(Spoilers!) Originally shot as Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror but eventually released under the misleading title Galaxy of Terror — Planet of Terror would have been more on the mark, as almost all the "terror" of the narrative transpires on a single planet — this cult fave is but one of multiple cheap science fiction exploitation flicks produced by Roger Corman that hit the shopping malls, drive-ins, and grindhouses in the wake of the successive whammy that was Star Wars (1977 / trailer)* and Alien (1979 / trailer). Galaxy of Terror, like its predecessors Battle Beyond the Stars (1980 / trailer) and Android (1980 / trailer) and its antecedents Forbidden World(1982) and Space Raiders (1983), is one of the many impressive slabs of fun trash produced by Roger Corman during his final years at his New World Pictures before he sold the production company in 1983 and moved on to eventually found New Horizons.
*Hans shot first!
Today, of the multitude of CormanT&A & Blood&Guts science fiction productions of the early eighties, Galaxy of Terror probably holds greater title familiarity than other "better" productions. Even among those genre fans who have never seen Galaxy of Terror, the title is familiar (if not spoken of in reverential tones) as the movie in which a woman, the crew's technical officer Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell of New Year's Evil [1980 / trailer]), gets raped to death by a huge maggot — a truly disgusting and trashy concept that deserves its infamy, although it is hardly the most disgusting and trashy concept to slither into a Corman-produced Alien semi-clone.* The maggot scene, in any event, originally helped garner the movie an X-rating, so it was trimmed before Galaxy of Terror reached the public; indeed, the trailer of the film features crasser shots than found in the movie, if but for mere seconds. Unluckily, the original X-rated cut, which would surely not be an X by today's standards, appears to be lost.
*In regards to sadly and undeservedly underappreciated Corman-produced Alien semi-clones, we here at a wasted life would place Corman's Forbidden World [1982], which shares some of Galaxy of Terror's sets made of McDonald take-away cartons, at the top of the list. It is just as cheap and sleazy and exploitive — easily with thrice the nudity quotient of Galaxy of Terror — but is a "better" film in general. Unluckily (?), its misogynistic money-shot scene, also involving the death of that movie's only blonde female, Dr. Barbara Glaser (June Chadwick), while equally deserving of infamy, inexplicably never quite gained the level of notoriety that the maggot scene of Galaxy of Terror still enjoys today.
There is, of course, another reason why Galaxy of Terror enjoys some film historical popularity: the people participating in it. Famously, it is one of James Cameron's first credits: he was both the art director and a second-unit director on the film, with some sources even claiming that he filmed the maggot-rape scene. (Others give Roger Corman as the man pointing the camera at the slime-covered boobs.*) At the time of its release, the movie also gained a lot of press in the US for featuring the actress Erin Moran (18 Oct 1960 – 22 Apr 2017) as Alluma, the ship's empath; she was a very familiar face and name because of her feature role as Joanie Cunningham on the classic sitcom Happy Days (1974-84 / theme song) and its dud of a spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi (1982-83 / theme song). And today, of course, everyone recognizes the then-unknown actor playing the crewman Ranger: genre-film staple Robert Englund. (Seriously: if you don't know who Englund is, what are you doing reading this blog?)**
*Whose gravity-defying butterballs they are is open to occasional contention. In general, it is accepted that the bongos belong to the actress playing the part, namely Taaffe O'Connell, who has even talked about the discomforts of the shoot. But some sources out there claim that the bronskies belong to O'Connell's body double, Iya Labunka, who later went on to become Wes Craven's third wife and co-produced fine stuff like Heathers (1989 / trailer), Meet the Applegates (1990 / trailer), and Craven's own My Soul to Take (2010 / trailer). During the big final fight scene, in any event, one can be pretty sure that the immobile, slime-covered bikini-stuffers seen are those of O'Connell. Over at the fun website Flashbak, the maggot scene is rated #10 on its list of The Top 20 Gratuitous Nude Scenes of the '80s.
