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.
Review of The She-Creature
