‘Deadlier than Dracula! Wilder than the werewolf! More frightening than Frankenstein!’
The She Beast - Italian title: La Sorella di Satana; British cinema release title: Revenge of the Blood Beast - is a 1966 British-Italian horror film. It was directed and co-scripted by Michael Reeves (as “Michael Byron”) who later made The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General. American writer Charles B. Griffith (The Little Shop of Horrors), a frequent collaborator with Roger Corman, was 2nd unit director and provided some comedy scenes that were mostly deleted from the final edit.
This low budget film stars Barbara Steele, John Karlsen, Reeves’ school chum Ian Ogilvy (also in The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General), Jay Riley, Richard Watson, Ed Randolph, Peter Grippe, and Lucrezia Love (The Sexorcist). American actor and director Mel Welles (Maneater of Hydra) has a cameo role as Vladisvar Groper, a voyeuristic landlord.
In Britain, this twenty-one day quickie-shot horror homage was distributed as Revenge of the Blood Beast by Miracle Films, specialists at circulating European-lensed horror and sexploitation titles, but for US cinema release it went the rounds with Venice-set Italian mystery-thriller The Embalmer as The She Beast.
Although largely unseen for many years, renewed interest in Reeves’ short directorial career in the 1990s ensured that battered 16mm prints began to be circulated as VHS copies. These apparently public domain versions still pop up on the internet but their quality makes them painfully unwatchable. A restored widescreen version of the film was finally released on DVD in 2009 by Dark Sky Films with an audio commentary by producer Paul Maslansky (Race with the Devil) and stars Ogilvy and Steele.
A couple on their honeymoon in Transylvania crash their car into a lake. Her body is then possessed by the spirit of an 18th-century witch who was killed by local villagers, and is bent on avenging herself on them. The witch takes over the wife’s body and it’s up to her husband and a descendent of Van Helsing to save her.
Watch grubby print online if you can persevere:
Buy The She Beast on Dark Sky Films DVD with commentary and extras from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
Offline reading:
Michael Reeves (British Film Directors) by Benjamin Halligan, Manchester University Press, 2003
Post by Adrian J. Smith