**Many of the rest of the cast are not exactly no-names, at least not among cult-film and pop-culture fanatics. The original My Favorite Martian (1963–66) Ray Walston ([2 Nov 1914 – 1 Jan 2001] of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington [1977, with Edy Williams, Cisse Cameron& Marilyn Joi] and Popcorn[1991]) is on hand as Kore, the crew's duplicitous cook; the future soft-core sex drama specialist Zalman King (23 May 1941 – 3 Feb 2012) grunts and glares as Baelon, the rescue unit's team leader; minor cult actress Grace Zabriskie (of Wild at Heart [1990 / trailer], Child's Play 2 [1990 / trailer] and so much more) overacts as the baggage-carrying Captain Trantor; and the legendary Sid Haig [(14 July 1939 – 21 Sept 2019) of Black Mama White Mama[1973], Coffy[1973], House of a 1000 Corpses [2003] and so much more) grunts all of a half-dozen lines of dialogue as crewman Quuhod.
The events of Galaxy of Terror play out in a dystopian future in which the all-powerful mysterious leader known as The Master sends a dysfunctional team to the planet of Morganthus to rescue the crew of the spacecraft Remus. Before you can say "this film looks cheap", the new crew also crash lands on the planet, where they find only the mangled remains of the earlier crew. In typical body-count fashion, the crew slowly gets decimated: The plebe Cos (Jack Blessing [29 July 1951 – 14 Nov 2017]) is the first to go, quickly becoming monster food, and he is soon followed by mission commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens [28 Sept 1926 – 19 Sept 2012] of The Changeling [1980 / trailer], The Man With Two Brains [1983 / trailer] and Zero Patience [1993 / trailer]). Somewhere along the line, the hero of the movie, Cabren (Edward Albert [20 Feb 1951 – 22 Sept 2006) of Space Marines [1996]) says "Stay close. We can't afford to be separated", but of course everyone wanders off alone at one point or another and is killed — including (Shock!) Joanie Cunningham. Ranger (Englund) eventually realizes that they are being hunted and killed by the personification of their fears, just in time for Cabren to confront the person pulling all the strings... and for the movie to resolve itself with some truly ridiculous metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that leaves the viewer laughing at the audacious stupidity of the resolution.
The concept of crewpeople being killed off one by one via mental mindgames was eventually swiped and tweaked for the later, bigger-budgeted, and once-maligned-but-now-appreciated science fiction horror flick Event Horizon (1997), which moved the events from a planet onto a spaceship and actually stuck more tightly to the concept of the deadly personification of one's fears. In Galaxy of Terror, however, the explanation doesn't really hold water: Okay, Damea (O'Connell) does says at one point that she hates maggots, but we are hard placed to remember Ranger ever saying that he was afraid of himself. Likewise, Joanie Cunningham dies less from a personification of claustrophobia than from deadly tentacles, while others are simply killed by monsters. Most notably, however, strongman Quuhod (Sid Haig) is actually killed by the very thing he worships, not what he fears. (True, he does at one point say "I live and die by the crystals", but he was merely expressing a religious platitude, not his deepest fear.)
But then, perhaps it is too much to expect that a movie like Galaxy of Terror should have a watertight narrative. The movie, after all, is by no definition a good movie, exploitation or otherwise, even if James Cameron's art direction does occasionally (more like rarely) call to mind the low-budget colorful wonders created by Mario Bava on some of his tightest budgets — say, Hercules in the Lost World (1961 / trailer) and/or Planet of the Vampires (1965 / trailer). But on the whole, what impresses more than the rare plus point of the movie are all the obvious faults: The acting is mostly terrible, the characters are barely characters, the story looser than the lips of a porn star, the direction serviceable at best, and the low budget production way too obvious. It is truly amazing that the movie is in any way entertaining. But it is.
Galaxy of Terror, like many a poorly made exploitation film of the past, is a cheap and base and tacky and cheesy ride that has the added patina of charm that age gives bad movies over the years. The maggot scene still pushes buttons today, and one or two of the deaths are effectively horrific. The movie is almost always laughable, though not necessarily where it tries to be funny. Of its ilk, there are definitely "better" flicks out there — Forbidden World, anyone? — but Galaxy of Terror nevertheless delivers roughly 1.5 hours of tacky and fun and obviously dated bad taste, even if it really doesn't have the technical or logical right to be able to do so.
Strangely, despite being rather a hit in
its day, Galaxy of Terror seems to have been the directorial swansong of its
director, Bruce D. Clark, whose short directorial career of four feature films
includes the decidedly average biker flick Naked Angels (1969 / trailer), the decidedly well-known
Blaxploitation movie Hammer (1972 / trailer, with Marilyn
Joi), and decidedly dated and pointless The Ski Bum (1971 / full movie, with Zalman
King).
