The Astounding She-Monster

The Astounding She-Monster
by Ronald V. Ashcroft

List Price: $9.98
Our Price: $5.90
You Save: $4.08 (41%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.52 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases

DVD Cover Information

Movie Reviews of The Astounding She-Monster

Movie Review: Cheap. Inept. And Totally Wonderful.
Summary: 4 Stars

The AS-M (who kills with a mere touch) stalks a geologist, a pretty socialite, and three kidnappers who are hiding out at the geologists's isolated hilltop cabin during what may loosely be deemed "night." Suffice it to say, some of them don't live through it. Then there's an ironic sort of ending that achieves absolutely no irony whatsoever because it is all wrong for a number of reasons. Essentially, it's an extremely poor man's 'Key Largo' meets an equally impoverished man's 'Alien.' Or you could look at it as a precursor to 'The Beast From Haunted Cave,' only quicker and sillier. (I guess I could add that it makes more sense than Plan 9, and is perhaps equal in coherency to Bride of the Monster. But somehow is more enjoyable than either, at least to me.)

The spaceship is represented in flight as a lit match; the actress playing the spacebabe split her skin-tight suit early during shooting, so she has to back away from the camera for the entire movie (actually, this is oddly effective); blaring chords sound when nothing is happening; people keep referring to the shapely alien lady as a horrible monster; everyone keeps returning to the cabin for safety, even though the AS-M can and repeatedly does enter at will through a huge (and broken-out) window.

The funniest bit of all is revealed in the liner notes: the saga of the bear(s) used during filming. I won't ruin it for you, but it will make me laugh and cry forever. It is one of the most pathetically messed-up things I have ever heard happen in moviemaking, Battlefield Earth not withstanding.

If these things sound like a fun time to you, buy this movie posthaste. Others beware.

I personally only wish I could have witnessed them making this movie at the time. That had to have been even MORE entertaining.

P.S. The DVD transfer is just OK, but I'm quite sure that's only because the original film itself was pretty shaky.

Summary of The Astounding She-Monster