Watch The She Beast For Free

hyped garbage

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

first off I actually liked this movie,, very quaint nice countryside scenery , decent characters, plus Barbara Steele always a joy to look at. a woman get's into an accident and the car goes into a lake,, the husband,, or boyfriend,, survives,, the woman is dead.. or is she really dead.. apparently the woman inherits the soul of a witch who was drowned in some kind of dunking machine, hundreds of years ago by the natives. there is a lot of comedy and laughs in this one, as it is fun to watch some of the characters try to hide the body, and to circumvent the husband from finding out if his wife is dead or alive.. this is a hard one to explain, because it was a little confusing I grant everyone that much,, I guess you will have to sit down and watch it for yourself and see what you think . personally I thought it was decent,, average "b" movie.

Much has been made of young film-maker Michael Reeves, especially what great heights he might have achieved in his career had he not died so tragically young (25 to be precise). Most of this mouth-watering yet unfulfilled expectation hinges upon the brilliance of his third and final film, the Vincent Price classic Witchfinder General. Having said that, Reeves' second film – The Sorcerers, starring Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey - is also an adeptly crafted bloodcurdler, greatly admired by critics and genre addicts alike. Since he attained such an esteemed reputation in his brief lifetime, one would assume that Reeves' first film must also be a cracker… perhaps not up to the heights of his 2nd and 3rd films, but certainly a superior offering showcasing the young director's budding brilliance and mastery. A good, interesting little debut at the very least, surely? Wrong! The She-Beast is a largely terrible horror entry, very muddled in conception and clumsily put together, with almost none of what would become the director's trademark skilfulness and artistry. If he'd died after this film it's unlikely anyone would have remembered him at all.In modern-day Transylvania, elderly recluse Von Helsing (John Karlsen) lives in a cave where he spends half his time drinking himself into a stupor and the other half re-reading accounts of legendary past events in the neighbourhood. He is particularly interested in one terrible incident from 200 years previous, the capture and drowning of a local witch in the neighbouring lake. At the point of death, the witch placed a curse on the entire village and promised that one day she'd return and have her vengeance. Back in the present, British couple Veronica (Barbara Steele) and Philip (Ian Ogilvy) end up in the village whilst on a tour of eastern Europe. Following a bust-up with a drunken innkeeper, they make a hurried getaway but, as they pass the lake, a mysterious force affects the steering on their car and they crash into the water. To Philip's horror, his wife doesn't make it out of the lake… instead, her unconscious body is possessed by the long-dormant spirit of the witch, transforming Veronica from an attractive young woman into a hideous monster with murderous vengeance on its mind. Philip and Von Helsing race against time to find a way to exorcise Veronica and return her to her natural state before she is lost forever.There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the plot other than a reliance on derivative ingredients – witch's curses, village mobs, the possession of a pretty young innocent, etc. (all things that have been over-used in terror pictures of its era). At the very least, however, The She-Beast should have enough mileage in it to be a semi-enjoyable horror movie in the familiar old style. Unfortunately, it simply doesn't work… it is awkwardly structured, woodenly acted, wildly overplotted and – worst of all – massively disorganised in terms of style and purpose. Disparate elements are thrown in for no good reason, such as touches of political commentary about the nature of eastern bloc existence and ill-fitting flashes of comedy (including a truly bizarre Keystone Cops-style car chase near the climax). These jumbled elements simply bring a sense of confusion and incohesion to the film, distracting the audience from what ought to be the central storyline. It wouldn't matter if they worked, if they added a worthwhile extra dimension to the film, but they don't… meaning that, as a result, everything comes across as muddled and incoherent. A couple of effective jumps remain, plus the odd memorable scene amid the chaos, but overall The She-Beast is a huge let-down from its wunderkind director.

Michael Reeves' official directorial debut – after his stint as an assistant director on CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1964; his modest contribution here is, erroneously, sometimes exaggerated by his cultists) – is, likewise, an Italian production of the Horror variety. Filmed under the title of REVENGE OF THE BLOOD BEAST and officially released in Italy as SISTER OF Satan (although, LAKE OF Satan, is apparently yet another name attributed to it over there!), the film's best-known moniker is SHE BEAST – which is how it has been released on DVD, first by the budget outfit Alpha and, more recently, by the more respectable label Dark Sky Films.Even though Reeves' entire cinematic output consists of merely four titles, he managed the enviable feat of working with one genre icon apiece: Christopher Lee in CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD, Barbara Steele in SHE BEAST, Boris Karloff in THE SORCERERS (1967) and Vincent Price in WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968), his last (and, undoubtedly, best) work. Actually, the contribution of Barbara Steele – the then-reigning 'Scream Queen' of Italian horror movies, ever since her breakthrough dual roles in (yet another legendary genre director) Mario Bava's BLACK Sunday (1960) – to the film under review amounted to just one 22-hour day of the 18-day shooting schedule; her agent at the time, David Niven Jr., only alerted her of this clause on the day before she came on the set and, although she was a trouper, Steele had a major falling-out with producer Paul Maslansky…although, judging by the cordial and lively Audio Commentary on the Dark Sky DVD, any animosity between the two has long since faded away! Joined in this discussion is the film's nominal lead and veritable Michael Reeves mascot, Ian Ogilvy; they had been schoolmates in their teenage years and Ogilvy would go on to star in all of Reeves' directorial output.The film opens with a witch-hunting sequence that anticipates the more notorious ones in WITCHFINDER GENERAL; the victim of the 'trial by water' (or, more exactly, stake through the heart!) has to be one of the ugliest female monsters to appear on celluloid and, in fact, was actually portrayed by a colored dancer sporting heavy – and highly effective – make-up…with hideous tooth-work and shriek-laden voice to match! Incidentally, one of the actor's winding down activities on the set (according to Ogilvy) was trying to hitch rides from passing cars in full "She Beast" get-up…obviously, to the stopping drivers' eternal chagrin! The cast also includes three other moderately familiar names of the period: John Karlsen (as the modern-day eccentric witch-hunter Count Von Helsing {sic}!), Mel Welles (as a boozing lecher of an inn-keeper) and Lucretia Love (appearing – in one of two surprisingly racy scenes in the film – as an innocent villager assaulted by Welles, just before he gets his own comeuppance from the rampaging titular creature); curiously enough, the other brief spot of nudity is provided by La Steele herself, during a night-time lovemaking scene with husband Ogilvy, that is witnessed by 'peeping tom' Welles – who is subsequently beaten up within an inch of his life by the understandably incensed guest! Apart from Welles, the American side of the production is represented by producer Maslansky and second-unit director/uncredited co-screenwriter Charles B. Griffith; film connoisseurs will immediately associate the first with the POLICE ACADEMY franchise and the second (like Welles himself) with the earlier days of the Roger Corman stable. Despite both Maslansky and Griffith having worked on some intriguing fantasy stuff (CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD itself, 1972's DEATH LINE, 1975's RACE WITH THE DEVIL and 1977's DAMNATION ALLEY, as well as two 1957 Corman productions, NOT OF THIS EARTH and THE UNDEAD respectively), unfortunately, it is their comedic vein which comes to the fore here in a truly misjudged and overstretched climactic "Keystone Kops"-type slapstick car chase (seemingly needed to pad out the running time to feature-length)! This not only involves an uncredited Maslansky himself – as one of three bumbling local cops, anticipating the similarly inept pursuing duo in Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)! – in a couple of mildly amusing pratfalls, but also the faintly surrealistic and completely illogical presence of an unknown motorcyclist that insistently reappears throughout this sequence!

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"