A name that does not need an introduction: if you do not know who Barbara Steele is, then you don't know horror films. She was, and is, one of the great Scream Queens* of the silver screen, though the breadth of the films she made over the course of her career is broader than just the genre films for which she is best remembered. But then, with but one or two exceptions, it is within the genre sphere that her best films were made, including more than one classic.
*"In Barbara Steele's case, much like Marilyn Monroe who is viewed through the lens of a sex symbol, bestowing the title of Scream Queen might be an honor considered by her passionate fan base, but it can also be a curse for an actress of formidable intelligence, acutely cerebral and worthy of an established movie career. Steele's otherworldly beauty has been objectified by the genre that embraced her uniqueness yet her acting skill never led her to become an idolized Hollywood star, a beloved character actor, or a mainstream celebrity. Somehow she metamorphosed into a figure of fantasy and myth, chained to an archetype and recreated as an icon. One thing's for sure, she has no competition for her unique style and mesmerizing sorcery, though there are many other genre superstars that are true, I would never dismiss that. Barbara Steele is the ultimate enchantress. Queen of shadows and the divine who suffer eternally. [The Last Drive In]"
Born on 29 December 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, Barbara [Winifred] Steele studied art at the Chelsea Art School and in Paris at the Sorbonne, even as she worked in film. Signed by the Rank Organisation while still an art student, she began appearing in minor film and TV roles in the late 1950s. Her contract was sold to 20th Century Fox in 1960,* and soon thereafter she abandoned her contract for Italy, where she became famous primarily for her numerous, mostly Gothic horror movies, including some a wasted life faves. By 1969, she was married to the American screenwriter James Poe (4 Oct 1921 – 24 Jan 1980) and living in California. The couple had one child, Jonathan, and divorced in 1973 (some sources say 1978). Her acting jobs became less and her parts smaller, and she began producing television projects — highly successful ones. She hasn't been seen onscreen in a "real" film since 2014.
*"[When] Rank sold her contract to 20th Century Fox, [...] she was off to America. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she later wrote, 'I [was] greeted by a coterie of people on the steamy tarmac – one of them holding a stricken-looking black panther on a leash from one hand and an electric prong in the other. I was obliged to stand there, holding the leash of this creature for their welcoming publicity shots, implying that this was some kind of image they decided to have of me.' Little did she know that this was to be the good part of her Hollywood sojourn. [awfi]" And now, enjoy Part VI of our typically meandering and all-over-the-place career review of a true Babe of Yesteryear and Scream Queen extraordinaire.
Original German title: Der Junge Törless. Barbara Steele plays Bozena, a prostitute. Young Törless is the feature-film directorial debut of Volker Schlöndorff, a prominent "member" of the New German Cinema movement that flourished from the late sixties to the mid seventies, whose greatest international cum artistic success as a movie director is arguably his adaptation of The Tin Drum (1979 / trailer), while his biggest flop is arguably his American movie, Palmetto (1998 / trailer). Der Junge Törless, based on the debut novel of Robert Musil (6 Nov 1880 – 15 Apr 1942), Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [The Confusions of Young Törless], was produced by Louis Malle and screened at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. Selected as the German entry for Best Foreign Film for the 39th Oscars, it was rejected as a nominee.
