beautiful assistant back to a previous life. However, his experiments eventually take on a physical form and do so in the form of a mutant sea creature. The creature comes from the sea and begins killing people. Several people believe the doctor to be at the heart of the killings. The most ridiculous thing about the film is, of course, the monster itself...which looks pretty silly. Think The Creature from the Black Lagoon, with breasts. The film clearly didn't have much of a budget either and much of it is taken up by talking and/or scenes that don't require any special effects - director Edward L Cahn having the good sense to keep the monster's appearances down to a minimum. The plot does have some problems too and many of the good ideas are not addressed in such a way to make them effective, which is a shame as clearly much more could have been made of the film. That being said, the ideas we do get are fairly clever; the whole hypnosis plot is not the most obvious route to a film about a monster coming out of the sea. Chester Morris takes the lead role and is probably the pick of the cast; his is the only performance that actually seems to have any effort at all put into it. Overall, I can't say that this is great or a must see; but it's much better than I expected and fans of fifties monster movies might get a kick out of it.

The She-Creature is a thing from the ocean that looks like an angry lobster. It comes ashore, invisible, then materializes and kills some people. It then returns to the sea. Why? I don't know. Then there's Dr. Carlo Rambaldi, a hypnotist and overall oily guy, who threatens Brack, from This Island Earth, and hypnotizes a beautiful young woman. Brack shows no emotions and does his best to feign interest. Rambaldi makes predictions, has some people killed, and moves into a house that has delightfuly Swedish caretakers. In the end, the lobster kills Rambaldi, the police shoot the monster, and Brack and the beautiful young woman presumably go on to live a rich and full life together. Very dull movie that will put you to sleep faster than Nyquil.

This picture is most famous for its grand monster creation: a lobster-like, humanoid female prehistoric beast that's a reincarnation of the leading lady (Marla English). It was designed by Paul Blaisdell, a mega-talent creator of many of American-International's monsters. The seaside scenes seem to be photographed with diffusion filters, an interesting touch, with the beast almost illuminated when she first rises from the Pacific ocean. Veteran actors Chester Morris, Tom Conway, Frieda Inescort, Ron Randell, Cathy Downs and William Hudson (co-stars in "The Amazing Colossal Man") give good performances. English (is that a wig?), whose body English is great, resembling either Elizabeth Taylor or Vivien Leigh, and Lance Fuller are adequate. The eerie music is by Ronald Stein, and there's just enough to get fairly thrilled about in the Bridey-Murphy inspired script (the reincarnation craze in the mid-1950s).

Even MST3K couldn't shield me from this one. Watching Lance Fuller non-act his way through his role (does he ever change expression???) was about as fun as passing a kidney stone. For that matter, no one in this movie changes expression. The most talented performance was probably given by King the dog. Thankfully at least, the directors failed in their attempt to get John Carradine for the role of Carlo Lombardi. Shot on incredibly grainy film--which, so help me, actually IMPROVES things---and apparently with a lighting budget in single digits. another improvement, since it saved me from actually having to watch the people onscreen. Avoid at all costs.