SHE DEMONS (1958) SHE DEMONS (1958)

Hey, everyone! What's goin' on? Well, I just went to the vet and had my shots...y'know, rabies, distemper, that sorta thing...and boy, was it ever painful! But believe you me, getting a rabies shot is a sheer cakewalk compared to this next piece of celluloid slop-a-roo! It's just too bad no one's ever come up with a vaccine for She Demons!



The real Spice Girls movie!


Welcome, gentle reader, to yet another classic sucky movie from the golden year of 1958! Looking back on what we've examined so far, I seem to have devoted a lot of bandwidth to movies from the period of 1958-'62, and some rather horrid ones at that. Nothing particularly wrong with that...in my opinion, that period marked the beginnings of what one could call the Golden Age of the Really Awful Genre Movie. And so it is that we examine one of the definative Really Awful Genre Movies...Richard Cunha's Z-movie "epic" She Demons.


Our tale begins with a news report of a hurricane that is pounding the nearby coastline; said disaster is played, of course, by stock footage (Puma's Laws of Bad Movies #1: When you see stock footage at the very beginning of a movie, be very afraid). During this catastrophe, a small boat containing Jerrie Turner (played by Irish Mc Calla), the daughter of a big-shot electronics magnate, is blown way off course...

"Now sit right back and you'll hear a tale...a tale of a fateful trip..." I can tell already where this is going!


Cut to a far-off desert island, where the crew of that tiny boat are now stranded. Along with Jerrie, the survivors include skipper Fred Maklin (Todd Griffin), the prerequisite unappealing male lead, and Sammy Ching (Victor Sen Yung), the prerequisite ethnic stereotype and comic relief. Know these names, people, for we will come to despise them later.


Using the radio that was salvaged from the boat, Fred and Sammy learn that the island they're on is also a testing ground for Navy bombers (Plot Point!)...that's right, our poor-man's Swiss Family Robinson's been castaway on Bikini Atoll...or Gilligan's Island. In this movie, they're one and the same.


Anyway, Fred had heard earlier that this particular island is the fabled home of a race of women that supposedly each have "the body of a woman and the face of a demon." Turns out he was snooping around when the hurricane slammed his boat into the island. Ooooo-kay...


Soon, our little band o'castaways hear drums a'poundin' from the nearby jungle! Now, anyone even the slightest bit well-versed in the Tarzan/Bomba The Jungle Boy/ Jungle Jim school of screenwriting will tell you that anytime you hear drums from a distance, it's a fairly-good sign that our hero(s) will be encountering some restless natives real soon. Sure enough, after a stroll through the jungle set that takes forever, our merry band of explorers witness a gaggle of gals (very shapely gals, I hasten to add) dancin' their tootsies off to a native drum-beat. Soon afterwards, our intrepid castaways also see those same girls being herded by well-armed men wearing Nazi SS uniforms(!); said Nazis are being led by Egore (b-movie veteran Gene Roth, who here looks like Gary Busey auditioning for the part of Sgt. Schultz of Hogan's Heroes).


Soon afterwards, Fred, Daphne and Shaggy...er, Fred, Jerrie and Sammy, sorry...follow the stormtroopers inside a conveniantly-nearby cave, where a conveniantly-nearby laboratory is kept within. After trying (unsuccessfully) to hide inside the lab, Jerrie is captured by the slobby Egore, who promptly tells her that she is now "a prisoner of the German Reich". "Have I got news for you," Jerrie flippantly replies...


"Yeah! Your career'll soon be over after being in this loser-fest, Bratwurst-boy! Hah!"


After telling Jerrie that Herr Osler (Rudolph Osler) would be just plain delighted to have her as one of his experimental subjects, Fred pops out of the shadows and serves Egore a knuckle-sandwich served American-style. As Jerrie and Sammy both beat a hasty retreat (yelling "let's get outta here, Scooby!" Well...not really), Egore is clawed to death by a pack of caged She-Demons. Or massaged. Or fondled. I don't know, and I don't wanna know. Anyhoo, the captive She-Demons escape, but Fred, Jerrie and Sammy get themselves captured by the Nazis, and are soon taken back to Osler's lab.



"Girls, girls...there's plenty of me to go around!"


Soon, Osler reveals to our luckless trio of castaways thathe's one of the most wanted Nazi war-criminals (how did he know this bit of information? By watching "Nuremburg's Most Wanted", perhaps?),and that during World War II he was conducting experiments on skin regeneration. His wife Mona, you see, got her face messed-up real bad during a lab accident, and he's been drawing out what he calls "Character X" from the native women on the island. Allegedly, Character X determines personal appearance, and the amount of the stuff he's already pumped into his wife's veins is only temporary in its effects. He's also drained Character X from certain animals to the native donors, and that's what's turned these gals into She-Demons. After a while, their own appearance returns, but they each retain the mind of a beast...or something (I don't write this stuff, folks--I just review it).


(I should perhaps hasten to point out here that we don't see hardly any animals on the island, with the lone exception of a snake that gives our castaways a scare early in the movie. The only animals of any kind inside Osler's lab are some rather depressed-looking pigeons. After appearing in this movie, I wouldn't blame those birds one bit for their malaise.)