Trailer to
Der Junge Törless:
"Volker Schlöndorff's first feature Young Törless is a scathing, uncompromising parable, not only for its most obvious reference point, World War II era Germany, but for the moral acquiescence of people everywhere when confronted with violence, brutality and unspeakable cruelty. [Only the Cinema]"
The plot, adjusted from that found at TV Guide: "Thomas Törless (Mathieu Carriere) goes off to boarding school to finish out his senior year. This expensive academy is located on the eastern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He joins his friends Reiting (Fred Dietz) and Beineberg (Bernd Tischer), and together they visit Bozena (Barbara Steele), a local prostitute who engages in sexual initiation of the schoolboys. When another student, Anselm von Basini (Marian Seidowsky), is caught stealing money from Beineberg's locker, Reiting promises not to turn him in on the condition that Basini become his personal slave. Basini is subjected to constant abuse from his masters Reiting and Beineberg, who get a sadistic joy from their physical and psychological torture. Törless becomes fascinated with the process as well, though he doesn't engage in the brutality. When the sadism becomes more than Törless can bear, he threatens to tell authorities, prompting Beineberg and Reiting to blame their schoolmate if he dares to report their actions. When the two masters hang their slave by his heels in a gymnasium full of students, Törless is horrified. The school authorities investigate this incident and call in Törless. He fully owns up to participating in the torture, yet he cannot explain his actions. The film ends with Törless leaving school on the recommendation of the headmasters. [...] The story is filmed in stark black and white, with a deliberately muted aura around the unfolding events. The boys themselves are clad in uniforms devoid of any personality. In many ways Young Törless recalls the pre-Hitler era German film Mädchen in Uniform (1931)* with its theme and tone."
Another trailer to
Der Junge Törless:
*"Due to the film's overt and openly lesbian themes, [Mädchen in Uniform a.k.a. Girls in Uniform] remains an international cult classic. [Wikipedia]." An global hit, Mädchen in Uniform was nevertheless often banned, including in Germany itself by the National Socialists. (In the US, only the positive words of Eleanor Roosevelt prevented it from being banned.) Mädchen in Uniform is based on the play Gestern und heute ["Yesterday and Today"] by "Renaissance Woman" Christa Winsloe (23 Dec 1888 – 10 Jun 1944), who was killed with her partner Simone Gentet near Cluny by four Frenchmen — depending on your source, "thugs" or "Gestapo agents" or "French criminals" — for being "Nazi spies". The four men were eventually acquitted, in 1948, for a lack of evidence, and the entire event airbrushed from history. The movie was remade in Mexico in 1951 (Muchachas de Uniforme [full movie in Spanish]) and again in Germany in 1958 (trailer), and "inspired" Loving Annabelle (2006 / trailer) — not to mention countless WIP films.
Full film —
Madchen in Uniform (1931):
"Barbara Steele is fantastic as the local prostitute Bozena who would charm Torless though she understands his shyness while she later meets him late in the film where she is aware of what he is going through. Bernd Tischer and Fred Dietz are excellent in their respective roles as Beineberg and Reiting as the two elder students who would torment Basini, with the former being the mastermind as it was his money that Basini stole. Marian Seidowsky is brilliant as Basini as young student who stole money to cover some debts as he finds himself being punished severely by other students where he nearly succumbs to madness. Finally, there's Mathieu Carriere as Thomas Torless as this young student who copes with taking part in the punishments where he enjoys it at first only to cope with the severity as well as his own issues in fitting in and making sense of all that is happening. [Surrender to the Void — a blog that should perhaps change its name to 'Surrender to Bad Grammar'.]"
"According to Volker Schlöndorff's autobiography Licht, Schatten und Bewegung, Marian Seidowsky had cancer at the age of 29 and committed suicide by shooting himself in a hospital in Munich." Törless was Seidowsky's first film, but prior to his death he appeared in Fassbinder's Gods of the Plague (1970 / trailer) and The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972 / trailer). Bernd Tischler has apparently never made another film or TV appearance. Fred Dietz's only other known movie appearance is in an Alfred Vohrer sex comedy, Herzblatt, oder Wie sag' ich's meiner Tochter? (1969 / full German movie). Mathieu Carriere, on the other hand, went on to a long and active film career and is still active today. His projects of the kind that we here at a wasted life like include the sleazy Born for Hell (1976 / trailer), the intriguing Parapsycho – Spektrum der Angst (1975 / trailer), Roger Vadim's The Murdered Young Girl (1974), the bloody-as-fuck Tears of Kali (2004 / trailer), Harry Kümel's underappreciated art-house horror Malpertuis a.k.a. The Legend of Doom House (1971 / trailer), and the laughably '80s Terminus (1987 / trailer).
The German poster above was created by the "German artist extraordinaire" Rolf Goetze (1920 [?] — 20 Oct 1969), a prolific German poster artist of the '50s, '60s & '70s about whom virtually nothing is known — and that despite an output that is estimated to be around 800 different posters!
