Oh No SHE Didn’t!! (MGM/Hammer 1965)

…didn’t manage to keep me awake, that is! That’s right, I actually dozed off in the middle of SHE for a good fifteen minutes! This so-called adventure film, a remake of the rousing 1935 Merian C. Cooper production starring Helen Gahagan and Randolph Scott, is based on a novel by H. Rider Haggard, a pretty big-deal adventure novelist back in the day, who also wrote the novels KING SOLOMAN’S MINES and ALLAN QUARTERMAIN. The ’35 version was filled with sumptuous Art Deco sets and a dynamic score by Max Steiner, and proved popular with moviegoers of the day.

But the times, they do a-change, and so do tastes. Hammer Films decided to do this remake thirty years later, with Ursula Andress in the title role. ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. caveman John Richardson plays Leo Vincey, who’s the spitting image of Queen Ayesha’s long-lost love Kallilkrates. Hammer’s top tag-team Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are in the cast, as is British comic actor Bernard Cribbins. An exciting story, a top-notch cast… what could go wrong?

Well, to put it simply, the whole thing’s boring, with no chemistry at all between sexy Ursula and stiff John. Maybe he’d spent too much time in the stone age, I don’t know, but they just don’t click. Cushing and Lee are good as always, though the sight of Cushing boogieing with belly dancers in the opening scene is unintentionally funny. Lee has his moments as Ursula’s high priest, but they’re few and far between. The film just felt hopelessly outdated, and dragged on and on. Zzzzz…

How boring was it? Well, I woke up in time to catch the final twenty minutes or so, hoping for a rousing finale. It wasn’t… I should’ve stayed asleep! And this was in the middle of the day, mind you, not during some late night movie marathon. Surprisingly to me, SHE was a box office hit, and Hammer actually made a 1968 sequel starring Richardson and the immortal Olga Berova, which tanked (I tried watching it and ended up turning off the TV).  So my recommendation is you watch the older version and skip this comic book nonsense. And not even a good comic book, mind you… I’m talking like Charlton or *gasp* Gold Key!