The She Beast (1966) – Review

This is a wild little loopy horror flick that’s half Gothic grudges, half absurd B-movie antics. It’s rough around the edges, deeply weird, and often more entertaining for its missteps than its successful scares. But tucked inside the chaos is the seed of a young Michael Reeves experimenting with horror form and Barbara Steele, doing what she does best.

Also known as Revenge of the Blood Beast, this film kicks off in present-day Vaubrac, Transylvania. We find Count Von Helsing (John Karlsen) flipping through a dusty old manuscript that recounts the fate of Vardella, a witch who was drowned two centuries earlier for crimes that probably boiled down to “existing while weird.” As she sank beneath the waves, she didn’t just die quietly; she spat out a curse promising revenge on everyone involved and their unlucky descendants. It’s the kind of melodramatic, centuries-spanning vendetta horror movies thrive on, and Von Helsing treats it like gospel. While most people would shrug this off as a creepy bedtime story, he’s clearly decided it’s his sacred duty to obsess over every grim detail, waiting for the day when the curse comes home to roost.

Is his name “Von Helsing” so he doesn’t get sued by the Van Helsing family?

Meanwhile, newlyweds Philip (Ian Ogilvy) and Veronica (Barbara Steele) check into a local inn run by Ladislav Groper (Mel Welles), a drunk, lecherous innkeeper whose name alone screams “Do not book here.” While Groper huffs and puffs their luggage upstairs, the couple enjoys some tea, only to be ambushed by Von Helsing, who won’t stop blathering about Dracula, local curses, and other honeymoon-ruining small talk. Veronica, ever the diplomat, tells him to drop by tomorrow at noon, knowing full well they’ll be long gone at sunrise. Of course, fate (and bad writing) has other plans.

“What, you didn’t check your TripAdvisor before coming here?”

That night, Philip discovers Groper peeping through the window like it’s amateur hour in Transylvania. He beats the creep bloody, but Veronica insists they still spend the night because… logic? The next morning, their car mysteriously swerves into a lake, and instead of his wife, Philip finds himself staring at the waterlogged corpse of Vardella. The truck driver (Ennio Antonelli) who fishes her out panics, Philip freaks, and Von Helsing pops up like a horror tour guide to calmly say, “Relax, I’ve dealt with witch resurrections before.”

If you can’t trust a Von Helsing, who can you trust?

Vardella, wearing Veronica’s face, slashes her way through the descendants of her killers until Von Helsing jabs her with a syringe and hides her at the hotel. The truck driver, angling for freedom, tips off the police, who find the body and schedule an autopsy…the fastest way to wreck a resurrection. Philip and Von Helsing steal it back, hijack a police van, and race to the lake, drugging Vardella (and a few cops) along the way. Exactly two centuries to the minute after her execution, they perform the ritual. However, the ending leaves it dangling: did Veronica return, or is the witch still grinning in the shadows?

“I told you we should have gone to Niagara Falls.”

Stray Observations:

• The villagers have a very large and elaborate dunking device to drown the witch. And I have to ask, “Was it built just for Vardella, or are witches a continuing problem around here?”
• Groper is a name you would not choose if your goal is subtlety. He’s also an alcoholic voyeur innkeeper who tries (in one subplot) to sexually assault his own niece. That’s… textbook B-movie villainy.
• Sometimes characters act like idiots (e.g. Veronica insisting on staying the night after the Groper spy business, or Philip not simply burning everything down and running). But that’s part of the fun.
• The timing of the final ritual (exactly 200 years to the minute) is such a dramatic device, but the film never really gives you faith that it’s going to work or that our heroes know exactly what they’re doing.
• Vardella may be a witch, and she certainly looks the part, but once resurrected, her “curse” appears to consist of her running around strangling or hacking people to death. That doesn’t seem all that witchery to me.

Did she lose her book on Black Magic?

By 1966, the Gothic horror tradition (Hammer, Italian Gothic, etc.) was starting to feel a bit threadbare, and younger directors were looking to push things toward mood, atmosphere, or even psychological edge. The She Beast sits awkwardly on that cusp: part Hammer-style curse vengeance, part proto-giallo weirdness, part B-movie oddity. Not to mention featuring a car chase right out of the Keystone Cops. As Michael Reeves’s debut feature, it’s messy and raw, but you can see the impulse to break from formulaic monsters and lean into unease.

This was definitely a break from formula.

Reeves doesn’t fully control the tone as the movie veers from camp to attempted dread, from exposition dumps to sudden bursts of violence, from awkward local satire to gothic curse narrative. But what’s interesting is his willingness to let scenes breathe (sometimes too much), and to inject visual awkwardness — odd framing, slow zooms, strange cut geometry — which hint at a director trying to find his voice, a sensibility he would sharpen in the later Witchfinder General. In that sense, She Beast is a learning ground: you see the ambition, the misfires, the rough edges, and the occasional flash of cunning.

Also, some of the funniest process shots ever put to film.

It goes without saying that Barbara Steele is the undeniable star (even if she’s absent or subdued much of the time). Her face, presence, and aura give the film the glue it desperately needs. Even in modern dress, even in short screentime, she carries weight; you believe (or at least want to believe) that she’s more than the sum of the strange plot machinery. Her beauty, her intensity, and her Gothic lineage lend the film a gravitas that its script can’t always sustain. Because she’s working under severe time constraints (rumoured to have shot most of her stuff in one marathon day), she doesn’t always get full character beats. Still, her performance feels like she is channelling a kind of haunted dignity and allowing the curse plot to ride on her shoulders. In weaker hands, the movie would collapse completely, but with Steele, it tilts, wobbles, but stays upright.

“I shall be back.”

In conclusion, The She Beast is a messy, uneven, occasionally absurd excursion into witch-revenge horror, but it holds a special fascination precisely because of its faults. Michael Reeves shows flashes of visual daring, though he hasn’t yet fully tamed the beast of tone, pacing, and coherence. The film’s silly character decisions, slapstick detours, and odd satirical flourishes make it as much a curiosity as a fright piece. Yet Barbara Steele’s gravitas and the weird energy that crackles in certain moments elevate it above mere campy junk. For anyone interested in the roots of Reeves’s later work, or just a weird night in with a cult horror oddity, The She Beast is worth the plunge.