The official video to the Pet Shop Boys'
2023 release, The Lost Room:
L'armata Brancaleone
(1966, dir. Mario Monicelli)
Another respectable project, if Italian and now mostly forgotten, L'armata Brancaleone is also known as For Love and Gold or The Incredible Army of Brancaleone. When released, the movie was a national hit and became, in its homeland, the third-highest grossing Italian movie of the year.
Like Young Törless, L'armata Brancaleone was entered into the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or but lost to the insufferable French love movie, A Man and a Woman (1966 / great theme). The Italian title is an Italian phrase used "to define a group of badly assembled and poorly equipped people" — basically, the Democratic Party of the USA. (Still, t'is at least morally better to be badly assembled and poorly equipped than to be abjectly fascist and religiously loony, as is the MAGA-led Republican Party.)
The plot: "The film is set in the tragically realistic Italy during the Middle Ages. After mugging a valiant but wounded German Knight (Alfio Caltabiano [17 Jul 1932 – 23 Jun 2007] of A Sword for Brando [1970 / full film] and They Still Call Me Amen [1973 / full film]), some raiders (Folco Lulli [3 Jul 1912 – 23 May 1970] of Raptus [1969 / full film] and Gianluigi Crescenzi of The Flying Saucer [1964 / full film]) find out that he was going to inherit the fief of Aurocastro. The bandits manage to persuade the fallen knight Brancaleone of Norcia (Vittorio Gassmann [1 Sep 1922 – 29 Jun 2000] of Ghosts of Rome [1962 / scene] and The Forbidden Room [1977 / full film]) to go to the fief in lieu of the German Knight and take possession of it, sharing the goods with the others, of course. So the ragtag bunch of misfits (or 'Armata Brancaleone') start its long journey towards the fief, meeting up with various characters on their way, including a princess (Catherine Spaak [3 Apr 1945 – 17 Apr 2022] of Take a Hard Ride [1975 / trailer] and Cat o' Nine Tails [1971 / trailer]), a fanatical priest (Enrico Maria Salerno) who want to force them to join the crusade, a fallen byzantine prince (Gian Maria Volonté [9 Apr 1933 – 6 Dec 1994] of The Witch [1966 / full movie] and A Fistful of Dollars [1964]), and many others. [TV Tropes]" Barbara Steele plays Teodora, a woman with a predilection for S&M.
"The opening to Mario Monicelli's L'armata Brancaleone (1966), or For Love and Gold, is completely nasty, gross and seemingly out of control! A village is attacked by some blood-thirsty raiders and it is utter chaos: limbs are severed, men hide in barrels of excrement, another tears the head of a baby chicken with his bare teeth [...]. It's as though the entire world has been thrown into murderous mayhem. [...] Fortunately L'armata Brancaleone is a comedy (phew!), and an incredible funny one at that, but this insane opening achieves two purposes — it demonstrates that this is a world (and hence a movie) where anything can, and more than likely will, happen and that any and all Medieval clichés and tropes are going to be fully embraced, exaggerated and then destroyed beyond all recognition in all the madness. And this is a very mad movie. [...] L'armata Brancaleone grabs you by the throat as soon as it starts and doesn't let go till the end. It's relentlessly funny, frequently beautiful (keep an eye out for a gorgeously composed shot of a glorious sunset, a yellow horse and a figure traversing a silhouetted viaduct), occasionally demented and consistently energetic to the point where afterwards you want to leap on a bright yellow horse and gallop directly into calamitous (mis)adventure shouting 'Branca, Branca, Branca!' [Colin Edwards @ Medium]"
Open credits to the movie:
Four years later, in 1970, Mario Monicelli directed a sequel, Brancaleone alle Crociate a.k.a. Brancaleone and the Crucades (credits): Barbara Steele was not in it.
