1957's "She Demons" marked the the second in a quartet of infamous horror titles from resident Astor Pictures director Richard E. Cunha, boasting an increased budget of $65,000 to complete a double bill with his debut "Giant from the Unknown." This is the picture that heralded the duo still to come, not a lone Conquistador for a menace but beautiful busty women wearing monstrous faces and little else threatening the weak stomachs of male characters on screen while parading in skimpy outfits for the benefit of masculine audience members. For those who admired Allison Hayes in her sultry dance of voodoo in "The Disembodied," there are a multitude of shapely bodies engaged in some kind of movement, some perfectly normal looking, others more savage due to their fanged appearance, resulting from experiments being conducted on a Pacific island stronghold for aging Nazis still devoted to the cause, the volcanic finale shot at the ubiquitous Bronson Caverns. The big cheese is Rudolph Anders as Col. Karl Osler, whose wife has been disfigured by the heat of molten lava, attempting to find a cure from the faces of female subjects kidnapped from neighboring islands. This hoary, old fashioned plot dragged out to 77 minutes is a rehash of Bela Lugosi's devoted husbands from Monogram items like "The Corpse Vanishes" or "Voodoo Man," while predating an identical European trend begun with "Eyes Without a Face," adding to the decade's mix "Atom Age Vampire," Jess Franco's "The Awful Dr. Orlof" (and various follow ups), Peter Cushing's "Corruption," and Claude Mulot's "The Blood Rose." Osler isn't played as much of a threat, but as described he sounds very much like the feared Josef Mengele, well versed in the art of transmutation in seeking to create the perfect Aryan specimen, Rudolph Anders repeating this low key approach in his next role as Boris Karloff's best friend in "Frankenstein - 1970," in which Karloff's scarred and twisted visage is the result of Nazi emasculation (Anders had smaller parts in "Phantom from Space" and "The Snow Creature"). Of greater marquee value for Cunha is casting Irish McCalla for the lead, television's Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, starting out a spoiled socialite before settling down to become a woman of action moving through more jungle hijinks (her last feature was playing a nurse in 1960's "Hands of a Stranger"). Little known Tod Griffin offers up masculine heroics, Charlie Chan veteran Victor Sen Yung provides comic relief, and reliable Gene Roth is again one of the villains, though dispatched too early to make much impression. More outrageous than "Giant from the Unknown," "She Demons" would be matched in pulchritude by the director's next double bill, "Missile to the Moon" and "Frankenstein's Daughter," before returning behind the camera as cinematographer, finally eking out a living as proprietor of an Oceanside video store in California.
Review of She Demons
