She Devil Blu-ray Review
Evidently blondes do have more fun.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 2, 2013
There's a certain cheese factor that must be taken into account when watching a certain class of low budget science
fiction or horror fare. That seems especially true of films from the fifties, when a perhaps collective fear of nuclear
holocaust tended to color a lot of the plot lines, at least tangentially. Some films, like
The Incredible Shrinking
Man, make a nuclear mushroom cloud part of their very plot, while a glut of other similar films allude to our then
relatively newfound scientific "expertise" by positing plotlines where Man's investigations into natural phenomena leads
to certain disaster. This of course has been an age old horror trope, as such iconic fare as
Frankenstein easily prove. But many fifties outings took this
basic idea and infused with a lot of quasi-scientific mumbo jumbo, while never shirking from that same central conceit
that Mary Shelley herself had exploited more than a century previously, namely that Man should not be poking his nose
around in territory that should rightfully be reserved for God. Playing out simultaneously with this phenomenon was
another sort of mini-trend in the fifties, films about
women who suddenly morphed into other versions of
themselves. Probably the best remembered in this sub-genre is the delightful Allison Hayes outing
Attack of the 50
Foot Woman, but there's another salient example in the Roger Corman opus
The Wasp Woman starring
Susan Cabot. Presaging both of those efforts is 1957's
She Devil (not to be confused with the similarly titled
She-Devil, which featured the decidedly odd couple starring duo of Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr). This is yet
another lo-fi outing that features well intended scientists who just can't help themselves from investigating things that
are better left to God and/or Nature, though at least in this film,
one of the scientists has the good sense to
object, albeit only just a little and only in the film's opening sequences.
When one thinks of iconic fantasy and science fiction authors who were active in the first half or so of the twentieth
century, two three-named authors spring instantly to mind, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells. Probably few other
than
true science fiction geeks have ever heard of Stanley Grauman Weinbaum, and yet this unassuming Wisconsian
is
credited by many authors (including Isaac Asimov and Lester del Rey) as having helped to invent the modern science
fiction genre back in the 1930s. Weinbaum's nascent career was cut short by cancer when he was barely 33 years old,
but he left a number of high profile works which have continued to influence fantasy writers ever since, the most
notable
of which is probably "A Martian Odyssey". Rather strangely, only one of Weinbaum's pieces has been adapted to
various
media, and even
more strangely, it's been adapted a
lot. Ironically this piece includes a form of "adapt"
in
its very title. "The Adaptive Ultimate" was published in November 1935, a mere month before Weinbaum's sad demise,
but it went on to enjoy no fewer than three television versions, at least one radio enterprise, and the 1957 film
She
Devil.
Our two unwise scientists are Dr. Dan Scott (Jack Kelly), who has derived a serum from the supposed "most adaptive"
species of all, the fruit fly, and his mentor, Dr. Richard Bach (Albert Dekker), an elderly man who is funding Scott's
research. Scott has been trying his serum out on a menagerie of animals kept in his laboratory, seeing one putative
miracle after another happen after he injects his subjects with the drug. A cat's broken spine miraculously heals, and a
chimp's double pneumonia simply vanishes in a matter of moments. Scott wants to move on to human trials, but Bach is
the temporary voice of caution, finally relenting only by agreeing that a human subject must be terminal and must agree
to be the experimental test subject.
Of course an appropriate human subject quickly turns up, a tubercular woman named Kyra Zelas (Mari Blanchard) who
is in her death throes. In a moment of perhaps unintended humor, Dr. Bach first tells Kyra she's going to be fine,
despite the fact that he's just concluded she's about to die, and then a few minutes later he's asking her to sign a
release form so that Dr. Scott can inject her with his miracle cure. Kyra of course agrees and the serum does its stuff
remarkably well. Within a very short span of time, Kyra's lungs have cleared and she in fact tells both doctors that
she's never felt better in her life. Worries start to intrude when Scott attempts to take a blood sample and can't get
the needle into Kyra's arm. He finally succeeds, but both doctors are stunned to see the injection site disappear the
moment the needle is withdrawn. Kyra's adaptive healing powers are obviously
highly evolved.
It's at this point that
She Devil actually becomes quite a bit of fun. Dr. Scott has more or less fallen in love with
Kyra, but Kyra has other ideas. She sets off on a series of mad escapades that sees her willfully changing her hair color
from brunette to blonde when she's being chased by the police to dispatching a husband with whom she's grown
bored. Meanwhile the good
doctors are only too aware that they have, to paraphrase a horror staple, created a monster and they need to figure
out some way to get Kyra back to her old self (hopefully minus the tuberculosis).
The film has a certain off kilter quality that will either strike viewers as charming or maddening. Dr. Scott seems almost
willfully ignorant of Kyra's crime spree, and is only too willing to forgive and forget. And as with many B-movies, there is
a
lot of portentous talking, including the requisite amount of scientific mumbo jumbo, in an obvious attempt to
generate some feeling of "reality". But as far as these cheese-fests go,
She Devil is actually surprisingly well
made and well acted. The source short story is ripe for another (ahem) adaptation, one with a higher budget and
better special effects, but
She Devil remains quite a bit of fun if taken with the appropriate grain (and/or pillar)
of salt.
