MOVIE REVEW: She (1965)
In high school, we got our cable back at the house. I enjoyed the wonderful films that came on Encore! and Starz!, while wallowing in the soft core porn that made up the bulk of Showtime’s late-nite programming. One night, while cruising the channels to see what I could see, I stumbled on an old movie on TNT’s “100% Weird” that seemed mildly interesting. It combined a healthy mix of lost worlds and adventure, with splashes of jealousy and forbidden magic. Oh, and since the film’s story was set in Africa, they had to include some superstitious, tar-black spear-chuckers in the mix, just to be fair. Topping it off with the sex symbol Ursula Andress (Dr. No, Clash of the Titans [1981], Slave of the Cannibal God), the end result caused my obsession with bad movies on par with the villain’s for the film’s main character. This villain has a name, but her subjects call her “She who must be obeyed,” or “She” for short. Before we look at the 1965 movie of She, we must look to the story’s origin.
The character of Queen Ayesha was created by the British writer H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) in his 1886 novel, She. A French film based on the novel was released in 1899 and titled La Colonne de Feu (The Pillar of Fire). Future interpretations of Haggard’s novel appeared in 1908, 1911, 1916, 1917, 1925, 1935 (to be reviewed at a later date), the 1965 Hammer version we’re reviewing, a 1985 post-apocalyptic version and another in 2001. A sequel novel titled Ayesha was turned into the 1968 movie The Vengeance of She. Not only did She outlast her creator, another of Haggard’s creations has lasted the test of time if only because the copyright has expired: Allan Quatermain the adventurer. Most recently played by Sean Connery in the 2003 comic book movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Quatermain’s last name has even been changed to be on the safe side when making movies like King Solomon’s Mines (1984) and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (1987). Prior to his death, Haggard wrote a book called She and Allan, a cross-over title featuring Ayesha and Quatermain. Oddly enough, this book has not been turned into a movie. Yet.
Now that I’ve given you all the knowledge I know of Haggard’s She, we concern ourselves with the 1965 Hammer film, as the camera pans down on a bar in Cairo, Egypt. Three British soldiers have come to Egypt to relax from a hard day’s work of defending British interests in the Middle East. They are Maj. Holly (Sir Peter Cushing, Star Wars ep. 4: A New Hope, Dracula [1958], At the Earth’s Core [1972]), Leo Vincey (John Richardson, Demons 3, One Million Years B.C.) and his manservant Job (Bernard Cribbins, Casino Royale [1967], “Coronation Street” [TV-itv], Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.). They are having a time when Leo spies a hot babe in the crowd. Lonely and wanting, he engages the girl in polite conversation. Her name is Ustane (Rosenda Monteros, The Magnificent Seven, Cauldron of Blood) and she is drawn to Leo like a moth to a flame. The two of them get along so well, he doesn’t stick around for the barfight his friends got into. He goes outside to make out with Ustane some more, only to get kidnapped. His friends go looking for him, to no avail.
Leo wakes up in a safe house located in the city. where it is revealed his kidnappers think he shares an uncanny resemblance to the king of their land, for whom their queen has searched for many years. They truss him up and take him into the desert, into an underground world. There, Leo Vincey meets the woman who’s been looking for him: Queen Ayesha (Andress). She rules supreme over the Underground Kingdom and has done so for almost 4000 years. She has renewed herself periodically in the Flame of Life with the help of her high priest Billali (Sir Christopher Lee, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Dracula AD 1972, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring). Ayesha heaps gifts and praise on her found king, always saying that he’ll never leave. It certainly looks that way, for Leo is under the spell of her beauty and the allure that comes with power. The love between the two of them seemed so powerful that nothing could ever break it; truly the only thing that could break love is another love, found in the heart of the queen’s personal servant Ustane.
Ustane knows the truth about Queen Ayesha and why her king disappeared in the first place. She’d not wish the same fate on anyone else, so she leaves the Underground Kingdom to get help from Maj. Holly and Job to rescue Leo. It’s a race against time to save Leo, for he is scheduled to enter the Flame of Life. Either he becomes like Ayesha, or he burns to a crisp in the blue blaze. Neither is an option for his friends, because Job needs an employer, Ustane loves him and Leo owes Maj. Holly money. With this in mind, the trio stride forward to deny the will of “She who must be obeyed”.
The most alluring character in the movie has to be Ustane the slave girl. I fell in love with her golden skin and petite frame before she uttered a word. When she did speak, she always communicated a longing for the image and history of the lost king with just her eyes, unfettered by the facts of the story being ancient. Finding Leo Vincent was the fulfillment of a wish she probably held in the back of her mind for most of her adult life. I don’t care what the movie’s tagline says about Queen Ayesha or what the R&B group Another Bad Creation had to say in their hit, “Iesha” or what the Monkees say in their song “She”; Ustane the one for me. But the story goes that no man can resist the will of Queen Ayesha, so here’s the chorus to ABC’s “Iesha”:
Iesha
You are the girl that I never had
And I want to get to know you better
Iesha
You know I want you so bad
And there’s nothing anyone can do
To keep me away from you
CHOICE CUTS:
- I love the character of Ustane so much, it’s an obsession. I’ve tried to find current photos of Rosenda Monteros, but to no avail. I know that she went on to make more movies and she starred in the novela “La Madre”. I’d love to find a picture or vidcap of her recent work.
- Queen Ayesha is very sexy, but the fact that she dresses like Lady Deathbird of the Shi’ar Empire in Uncanny X-Men turns me off.
- The Underground World runs on the power of human beings. They turn the wheels of progress as workers and slaves, but the machines are more reminiscent of the Morlock devices in The Time Machine (1960).
- The beginning sequence that proceeds the action in Cairo is a disservice to all African cultures to the point that the scene itself seems not to have anything to do with Africans, with the exception that a lot of Black movie extras got paid for that movie.
- I wonder if all of H. Rider Haggard’s copyrights have expired, thus allowing the free use of his characters throughout the spectrum of science fiction. It’d be a challenge to see someone use his characters intelligently, hopefully in a movie that uses the book She and Allan.
