Maybe I watched a different movie than others but I liked this one quite a bit! Certainly next to Cahn's other film with Marla English, Voodoo Woman, this is a masterpiece. A good cast and atmospheric direction (setting a coastal location, mostly revolved around Tom Conway's beach house) help a great deal. The plot is a bit odd, though: hypnotist Chester Morris is obsessed with his assistant, Marla, putting her under deep so he can summon folks from the past including a lady from the 1600s and a sea creature that appears at first in a cloud before manifesting into a scaly monster that kills at his command. Morris seems to will the monster to kill either because he's an evil bastard, wants to prove himself, or a bit of both. Skeptical doctor, Lance Fuller, rivals Chester for Marla. Conway of the Val Lewton productions is an agent who sees dollar signs and sets Chester up as a star hypnotist not realizing of the danger to himself and others who live in and around his coastal community. Blaisdel's monster, rubber-suited with a lot of detail to make it aquatic and distinctive, is probably his masterwork. Cathy Downs is the elegant blond daughter of Conway hot for Fuller, while Fuller resists life amongst the aristocratic jet set. Ron Randell is the detective out to stop Chester. Marla is a stunner, much easier to take than as the wretched gold seeker in Voodoo Woman. Sexy and vulnerable, Marla offers a victim needing release from the hypnotic stranglehold of Chester. Some decent dialogue (especially from Fuller regarding the affluent folk wanting him to commiserate with them regularly and the startling ability of Chester for which his science has a hard time explaining), delightful cold-blooded and stern-faced Chester in all his villainy, and the spiritual mist that emerges from Marla which is a rather effectively done special effect to prove the hypnosis used on her are reason enough to thwart the rather negative reputation this little B-movie has against it.

As awful as The She-Creature is, it may hold some interest for the following types: Those wondering what Chester Morris would look like with black shoe polish on his hair...People who don't believe whiskey can make a 52-year old man look as if he is eighty-two -- here's what's left of Tom Conway...Serious perverts who may become excited by the sight of a female Creature from the Black Lagoon -- wow! dig those scaly 38-double-D's...Old School Catholics who need to suffer for penance during Lent. Watching this stinker is such torment, you can skip the Hail Mary's for a whole week...The usual desperate insomniacs.Others should avoid The She-Creature as if it were a two-foot tall fire ant mound.

The best performances come early on-- that's when the two stiffed-up dead people fall to the floor. From then on, the acting goes steadily downhill. Actually, my nomination for "This movie's so bad, I'm not even going to try" award goes to Chester Morris, formerly known as Boston Blackie, with Ron Randell's "where am I" cop a close second. Morris wins because he gives his lines all the emotional inflection of a dial tone, and when he cuddles up to cutie Marla English for one of their many painful clinches, she looks like she wants to bang down the receiver. Too bad that making fun of a stinkeroo like She-Creature is like kicking a dead carcass. Because unlike one of those it's-so-bad-that-it's-good campy features, this one never had any life to begin with. Good camp needs an element of conviction— at least someone in production who believes the film is worth his/her effort. There's none of that belief here, probably because the cast of movie veterans knows they're on the downgrade and can look forward to little more than the next Social Security check. American-International and Roger Corman would soon wise up and turn these productions over to eager young unknowns and then the real campy fun would start. I just wish cable TV would honor some deserving old actors and give this celluloid zombie a quick burial, decent or otherwise.

**SPOILERS** The movie "The She Creature" seems to have been highly influenced by the reincarnation craze of the 1950's revolving around the past life of Colorado housewife Mrs. Simmons who in her previous incarnation was the 19th century Irish woman Bridey Murphy.The movie instead of concentrating on the reincarnation angle goes all over the place with the somewhat unstable carnival hypnotist and mind reader, as well as prognosticator, Dr. Carlo Lombari, Chester Morris, who's completely obsessed with his beautiful assistant Andrea Talbott, Marla English. Dr. Lombardi is so possessive of Andrea that his trying to get her to be his soul-mate just turns her off to the wild and crazy guy.It's when the handsome and a bit skeptic, of Dr. Lombardi's psychic powers, Dr. TedErckson, Lance Fuller, comes on the scene that things really start to unwind with the by now mad Doctor Lombardi going so far as conjuring up this She, or Sea, Creature to do Dr. Erickson in. The creature has been around for some time in the movie even before Dr. Erickson showed up. It was Dr. Ericksons presence that really brought the worst out of it as the thing, being controlled by Lombardi, went on a rampage murdering some half dozen young people who were enjoying themselves on the beach.Even though Lombardi is on the scene of every one of the She Creature's killings he's totally innocent, to the disgust of police Let. Ed James (Ron Randell), of them. Lombardi is at the scene of the crime but the evidence exonerates him . It's as if Lombardi is pulling the polices, and Let. James, leg in order to both show them up and prove his power as a psychic is genuine.As for the hypnotized and at times completely composed Andera she's in a life and death struggle tug of war between her "master" Dr. Lombardi and "saviour" Dr. Erickson that goes on for almost the entire film. Besides being a woman from 17th century England, Elizabeth Wetherby, It's also brought out that Andera was this 1950's looking spaceman, or spacewoman,in the very distance, about 300 to 400 million years ago, past that came out of the primordial soup and was to become the precursor or mother of the human race;The She Creature!The film has money hungry entrepreneur Timothy Chapple, Tom Conway, make a deal with Dr. Lombardi to manage his carnival act and make millions for both himself and the mad doctor. What Chapple doesn't know is that whatever Dr. Lombardi is doing is not and act but the real McCoy and in the end he's to get the shock of his life finding that fact out. The She Creature her, or it, self takes care of business by finally putting an end to Dr. Lombardi's obsession with both it and Andrea, whom it supposed to have been way back then in prerecorded history. Finishing off the crazed Dr. Lombardi who wanted it to instead finish off Dr. Erickson the bumbling and hardly able to walk She Creature stumbles back to the ocean with the cops, who are unable to see it, being directed by Dr. Erickson, who can, to shoot at it as it finally disappears under the waves.Were given to understand that It, the She Creature, will come back in the very near future to both shock as well as put it's audience to sleep, the thing was about the least scariest monster in movie history,in a new film sequel. As far as I know that happily never happened which was a blessing to everyone, the cast crew and those watching the film, involved with it.