Cast:
Mari Blanchard (Kyra Zelas), Jack Kelly (Dr. Dan Scott), Albert Dekker (Dr. Richard Bach), John Archer (Barton Kendall), Fay Baker (Evelyn Kendall), Blossom Rock (Hannah, the Housekeeper), and Paul Cavanagh (Sugar Daddy) Produced and Directed by Kurt Neumann (#618 - Rocketship X-M, #710 - The Fly, and #832 - Kronos)
Review:
You may or may not be surprised to hear that this falls under the web of film producer/cinema chain owner Robert L. Lippert. In 1956, he struck up a deal with 20th Century Fox that saw his Regal Films company make films that would be distributed by Fox. Lippert and Fox would do countless films together, and She Devil was released as a double bill with Kronos that had the same director in Kurt Neumann, who directed four features with Lippert as a producer (contrary to what it says in the film, which lists just Neumann as producer/director, since Lippert was trying to escape a rule about residual payments and TV). Both films happen to share the same cinematographer in Karl Struss, who shot various productions over the decades that ranged from Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) to The Great Dictator (1940). Regal managed to convince Fox to let them use their CinemaScope format for their films (which were in black-and-white), which they did under the name of "RegalScope". The film is based on the short story "The Adaptive Ultimate", written by Stanley G. Weinbaum, which first appeared in print in November of 1935, one month before Weinbaum's death from lung cancer at 33. Prior to this film, it had adapted to radio (1949) and television (1949, 1952, 1955). Kurt Neumann and Carroll Young wrote the screenplay together. The story and film are a bit different in little details. Her first act of trouble is killing an old man in a park for money that she gets away with by changing her hair color before the trial begins. Also, she apparently can intensify her beauty as a mode of adaptation, which she either uses on a politician (story) or a millionaire (film). Of course, the mode of trying to take her down is the same in story and film: carbon dioxide.
It really isn't a horror film as it sometimes is labeled with being "sci-fi horror". It seems a bit too closed in to be anything other than a mild thriller, mostly because they have established a threat so clear that the only way to win is basically cheating. I mean, you've created someone who is probably immune to getting diseases worse than tuberculosis that can heal from bullet wounds and change their hair color, so the fact that she has a small body count seems more of a surprise than anything. Sure, you could interpret the film as one of attempted liberation, because she really is someone who is given newfound power (by men) that simply takes what she wants. But really it is just the doomed idiocy of two folks who should know better than to look away at the threat that grows until it has gone on a bit too much (such as admitting to bonking someone on the head when asked). The movie can't really pull a dilemma that you haven't already thought you saw in "insert Frankenstein feature/ripoff". Hell, what's the point of having "devil" in your title? Blanchard had been cast in various supporting roles throughout the 1950s, such as Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) along with various B-movies such as Son of Sinbad (1955). Sadly, she was diagnosed with cancer in 1963 and passed away in 1970 at the age of 47. Blanchard might be pegged as the femme fatale type if this was actually meant to be a noir, because she does prove quite entertaining in a role that overshadows everyone around her, one that sees her as both brunette and blonde in hair (truth be told, dark hair always looks better) while finding just how much it means to be alive and ready to get what they want. Undeniably, having the ability to take on a leopard and not have a lingering wound could make an interesting god complex, and yet the movie can only find the smallest of threats to establish with the destruction of a marriage, but Blanchard still shines in watchability right down to the end. Kelly and Dekker are just too ordinary in their foolishness to really make them interesting beyond the fact that they made the simple choice to not murder people and that's it. Granted, the killer is supposed to be interesting when it comes to stuff like this, but man, you need even the tiniest bit of tension or interest when they aren't on screen, which is surprising when one of the actors ended up starring in Maverick that same year and the other was known for various adversarial roles such as The Killers (1946). It probably seems a bit too convenient that the 77-minute run-time comes with an ending where the threat is basically neutered without much trouble (of course, they include a reference to religion within the last few minutes when wondering just what will happen to the neutered she-devil, which is rich when it is revealed that she has tuberculosis again). As a whole, the movie falls just a bit short to really make a consistent enjoyable time, but it surely would be a decent double feature with another B-movie where one can sit back and look upon the wide frames and see for themselves how much a lead performance matters for both good and terrible films.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
