SHE DEMONS

Irish McCalla and Tod Griffin

SHE DEMONS (1958). Director: Richard H. Cunha. Colorized version.

Fred Maklin (Tod Griffin) has been hired by a wealthy man to find a certain island where there have been reports of strange creatures. He has taken along two crewmen and the millionaire's spoiled daughter, Jerrie (Irish McCalla), and they wind up shipwrecked on the very island they seek. They discover that in underground chambers there is a Nazi scientist named Osler (Rudolph Anders), his disfigured wife Mona (Leni Tana) whom he is trying to help, and a bunch of stormtroopers lorded over by sadistic Igor (Gene Roth). Not to mention a whole bevy of women, half of whom have been temporarily transformed into hideous, fanged "she demons" due to Osler's experiments. Mona decides to help the castaways when she realizes her husband has the hots for Jerrie. 

Irish McCalla has no interest in Rudolph Anders' proposal

It's hard to hate the zany She Demons because it does make use of a kind of zesty luridness to pull you along. Victor Sen Yung as one of the crew members still seems to be playing Charlie Chan's Number Two son (or was it number one?), Tod Griffin has an appealing presence and is perfectly okay, but poor Irish McCalla, although she tries, never seems more convincing than an acting student in a high school production. Gene Roth (of Earth vs, the Spider) can give both good and bad performances and in this he's stuck somewhere in the middle. To give Anders the benefit of the doubt, he may have been trying to be colorful in his almost-camp portrayal of the Nazi scientist, but it just doesn't work and he's simply borderline awful. In addition to trying to fix his wife's horribly disfigured face -- we get a look at it in the film's single shock sequence -- Osler is also trying to use lava and thermal energy to create a perpetual motion machine -- or something like that. The She Demons are played mostly by the Diane Nellis Dancers. Poor gals! 

Verdict: You can never have enough She Demons at a party! **1/4.