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Thursday, September 22, 2016

Where a Single Lab Set Will Do ...

First-Runs of Kronos Get a Bonus With She-Devil

Lippert and Crew Let Loose a She-Devil (1957)

J.Archer Referees Catfight w/ Two She-Devils
Good enough ideas could sometimes rescue cheapest sci-fi past a time when major companies were willing to bet on the genre. By 1957, about all you had left was actors hashing out concepts that could as easily be read in far-out anthologies or done on radio. There just wasn't willingness to spend for visual effects or well known players. An exception that year was Universal and The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it had a gimmick sure-fire as fantasy could get, and how could you tell the story of a shrinking man without having him shrink? In She-Devil, it's mostly personality change that comes over Mari Blanchard after experimental serum gets her past imminent death, resulting sex lure a threat to all male-kind. That last has excited interest among those who study gender roles as understood to have been enforced in the 50's, and if that's a boost to Blu-Ray sales, I say bring on closer readings. Bob Lippert had paw prints on She-Devil, even as he went uncredited, black-and-white scope there to emphasize decor that's lacking. This was long among missing of chillers from its era, and I double-taked on word that Olive would release it in HD. Go forward like me with low expectations and you'll be surprised how good She-Devil turns out, truly a 50's sci-fi quickie for fans who thought they'd seen everything.

2 Comments:

Blogger john k said...

SHE DEVIL is good and KRONOS even better but neither are as good as Kurt Neumann's
ROCKETSHIP XM..also from Lippert. Neumann was a director who really could make something out of nothing.Lippert had enough faith in Neumann to up his budget for
THE FLY (reportedly $450,000-$500,000) the film made a fortune-but sadly Neumann
passed away before the film was released.Had he lived Neumann was set to direct
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari a film that Lippert eventually made with another director.

11:08 AM  
Blogger Dave K said...

"Good" is kind of strong for SHE DEVIL, but it sure is interesting. You're right this one has been out of view for a while, but boomers who caught it back in the day probably remember that goofy hair color effect (brunette to blonde in an instant with no lap disolves) better than many contemporaneous Oscar winners. Albert Dekker's odd relationship with Kelly and Blanchard seems a re-configured echo of the trio he formed with Barry Sullivan and Belita in the 1946 noir SUSPENSE. In both cases, Dekker gets all the plummy dialogue while the audience tries to figure out why these three keep hanging out together.

Pretty sure you are also spot on about the majors pretty much giving up on A budget horror and/or sci-fi for a while, but if you pick up any theater page from any any town circa 1957-58, it's astonishing just how many of the low rent kind were in release. I'm thinking a lot of folks were content to make nickles while big studios lost dollars.

3:06 PM  

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