Director Mario Monicelli (16 May 1915 – 29 Nov 2010), by the way, was occasionally nominated for an Oscar — for example, for the original screenplays of Casanova 70 (1965 / trailer) & The Organizer (1963 / trailer), or best film, as with The Great War (1959 / trailer), or best foreign language movie, as with Girl with a Pistol (1968 / trailer). "Deftly mixing comedy with tragedy, director Mario Monicelli laid bare Italy's flaws and sins for a half-century on the screen. In his final script of his own life, he chose a dramatic ending: Plunging off the fifth-floor balcony of a Rome hospital [...] where he had been admitted several days earlier. [...] Monicelli was being treated for prostate cancer at the San Giovanni hospital when he leapt to his death, landing near its emergency room entrance to the shock of many patients and relatives waiting at one of Rome's busiest hospitals. [San Diego Tribune]"
Trailer to
O Incrível Exército de Brancaleone:
An Angel for Satan
(1966, dir. Camillo Mastrocinque)
Two years after his first horror movie, the Gothic Crypt of the Vampire (1964 / trailer) Camillo Mastrocinque (11 May 1901 – 23 Apr 1969), returned to the genre with Un angelo per Satana, a.k.a. An Angel for Satan. Oddly enough, although he directed more than 60 films between 1937 and 1968, he seems best remembered today only for his two horror movies...
As for Barbara Steele, An Angel for Satan, in which she once again more or less plays two characters, Harriet Montebruno and Belinda, proved to be her final Italian Gothic. ("More or less" because Harriet Montebruno and Belinda inhabit the same body, thus she is still but one physical woman.) The narrative, as adapted by Luigi Emmanuele, is based on Antonio Fogazzaro's gothic novel Malombra, which was first published in 1881 and already enjoyed two prior cinema adaptations: Carmine Gallone's silent Malombra (1917 / full movie) and Mario Soldati's post-WWII Gothic Malombra (1942 / fan trailer).
The screenplay to An Angel for Satan was written by the director and Giuseppe Mangione (17 Mar 1908 – April 1976), the latter of whom also helped scribe the krimis The Carpet of Horror (1962, with Joachim Fuchsberger) and Hypnosis(1962). Antonio Fogazzaro, the Italian author of the original novel, was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature a grand total of seven times but never won once. (The Spaniard Ramón Menéndez Pidal [13 Mar 1869 – 14 Nov 1968] fared far worse: he was nominated a total of 154 times without winning once.)
An Angel for Satan is perhaps one of the more obscure of all Barbara Steele's Gothics, if only for the fact that it seems to never have had an official English-language release... Or if it had one, it came and went more quickly than the average MAGA Republican says something stupid. As of relatively recent, however, the movie has finally seen a DVD release and is gaining a broader audience. Most seem to agree with what Trailers from Hell say: "Barbara Steele has one of her better performance showcases in Camillo Mastrocinque's classy ghost story with a somewhat dispiriting twist. Steele's [...] in most every scene and gets to play a variety of moods from delicate to seductive to outright poisonous. Quality performances flatter a flawed screenplay, and the fine direction and attentive cinematography clearly inspired Steele to give it everything she had."
Another trailer for
An Angel for Satan:
The plot, as found at The Hitless Wonder: "Sometime in the 19th century, a young artist named Roberto (Anthony Steffen [21 Jul 1930 – 4 Jun 2004] of Hotel Paradise [1980 / opening credits], Escape from Hell [1980 / trailer], Django the Bastard [1969 / trailer] and The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave [1971 / trailer]) travels to an Italian villa in order to restore a 200-year old statue. The statue was recovered from the bottom of a lake next to the villa — and local superstition claims that it is cursed. Also arriving at the villa is the young & beautiful Harriet (Barbara Steele), who will soon inherit the estate. Roberto and Harriet start to fall for one another. The statue bears a startling resemblance to the lady, and Roberto tries to learn more about the curse, but Harriet's uncle (Claudio Gora [27 Jul 1913 – 13 Mar 1998] of Hate Is My God [1969 / theme song] and Umberto Lenzi's Seven Blood-Stained Orchids [1972]) and the locals are evasive. Harriet's demeanor starts to change greatly — she becomes a vindictive seductress, ensnaring men from the area. Is Harriet possessed by the model for the original statue, or are there other sinister forces at work?"
Original Italian trailer to
An Angel for Satan:
What happens? Well: "Belinda [or is it Harriet?] eventually sets about seducing the men in the village — often with gruesome results (a feeble-minded gardener [Aldo Berti (29 Feb 1936 – 26 Dec 2010) of Night of Violence (1965 / full film)] is inspired to rape and murder comely villagers; a brutish laborer [Mario Brega (25 Mar 1923 – 23 Jul 1994) of Death Rides a Horse(1968), The Great Silence (1968) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964)] traps his wife and children inside a burning house) — but is she a schizophrenic or is she possessed by an evil spirit? The weak finale doesn't provide the answer viewers might expect (or desire), but the majority of the film delivers the atmospheric goods. [Film Frenzy]"
Furthermore, as Mark David Welsh points out, "the new school teacher [Vassili Karis of The Arena (1974 / trailer), War of the Planets [1977 / trailer] and Scalps (1987 / trailer)] can't resist her and she seduces her own housemaid [Ursula Davis of Kong Island (1968 / scene) and Reflections in Black (1975 / full film)] in a scene that threatens to fog the camera lens."
