She Devil (1957)

Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely the worst movie.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

They created an inhuman being who destroyed everything she touched! The woman they could not kill! This film was written, produced and directed by Kurt Neumann, best known for "The Fly" (one of his next features). He was also allegedly considered for the director's chair on "The Bride of Frankenstein", though I must say I am glad James Whale got the job.Worth noting is that the source material came from Milwaukee native Stanley Grauman Weinbaum, who sadly died at age 33 and never saw his work brought to the screen. Weinbaum, though not well known today, was influential in the 1930s and H. P. Lovecraft praised his work.While all of the film is quite good, the best part is probably the awesome sequence of a car driving off a cliff... no dummies were killed in the making of the movie!

As Bill Warren points out elsewhere, director Kurt Neumann had a lot of enthusiasm for the potential of science fiction movies, but he didn't quite seem to have the talents (or the budgets) to make consistently good ones. He seems to have plenty of intelligence - hence adopting a story with the fascinating idea of seeing what would happen if a human being were injected with a serum that enables her to "adapt" to any threat or environment - but he didn't seem to be able to create scenes without tons of expository dialog, or patch the enormous plot holes in the screenplays.She Devil...it has its moments. As a friend said, someone ought to give Albert Dekker the Purple Heart Actor's awards for his valiant attempts to soldier on as he is forced to deliver line after line of clunky dialog in scenes that are going nowhere. And there are some good framing shots and set ups here and there - at times the actress who plays the woman test subject does manage to project a chilly, barely human glamour that makes you believe that she could take a man for everything and kill him once she was bored with him.But the screen play asks the viewer to believe that a millionaire widow wouldn't have a retinue of courtiers and employees and bodyguards who would follow her everywhere, and who wouldn't make a major fuss when she went missing after she visits the two men in the world who created her and know her secret. And it wastes a lot of time foreshadowing a leopards presence in the lab without ever doing anything interesting.Anyway...this what happens when you try to get by with one special effect (the woman seems to be able to change her hair color at will) and pretend you've created a movie about "ideas"...when you don't know how to do anything really interesting with that idea.Still way better than some of its contemporaries (dreck like "Voodoo Woman" make this look like Scorcese) and worth seeing once if you are fascinated by 50's scifi.

Two scientists (Albert Dekker and Jack Kelly) treat a young female patient's medical trauma with an injection that has a profound effect: the woman's black hair becomes luminously blonde, she gains an irresistible sexual magnetism, but she also becomes an impulsive thief and killer possessed with the instinct to get whatever she desires at any cost. Mari Blanchard is ideal in her role as the gorgeous femme fatale, who has also gained an immunity and cannot be stopped even by her own doctors who've created her. Albert Dekker (popular to fans for his title role of DR. CYCLOPS) spews a lot of hokey dialogue in his remarkably self-assured manner. The younger Jack Kelly is his assistant hovering on falling under Blanchard's spell. Another fun 1950s 'B' . **1/2 out of ****

I was COMPLETELY mesmerized by this film because I loved the concept of this woman who was in essence given everything a human being would need to survive and still gave into her baser instincts and became even more of a monster than before.I believe that she started out as a petty criminal before they gave her the operation, so it was already in her to be this way already so I don't think they could have blamed it on the injection unless there was someone else to compare her progress with or a lab animal with similar characteristics- like a primate.This added a much needed balance to Whitley Streib's novel "The Hunger", as the supernatural condition was given biological rules and parameters.I simply adored the scenes where she would go for a Sunday drive with her rich new husband, and then run them both off a cliff in the convertible, dust herself off and walk home to plot her next marriage.Genius!I have kind of a photographic memory and only saw the film only once (30 years ago) when I was six, but those scenes stood out for me- (almost as the one in the very beginning of the film where she runs into a dressing room-being pursued by the police as a brunette, changes into the clothing hanging in the room, and walks out as a platinum blonde as all the cops are drooling all over her!!It was a great lesson to me as a child that people only look at the surface and are always prone to fall victim to those whom their prejudices judge as being more desirable than themselves!I wouldn't have touched her with a ten foot pole just cause her saccharine sweet personality barely concealed her contempt for humanity.A LOVELY film which I hope someone finally decides to remake with a more scientific base (while keeping the humor!)-Skittles!