Review

Holly, his butler, and his young friend Leo are hanging at a belly dancing bar in Palestine 1918. A shady looking Arab notes Leo and leaves a honey trap in the form of the lovely Ustance to entice Leo away from his friends. This naturally works and Leo finds himself kidnapped. But rather than a ransom scam Leo finds himself attracted to Ayesha, a blonde bombshell with all the right curves. Ayesha gives Leo a ring and a map telling him that he must cross the dessert to the mountains of the moon to return the ring to her, and then he can have everything he desires.

Returning to his friends Leo presents the ring to Holly, who identifies it as an antiquity from Egypt. They decide to undertake the quest Leo was given in order to discover the site of a fabled lost city. Naturally not everything goes to plan, what with dessert raiders, Leo's likeness on an ancient coin, and the barbaric civilisation Ayesha rules over. Add in a flame of eternal youth, tribesman who like to sacrifice strangers, and you have the ingredients of a rip roaring adventure story. Saddle up the camels and let's get underway with this early Hammer production.

Seems this is the year for cinematic challenges. I already have a "half ton of movies" to wade through, now someone thought it would be a cool idea if I tackled the Hammer Studios back catalogue. I'm nearly always up for some Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee shenanigans, both actors appear in She, so I signed right on board the challenge and couldn't wait for the ship to leave the harbour. Besides which, with Hammer having re-ignited their Production fires there are probably going to be quite a few new titles to wade through. To kick things off I was sent a box set called "The Ultimate Hammer Collection" that contains 21 movies. So let's get down to vampires, busty ladies, and English politeness as we rip the lid off some movies in "Hammer Time!"

She is one of those good old fashion English movies that is filmed entirely in the studio yet somehow manages to successfully conjure the wide open spaces of exotic landscapes. Here we have our team of Brits traveling across the desert of lost souls, being waylaid by raiders, and everything seemingly perfectly real. It's to the credit of Hammer Studios that even in this early offering, realism was high on the agenda. The lava under the throne room was somewhat less believable, but hey you can't blow hot all the time. I was totally convinced that I was being transported to exotic Middle East lands and in the wash up that's all that counts. I'm here for the action not the picture postcards. About the only problem I had with the actual landscapes were the obvious Europeans jiving away in the tribal dance scenes.

The lost civilisation created for Ayesha is certainly interesting. There's a real feeling of Egypt under the Pharaohs mixed in with imperial Roman legions. Clearly the set designers decided a lost civilisation would necessarily develop in different fashion to its parent culture. What was cool was the civilisation being shown in decline with the eternal Ayesha ruling over its final days. Interestingly it's the very nature of Ayesha's harsh rule that causes the revolt that heralds the end of times.

While not the best ever Hammer movie, well okay it reaches for epic and falls short, it still reamins watchable

There are certainly enough horror elements in the movie to have ScaryMinds readers sitting up and taking notice. Leo has continued visions of Ayesha and seemingly remembers things from a past life. Of course there's the whole fire of eternal youth, which in one scene hits a horror concept that is recycled in a number of later horror outings. And of course a whole bunch of tribesman being flung into a pit of lava, now that never gets old for this Reviewer.

While She captures the whole nature of the boys own adventure there just seems to be an aspect missing, something needed to be thrown into the mix to give the movie that must needed extra dimension. Christopher Lee is entirely underused, and barely recognisable, while Peter Cushing naturally dominates, though I guess we are meant to be focusing on Leo. There seems to be a few aspects to this movie that needed further exploration rather than simply becoming plot points to move things along.

Surprisingly both John Richardson (Leo) and Ursula Andress (Ayesha) turn in lack lustre performances and have absolutely zero chemistry going down on screen. Considering She hinges on Leo being the reincarnation of Ayesha's centuries dead lover, this is almost unforgivable. When Leo finally gives in to Ayesha's demands it simply doesn't ring true, neither does his eventually rejection of what Ayesha stands for however. The movie fails on this relationship, with Peter Cushing unable to drag it out of the fires of disappointment.

While I did enjoy She, and thought it was as good a place as anywhere to get this thing happening, as the end credits rolled I was left wondering "is that all?". Hammer Studios are attempting to hit out at an epic story here, lost civilisation etc, but fail to deliver the necessary framework to gain anything like an epic feeling. If dipping your toes in the Hammer waters then this one is probably not the place to start. A disappointing movie overall, but hey you don't necessarily get everything you could hope for from every movie you watch.

There's a general lack of options available to score a copy of She, I'm assuming here you don't have a DVD rental outlet at hand with a massive library available to choose from. Either you can hit The Ultimate Hammer Collection or I guess score a stand-alone copy. Either way you're looking at an import or doing a bit of eBay surfing. Good luck if hunting out the movie, in fact best of British.