Later on, Osler invites Jerrie to his den for a few drinks. She's now wearing one of his wife's old dresses, a very snug deal that shows off Jerrie's, uh, attributes very nicely. Anyway, in spite of the fact that Osler is still loyal to Mona (the one with the spinich-dip face, remember?), he's got the flaming-hots for Jerrie. Jerrie's no dunce (even though she's written like she's one), so she rejects Osler when he starts making his move, and she escapes to the jungle. Unfortunately, Mona happens to see all this hanky-panky, the poor kid.


Soon after Jerrie runs through the jungle set (the Jungle Jim folks just had to have used this set), Mona greets her with the keys to Fred and Sammy's cage, and information on the whereabouts of a nearby rowboat. Jerrie quickly unlocks the cage and frees her friends...


"Please, oh pleeeease tell me this is the end of this festering stinkburger!!!"


Well, just when you thought that would be the end of the movie, Jerrie, Fred and Sammy get recaptured by the Nazis. Again.

"AAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!"


Back at Dexter's...excuse me, Osler's laboratory, our local mad-doctor has a mad posh to turn Jerrie into a She-Demon. Why? Beats me with a ten-foot pole...I guess it's a mad-scientist kinda thing. Just when Mona is beseeching with her husband to not start the operation (and drag the movie even further along...seriously, this is like watching paint dry!), the Navy bombers (remember them?) begin their practice run. Even though the island appears to have been used as a target before, it has never worried Osler in the least (a major improbability, that), until now. The bombs have now set off the volcanos on the island, and before long, Osler and his lab are coated in hot lava. After shooting down some remaining stormtroopers and dodging falling debris, Fred, Jerrie and Sammy reach Mona's rowboat on the other side of the island. As the island goes ka-flooey (via stock-footage from One Million B.C.), Fred and Jerrie make kissy-face on their little dinghy. The End.



"Hurry up! The R.A.'s coming back!!!"


She-Demons has all the makings of a true cult-classic going for it...displaced Nazis, scantily-clad native girls, Irish McCalla...and yet watching it is like having a 500-lb. gorilla sit on your head along the way. Too many scenes are just s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d way too long, like the many times that our castaways explore the island early on, or the (too-many) times in which those same castaways are captured by the island S.S. The movie's only 77 minutes long, but it feels like 77 hours.


The acting's variable--Rudolph Anders is a bit hammy as the movie's Mad Scientist, while the photogenic Irish McCalla practically sleepwalks through her role as the spoiled heiress/heroine/love-interest. The dialogue, however, is just godawful... not only is there way too much of it, but all our characters spout cliches left and right, and none of them are any good. Shortly after the castaways take in their surroundings early in the proceedings, Sammy (our ethnic-stereotype/comic-relief) says that he feels like "a cook in a cheap chow-mein joint." Later, as Egore goes after the She-Demons with a whip (kinky boy, that Egore!), he calls one of the gals a "Schweinhund!", and later on during his fight with Fred (the square-jawed hero), he calls him an "American swine." Dorothy Parker, it ain't.


Director Richard Cunha (Frankenstien's Daughter) said in an interview with Tom Weaver that his approach to the screenplay that he co-wrote was supposedly a lighthearted one. "I was trying to get even with the world...and just having a good time. These were really tongue-in-cheek films and we enjoyed doing them a great deal and had as much fun as possible..." If there was any tongue-in-cheek style that was supposed to be present in She-Demons, then it's squashed flat by Cunha's plodding, snail's-pace direction. If there's any humor in it at all, then it's of the variety found in most grade-Z movies...the unintentional kind.


--Jeff "Widget" Myers




CAST: Jerrie Turner: Irish McCalla, Fred Maklin: Tod Griffin, Sammy Ching: Victor Sen Yung, Col. Karl Osler: Rudolph Anders, Mona Osler: Leni Tana, Egore: Gene Roth, Kris Kamata: Charlie Opuni, Stormtroopers: Bill Coontz, Billy Dix, Larry Gelbman, Micheal Stoycoff, The She-Demons: Maureen Janzen, Grace Mathews, Island Women/She-Demons: The Diana Nellis Dancers, Stunts: George Barrows, Double for Leni Tana: Kathryn (Mrs. Richard) Cunha, With:Whitey Hughes.


CREW: Directed by: Richard E. Cunha, Screenplay: Richard E. Cunha, H. E. Barrie, Producer: Arthur A. Jacobs (not Arthur P. Jacobs, as some sources give), Associate Producer: Marc Frederic, Production Design: Harold Banks, Director of Photography: Meredith Nicholson, Camera Operator: Buddy Harris, Special Effects: David Koehler, Editor: William Shea, Music: Nicholas Carras, Sound Mixer: Frank Webster, Makeup: Carlie Taylor, Costumes: Marj Corso, Production Manager: Ralph Brooke, Assistant Director: Leonard J. Shapiro, Script Supervisor: Judith Hart, Props: Walter Broadfoot, Chief Electrician: Lee Dixon, Key Grip: Grant Tucker.


1958; A Screencraft Enterprises production for Astor Pictures; black and white; 77 minutes. Released on a double-bill with Giant from the Unknown.


BACK TO THE GRAVEYARD!!!