"15 minutes into the movie, we get to meet Barbara Steele's character; the count's niece Harriet who is returning from being schooled in London for 15 years since the age of 5 and by inheritance is the rightful owner of the castle. [...] While Satan never makes an appearance, and I don't recall any angels, An Angel for Satan still happens to be my favorite out of Barbara Steele's movies; at least out of the ones I've seen. Any scene in which Steele is exhibited just demands the viewer's attention. The ability to play a docile polite woman one moment and an intimidating vicious "She Beast" the next was what made her famous in Mario Bava's Black Sunday(1960, see Part I), and she takes that element to the next level in this one. A delicious and enjoyable sight she is, with that strangely beautiful face, those doughy (unblinking Innsmouth-like) eyes, and Gothic presence that was just made to climb out of a coffin, again and again, amongst "Terror Creatures from the Grave!" Barbara Steele reigns supreme!!! [At the Mansion of Madness]"
Full movie, while it lasts:
"Atmospherically shot by Giuseppe Aquari, with a moody score by Francesco De Masi, the movie is disappointing as horror, but nonetheless makes good use of Steele's talent in what initially appears to be a dual role echoing her part in Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960, see Part I); as Harriet the heiress she is appealing and vulnerable, but as Belinda she exudes a sadistic erotic authority which clouds the minds of the men around her, whom she delights in tormenting. [Cagey Films]"
"One of the last and most interesting Italian horror productions featuring the alluring Barbara Steele, this obscure feature from Crypt of the Vampire director Camillo Mastrocinque apparently never found distribution in English, and dubbed or subtitled prints are [were once] all but nonexistent. [...] Steele's magnetic performance and the strong visuals propel the story with or without the minimal dialogue. [Cavett Binion @ All Movie]"
Following his work as an assistant director on The Castle of the Living Dead (1964 / trailer below), 23-year-old Michael Reeves (17 Oct 1943 – 11 Feb 1969) made his directorial debut with this cheapy. Today, Reeves is best remembered for his excellent Vincent Price movie, Witchfinder General(1968), but we've also always had a soft spot for his critically panned Boris Karloff horror, The Sorcerers (1967 / trailer). Reeves died at the age of 25, a few months after the release of Witchfinder General, not by jumping from a window, as is often told, but from an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates; often claimed an intentional suicide (he was known to suffer from depression), today the preferred adjective is "accidental".
Trailer to
The Castle of the Living Dead:
The script for The She Beast is credited to a "Michael Byron", but is from the pen of Reeves; nowadays, it is commonly said that the script had additional input from Charles B. Griffith (23 Sept 1930 – 28 Sept 2007), the man who wrote (among others) the Corman classic Bucket of Blood (1959), who appears uncredited as a policeman in She Beast, Mel Welles (17 Feb 1924 – 19 Aug 2005) and F. Amos Powell, who later wrote S.F. Brownrigg's regional slice of sleaze, Keep My Grave Open (1977 / full film), and the Mexican-US disasterpiece (featuring Haji in a small role!) Demoniod (1981 / trailer).
Famously, Barbara Steele was paid $1,000 for a single day's work on the movie — only for the day to turn out to be 18 or 20 or 24 hours long (different sources give different hours, but a single day does have 24 hours). Still, considering that in 1966, $1,000 had the purchasing power of a bit more than $9,500, she wasn't paid that poorly...
