As Bill Warren points out elsewhere, director Kurt Neumann had a lot of enthusiasm for the potential of science fiction movies, but he didn't quite seem to have the talents (or the budgets) to make consistently good ones. He seems to have plenty of intelligence - hence adopting a story with the fascinating idea of seeing what would happen if a human being were injected with a serum that enables her to "adapt" to any threat or environment - but he didn't seem to be able to create scenes without tons of expository dialog, or patch the enormous plot holes in the screenplays.She Devil...it has its moments. As a friend said, someone ought to give Albert Dekker the Purple Heart Actor's awards for his valiant attempts to soldier on as he is forced to deliver line after line of clunky dialog in scenes that are going nowhere. And there are some good framing shots and set ups here and there - at times the actress who plays the woman test subject does manage to project a chilly, barely human glamour that makes you believe that she could take a man for everything and kill him once she was bored with him.But the screen play asks the viewer to believe that a millionaire widow wouldn't have a retinue of courtiers and employees and bodyguards who would follow her everywhere, and who wouldn't make a major fuss when she went missing after she visits the two men in the world who created her and know her secret. And it wastes a lot of time foreshadowing a leopards presence in the lab without ever doing anything interesting.Anyway...this what happens when you try to get by with one special effect (the woman seems to be able to change her hair color at will) and pretend you've created a movie about "ideas"...when you don't know how to do anything really interesting with that idea.Still way better than some of its contemporaries (dreck like "Voodoo Woman" make this look like Scorcese) and worth seeing once if you are fascinated by 50's scifi.

I was COMPLETELY mesmerized by this film because I loved the concept of this woman who was in essence given everything a human being would need to survive and still gave into her baser instincts and became even more of a monster than before.I believe that she started out as a petty criminal before they gave her the operation, so it was already in her to be this way already so I don't think they could have blamed it on the injection unless there was someone else to compare her progress with or a lab animal with similar characteristics- like a primate.This added a much needed balance to Whitley Streib's novel "The Hunger", as the supernatural condition was given biological rules and parameters.I simply adored the scenes where she would go for a Sunday drive with her rich new husband, and then run them both off a cliff in the convertible, dust herself off and walk home to plot her next marriage.Genius!I have kind of a photographic memory and only saw the film only once (30 years ago) when I was six, but those scenes stood out for me- (almost as the one in the very beginning of the film where she runs into a dressing room-being pursued by the police as a brunette, changes into the clothing hanging in the room, and walks out as a platinum blonde as all the cops are drooling all over her!!It was a great lesson to me as a child that people only look at the surface and are always prone to fall victim to those whom their prejudices judge as being more desirable than themselves!I wouldn't have touched her with a ten foot pole just cause her saccharine sweet personality barely concealed her contempt for humanity.A LOVELY film which I hope someone finally decides to remake with a more scientific base (while keeping the humor!)-Skittles!

FYI: I first saw this movie as a youngster and vividly remember it, even though I can't say it was one of my favorites. In late 2004, I watched episodes of Science-Fiction Theater, a TV series from the mid-1950's. An episode of the series titled "Beyond Return", aired in late 1955, presaged the movie with the same story and even specific points (the evolution of the meek terminally ill woman to a murderous villainess, the changing of the woman's hair color, etc.) by at least a year. The TV episode is credited to Doris Young but that may have been as screenwriter, not necessarily as the original author. I'm sure that both the TV program and "She Devil" are from the mind of Stanley Weinbaum's 1935 story titled "Adaptive Ultimate".

I remember seeing this movie when I was a kid on the Sunday afternoon TV matinee. In the film, a terminally-ill woman will die unless an experimental drug is administered by the scientist who developed the serum, if I remember correctly, from some type of insect or spider (or was it some deadly plant?). Her life is saved, but she has developed extraordinary methods of survival and becomes seemingly indestructible. What can the scientist do to solve this situation? In many ways, this film is typical of the 50's "horror" genre as seen in its low-budget, B-list tier of performers and the opinion that a man can save a woman, but who can save a woman from herself (especially one who's developed into some kind of monster)? As a kid, I remember being really impressed with a scene where, to avoid being caught, the woman (having developed those incredible survival techniques), mentally changes her hair color from brunette to platinum blonde (much like a chameleon). I remember thinking that would be really cool to be able to do that! So while this film is no awards-contender, it's a memorable quasi-horror title from the 50's!