Simply Perfect

Excellent but underrated film

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Maybe I watched a different movie than others but I liked this one quite a bit! Certainly next to Cahn's other film with Marla English, Voodoo Woman, this is a masterpiece. A good cast and atmospheric direction (setting a coastal location, mostly revolved around Tom Conway's beach house) help a great deal. The plot is a bit odd, though: hypnotist Chester Morris is obsessed with his assistant, Marla, putting her under deep so he can summon folks from the past including a lady from the 1600s and a sea creature that appears at first in a cloud before manifesting into a scaly monster that kills at his command. Morris seems to will the monster to kill either because he's an evil bastard, wants to prove himself, or a bit of both. Skeptical doctor, Lance Fuller, rivals Chester for Marla. Conway of the Val Lewton productions is an agent who sees dollar signs and sets Chester up as a star hypnotist not realizing of the danger to himself and others who live in and around his coastal community. Blaisdel's monster, rubber-suited with a lot of detail to make it aquatic and distinctive, is probably his masterwork. Cathy Downs is the elegant blond daughter of Conway hot for Fuller, while Fuller resists life amongst the aristocratic jet set. Ron Randell is the detective out to stop Chester. Marla is a stunner, much easier to take than as the wretched gold seeker in Voodoo Woman. Sexy and vulnerable, Marla offers a victim needing release from the hypnotic stranglehold of Chester. Some decent dialogue (especially from Fuller regarding the affluent folk wanting him to commiserate with them regularly and the startling ability of Chester for which his science has a hard time explaining), delightful cold-blooded and stern-faced Chester in all his villainy, and the spiritual mist that emerges from Marla which is a rather effectively done special effect to prove the hypnosis used on her are reason enough to thwart the rather negative reputation this little B-movie has against it.

And now for something completely different: a woman is hypnotically regressed to reveal a former life as a seventeenth-century lass and one of the primeval sea creatures from which--didn't ya know--humanity evolved. The beast looks like a cross between Gillman and a gargoyle, but the really odd thing about it is that it emerges from the ocean as a ghostly figure and quickly materializes into a solid man-size monster that dispatches victims with a karate chop to the shoulder with a crab-like, but apparently non-prehensile, fin/claw. This female of the species goes on rampages as rapacious as any male and only once demonstrates any discrimination in the attack. It's difficult to tell what, if anything, might kill or even repel her, since the cheap sets call for such tight shots that she's on top of her prey before they scarcely begin to fight. And when the sieve of a script does try to explain anything--let alone the monster--it just causes more confusion. The slimy hypnotist who controls the latest carnation/evolution of the creature somehow does so despite her profound hatred for him and desperate resistance to trance. He's seen leaving an apparent murder scene, yet these pre-Miranda-era cops fear lack of evidence and a suit for false arrest--which of course means charging someone for something that's not a crime. As anyone knows, murder IS a crime, and the police think the large, reptilian tracks left at the death site were faked by a human being. Of course, the cops in this film also finger half the items in sight and phone the lab boys only after throwing flour all over the floor to check the footprints. Much of the plot and dialogue are just as dopey, so it can be fun to anticipate the next oddball occurrence. The acting is adequate, though Tom Conway appears to sometimes stare too obviously at cue cards. Even the (unneccessary) comic relief is rather weird. It's a loquacious Scandinavian butler who keeps losing his bow-tie.

POSSIBLE PLOT SPOILERS!!!! Hypnotist Dr. Lombardi (Chester Morris) puts his assistant Andrea (Marla English) into a deep sleep. When this happens her thing in a past life (the title creature) comes out of the sea and kills people. Lombardi knows this and "predicts" the killings. Dr. Ted Erickson (Lance Fuller) thinks Lombardi is a fraud and tries to prove it. He also falls in love with Andrea which bothers Lombradi a LOT.... Absolutely ridiculous story but this isn't a total bomb. Some of the discussions on reincarnation and past lives are interesting, there's good direction and a really eerie music score. Also the creature itself has become one of the legends of horror movies. It looks pretty scary and has HUGE breasts!!!! You just have to laugh when the creature attacks people--and they just stand there and do NOTHING so it can kill them! The acting wavers. Fuller seems to be (wisely) kidding the material but isn't bad. Morris is VERY serious (and dull). English is just stunningly beautiful and very good in a tricky role. Tom Conway shows up in a small role and has fun with the material.So--this has its good points but the silly story and slow pace really wears you down. Worth catching at least once for the monster. I give it a 3.

**SPOILERS** The movie "The She Creature" seems to have been highly influenced by the reincarnation craze of the 1950's revolving around the past life of Colorado housewife Mrs. Simmons who in her previous incarnation was the 19th century Irish woman Bridey Murphy.The movie instead of concentrating on the reincarnation angle goes all over the place with the somewhat unstable carnival hypnotist and mind reader, as well as prognosticator, Dr. Carlo Lombari, Chester Morris, who's completely obsessed with his beautiful assistant Andrea Talbott, Marla English. Dr. Lombardi is so possessive of Andrea that his trying to get her to be his soul-mate just turns her off to the wild and crazy guy.It's when the handsome and a bit skeptic, of Dr. Lombardi's psychic powers, Dr. TedErckson, Lance Fuller, comes on the scene that things really start to unwind with the by now mad Doctor Lombardi going so far as conjuring up this She, or Sea, Creature to do Dr. Erickson in. The creature has been around for some time in the movie even before Dr. Erickson showed up. It was Dr. Ericksons presence that really brought the worst out of it as the thing, being controlled by Lombardi, went on a rampage murdering some half dozen young people who were enjoying themselves on the beach.Even though Lombardi is on the scene of every one of the She Creature's killings he's totally innocent, to the disgust of police Let. Ed James (Ron Randell), of them. Lombardi is at the scene of the crime but the evidence exonerates him . It's as if Lombardi is pulling the polices, and Let. James, leg in order to both show them up and prove his power as a psychic is genuine.As for the hypnotized and at times completely composed Andera she's in a life and death struggle tug of war between her "master" Dr. Lombardi and "saviour" Dr. Erickson that goes on for almost the entire film. Besides being a woman from 17th century England, Elizabeth Wetherby, It's also brought out that Andera was this 1950's looking spaceman, or spacewoman,in the very distance, about 300 to 400 million years ago, past that came out of the primordial soup and was to become the precursor or mother of the human race;The She Creature!The film has money hungry entrepreneur Timothy Chapple, Tom Conway, make a deal with Dr. Lombardi to manage his carnival act and make millions for both himself and the mad doctor. What Chapple doesn't know is that whatever Dr. Lombardi is doing is not and act but the real McCoy and in the end he's to get the shock of his life finding that fact out. The She Creature her, or it, self takes care of business by finally putting an end to Dr. Lombardi's obsession with both it and Andrea, whom it supposed to have been way back then in prerecorded history. Finishing off the crazed Dr. Lombardi who wanted it to instead finish off Dr. Erickson the bumbling and hardly able to walk She Creature stumbles back to the ocean with the cops, who are unable to see it, being directed by Dr. Erickson, who can, to shoot at it as it finally disappears under the waves.Were given to understand that It, the She Creature, will come back in the very near future to both shock as well as put it's audience to sleep, the thing was about the least scariest monster in movie history,in a new film sequel. As far as I know that happily never happened which was a blessing to everyone, the cast crew and those watching the film, involved with it.