"Though top-billed and promoted as the star, [Barbara] Steele is actually only on-screen for about 15 minutes and all of her scenes were filmed in just one (very long) day. She's, of course, good while she's around, but the same can't really be said for some of the other cast members. [Ian] Ogilvy, a childhood friend of the director's who went on to play lead roles in Reeves' other two genre films: The Sorcerers (1967) starring Boris Karloff and Witchfinder General (1968) starring Vincent Price, is a little one-note and not particularly likable in the lead. [Mel] Welles is even worse as an extremely obnoxious, annoying, LOUD, disgusting pig. He's also a huge pervert who not only peeps in windows and has nudie photos plastered all over his bedroom, but also attempts to rape his own niece (Lucretia Love [24 Mar 1941 – 9 Jan 2019] of Enter the Devil [1974 / trailer] and The Killer Reserved Nine Seats [1974 / trailer]) at one point! Thankfully, Karlsen partially makes up for the slackers, giving an extremely likable and charming performance in his role. [Bloody Pit of Horror]"
Trailer to
The She Beast:
Long only available in scratchy and crappy P.D. copies, The She Beast has recently enjoyed some reconstructed and rejuvenated releases. A trend is noticeable online: those who see the revitalized version all seem to enjoy the movie, and find it better, than those who suffer through the old PD version. An exception is Kim Newman, who says: "A runaway production shot in Italy [...]. Made with English cash and a crew of Italians and Americans, La Sorella di Satana is technically Anglo-Italian film. Initially scripted as Vardella, it was released in Britain and America as The Revenge of the Blood Beast and The She-Beast. If Reeves hadn't gone on to make two of the most important British horror films of the decade then seal a romantic lost genius reputation by dying young, the film would most likely not be well-remembered. It's interesting, but a mess."
Full movie while it lasts —
The She Beast:
The plot, as found at Trailers from Hell: "The story shows a keen awareness of Eurohorror to date, and doesn't try anything too original. It begins with the execution of a horribly ugly witch, two centuries ago in an Eastern European village. As in at least seven previous '60s Eurohorror films, the witch puts a curse on her tormentors. We flash forward to recent times to join newlyweds Philip and Veronica (Ian Ogilvy [of Now the Screaming Starts (1973 / trailer) and Puppet Master 5 (1994 / trailer)] and Barbara Steele) as they tour the area, now a Communist country with a depressed economy. They briefly meet the lecherous innkeeper Ladislav Groper (Mel Welles, the director of Lady Frankenstein [1971] and Maneater of Hydra [1967 / full movie]) and a local scientist, Count von Helsing (John Karlsen [20 Oct 1919 – 5 Jul 2017] of The Church [1989 / trailer], Asylum Erotica [1971 / trailer] and Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory [1962]). A descendant of the famous vampire hunter, von Helsing tries to interest the couple in his occult studies. After catching Groper peeping at them, Philip and Veronica leave. They crash their Volkswagen into a lake — the very same place where the witch was killed. When he comes to, Philip discovers that the body recovered from his car is not Veronica but a hideous creature [Joe 'Flash' Riley (24 Jun 1916 – 20 Sep 1988), of Electric Angel (1981 / trailer) playing Veronica as Vardella, the She-Beast], which returns to life and begins killing. Groper and a truck driver try to hide these facts from the humorless secret policemen, while von Helsing convinces Philip that the monster-woman is really Veronica, possessed by the legendary witch. [...]"
Battleship Pretension sees the movie's political pretensions: "Something changes, though, after one of the beast's kills. She's just slashed a man to ribbons with a sickle when she tosses the instrument aside and the camera catches it skittering across the floor and coming to rest at an angle atop a hammer. The resulting communist symbol is far too conspicuous to ignore and suddenly things begin to fall into place. The brutish motel owner is not just a creep, he's a stand-in for morally hypocritical loyalists of the state who believe that fealty is more important than decency. The frenzied townsfolk are the mob whose numbers increase their strength but not their intelligence. Ogilvy and Steele, then, represent the more sophisticated, cosmopolitan capitalists (the movie is as anti-provincial as it is anti-communist). When the military gets involved, they are alternately bumbling, Keystone Kops types or hilariously committed to protocol above all else. When one officer asks a soldier about a victim, 'Can he talk?' and the soldier answers, 'No, he's already dead,' the officer's response is, 'Then he's obstructing justice!' [...]"
Trailer to
The Embalmer & The She Beast:
In the US, The She Beast was released by AIP as part of a double feature with Dino Tavella's "Edgar Wallace-inspired horror giallo" Il mostro di Venezia, otherwise known as The Embalmer (1965).
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