The Big Whatsit

‘SHE who must be obeyed! …SHE who must be loved! …SHE who must be possessed!’

I put off starting the Ultimate Hammer collection because She was the first film in the queue, and I got the impression if I didn’t watch them in strict chronological order, there would be certain titles I would skip only too happily. She wasn’t the movie for me. I didn’t buy a Hammer boxset for the studio’s forays into action adventure, just as I wouldn’t be looking forward to the cheeky chappy antics of the On the Buses lads with any great relish. What I want is horror, the word most synonymous with Hammer. She isn’t it.

As is so often the case though, in spite of the poor reviews for She, and the fact it clearly is a load of old tosh, I found myself enjoying it immensely. It’s a swashbuckler, penned originally by the author of King Solomon’s Mines, H Rider Haggard, and ripe material for a studio with money to spend and one of the most glamorous stars of her era at its heart. It’s obvious from the start that She had a lavish budget, by Hammer’s usual modest standards. The sets are beautiful, which is quite normal for the studio, but what really sets it apart is the location work. She’s outdoors filming took place in southern Israel. The desert scenes, no doubt knowingly reminiscent of Lawrence of Arabia, give the movie an epic scale that is quite at odds with Hammer’s typical fare. Throw in a cast that mixes good looks with the reliable talent of Cushing and Lee, and a fun romp of a yarn, and She turns out to be a decent addition to the collection. It was a smash hit at the time also, helped along by its star, Ursula Andress being daubed liberally over all the publicity.

She opens in Palestine. It’s 1918, World War One is at an end, and Major Holly (Peter Cushing), his valet Job (Bernard Cribbins) and friend Leo (John Richardson) are wondering what to do with themselves. Holly wants to pursue his dream of uncovering ancient civilisations in the Middle East. Once this loose plan of action is agreed upon, the trio seal their deal by getting drunk in a bar and cavorting with belly dancers.

The sight alone of Cushing and Cribbins strutting their funky stuff with the local entertainers should give an early indication of how seriously this movie takes itself. Things get sillier still when Leo gets it on with a girl, Ustane (Rosenda Monteros), who is in fact luring him into a trap. Knocked unconscious down a Palestine alleyway, Leo wakes up in the company of Ayesha (Andress), who lures him into the desert, the promise of riches and, more importantly, her at the end of the journey. It turns out that Leo might be the reincarnation of her lost love, a priest of Isis who she murdered in a fit of jealous rage more than 2,000 years before. Ayesha in the meantime has discovered the gift of eternal life, and has set herself up as ‘She who must be obeyed,’ the ruler of the ancient, forgotten city of Kuma.

Sure enough, Leo sets off with Holly and Job into the desert, where they meet with the various trials and privations you might expect to find in such a situation. Our young hero has been dreaming of Ayesha, and it’s the prospect of seeing her again that keeps him going, long after the companions’ camels have been stolen and their water run dry. Eventually, they reach a local village near Kuma. This is Ustane’s home, and her father is the one reasonable man in a community of primitives. By now, the rather unfortunate Ustane has fallen for Leo and will do anything for him, despite being no match for Ayesha. The peasants want to kill Leo. As they’re about to sacrificially do him in, Ayesha’s troops intervene and whisk the adventurers off to Kuma and their destiny.

So far, so hokum. Connoisseurs will enjoy the plastic wigs the locals have to wear, presumably in an effort to make them look more exotic. Better still are the costumes donned by Ayesha’s soldiers. It would appear that Hammer begged, stole or borrowed props from a local swords and sandals epic, as they look just like Roman legionnaries, complete with helmet, breastplates and even a cheeky standard. By this stage, alert viewers will have spotted the obvious - Richardson isn’t up to any of this. It’s hardly a classic turn from Cushing either, but he has enough class to knock the acting stuffing out of the plank of wood playing Leo. Maybe Stephen Boyd was too busy that week, so Hammer had to scrabble around for a quick stand-in. She’s story delivers nothing new. The journey through the desert takes some time, but the pitfalls faced by our adventurers are just what you’d expect to find in a cliche-ridden affair - marauding Bedouins, water bottles running out and then simply tossed away (what are they supposed to use if they come across an oasis? Isn’t this a form of littering?), people staggering to a halt in the relentless heat.

Things take an instant turn for the better when we see Kuma for the very first time. One can gain access only via a door, which is situated at the foot of a colossal golem that has been carved into the mountainside. Ignoring the slap in the face fact that building such a doorway rails against most rules about maintaining a city’s precious secrecy, it’s a very impressive effect. We get no warning that it’s coming up, and for once the so often derided special effects team get it absolutely right. Leo meets Ayesha, who is now revealed as the city’s ruler. And she isn’t a good one. It happens that She is thousands of years old, and has followed in the tradition of despotic, absolute rulers of the Middle East by being something of a tyrant. Her preferred form of punishment is to toss her prisoners into a well of fire, not a very pleasant way to go. Obsessed by the possibility of reuniting with Leo’s former self, She lets nothing get in her way, not his friends, and certainly not the gamine local girl who divides his attentions.

Another potential problem with She is Ursula Andress - like Richardson, she’s a terrible actor. Given her Bond girl celebrity, it’s obvious she wasn’t hired for her thespian talents. Yet funnily enough, none of this really matters. Andress isn’t given an awful lot to do, apart from regard her subjects with disdain and flutter her eyelashes at Leo. It’s a role made for the broadest of brush strokes, and this is what she provides. It helps that she is indeed easy on the eye. The naked photo shoots (for which she earned the epithet ‘Ursula Undress’, haw haw) that diminished her glamour were still in the future, as was her reputation for lazy decadence, for going where the filming locations were situated conveniently close to beaches. In She, Andress is impossibly lovely, just as you would imagine Ayesha to be. As oriental as the role demands, she is virtually perfect.

It’s fortunate for Andress that she has Christopher Lee to boss around. The Hammer mainstay has a supporting role here, but a significant one. Playing the goateed High Priest, Billali, and being made to wear successively crazier forms of headgear, Lee gets many of the film’s best lines. In a movie filled with characters who are obviously either good or bad, his is the only one with any degree of complexity - we never know until the climax which way he swings. It’s an uncharacteristically understated performance, and a fine one at that.

Surrounded by a winning score from James Bernard, She is ever good fun, with both feet in boy’s own, Ripping Yarns territory. The moment where Job serves Holly and Leo with whiskey in the desert is symbolic of how daft this stuff is, and how well aware of that is everyone involved in its production. After watching it, I sat through the whole thing again, and I think it was because it seems a very long time since I have watched a movie that doesn’t try to say anything, or leave any trace of significance. There are shades of She in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A more modern take on the yarn set in the endless deserts of the Middle East would be Sahara, or Hidalgo. Proof, I guess, that there is always room for this sort of nonsense.