THE SHE BEAST! (1965)

Star: Barbara Steele; Mel Welles

Barbara Steele and her husband are aimlessly speeding through Eastern Europe, when they stop at a rundown hotel operated by a uxorious communist-quoting landlord to whom they act condescending and then beat the crap out of when they catch him peeping on them later in the evening. They then speed out of town, not knowing that the landlord messed with their car brakes, and they end up crashing into a lake that isn’t anywhere near the road, whereupon Barbara Steele is killed, but she returns to life as a hideous, foul-mouthed, hermaphroditic, insane cleaning-woman-monster with really bad breath.

Oh, I forgot, before they’re peeped upon by Mel Welles (playing an unsympathetic character with an extremely bogus accent), Barbara and her husband are visited by a dithery, pompous, impoverished, incoherent old British dude in a tatty tweed coat and a worn-out bowler hat, who tries to warn them about the curse of this weird witch who’s supposed to come back on this particular day to wreak vengeance upon the superstitious villagers who executed her three hundred some-odd years ago.
They also ignore and make fun of the old putz. But after the accident, he’s the only hope to turn the insane, smelly, bad breath monster back into sexy Barbara Steele.

Sadly, the movie sounds like a lot more fun than it really is! Director Michael Reeves (“The Conqueror Worm” “The Sorcerers”) isn’t quite up to speed yet as the director he would become and the pedestrian look and frenzied pacing of the film bemoan its extremely small budget (most of which probably went for Steele’s salary) and, probably, rushed shooting schedule. There’s also an extremely unfunny and tiresome ten-minute scene (that feels like 50 minutes!) involving some Eastern European Keystone Kops who keep driving around and around and around (in sped-up footage, of course) chasing Steele’s husband and the tatty English guy. Was that trip really necessary?

In fairness, the public domain prints of this film are all fuzzy and faded, with barely adequate sound, so no one I know has actually seen a watchable print of it. There may also be scenes that are cut out that would might make some of the incoherent scenes a bit more coherent. We can only hope. Supposedly, some company is getting ready to release a cleaned-up definitive print, so check that out---but regarding the currently available P.D. prints, as Mr. Clampett’s kin advised him, “Jed, move away from there!”