Now they've gone too far! Nazis are turning sexy chicks into monsters!

She Demons (1958)
Starring: Irish McCalla, Tod Griffin, Victor Sen-Yung, and Rudolph Anders
Director: Richard Cunha
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

An obnoxious an rich girl (McCalla) and two of her daddy's employees (Griffin and Sen-Yung) are shipwrecked on an uncharted island. They must fight fight for survival against a Nazi mad scientist (Anders) who has harnessed the secret of perpetual motion and is using it and processes he perfected in the WW2 concentration camps to steal the beauty of native island girls (who like all native girls only want to dance) and transferring it to his wife, in the hopes of restoring her fire-ravaged body. The process reduces them to horribly mutated, violent monsters.... you know, She-Demons!

My summary gave away the element that almost earned this film a Four Rating. It's going along likea fairly standard, low-budget castaways-on-a-jungle-island-with-monsters-and-a-hot-babe movie when suddenly Nazis appear on the scene. And they're not just any Nazis... they're led by a mad scientist Nazi who, although his research is dedicated to restoring his wife's beauty (at the expense of a bevvy of hot bikini-babes) he immediately wants to do the horizontal mambo with Aryan beauty Irish McCalla.

That strange turn resulted in this film perhaps being the greatest combo of B-movie/exploitation movie/"grindhouse" movie mainstays ever made. (Uncharted island, jungle inhabited by strange creatures, a mad scientist transforming humans into beasts with his weird experiments, Nazis--sadistic, whip-weilding Nazis no less--a wife with a disfigured face who only Weird Science can restore, wise-crakcing colored sidekick, and exploding volcaones. All this movie needed was a flying saucer, nudity, and lesbian vampires, and it might have been been the Platonic ideal of crappy movies.)

Of course, it would need better acting and something resembling decent dialogue to truly be worth viewing. Only Rudolph Anders as mad scientist Colonel Osler was any good here, because he went waaay over the top with smariness and superior attitude. Irish McCalla did an okay job, because her character was so obnoxious that I wanted Osler to turn her into a She-Demon because it would shut her up.

On its own, "She-Demons" is not worth your time or money. It might be odd enough to be a secondary feature for a Bad Movie Night, but if you are going to get it, look for a DVD multipack that includes it and one or two movies you know are good. That way, this becomes a "bonus feature", and you've gotten your money's worth.

Perfect Wednesday Bonus Picture!

Click on the picture to see it at full size.

Underrated Orson Welles thriller

The Stranger (1946)
Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Orson Welles, and Loretta Young
Director: Orson Welles
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A US government agent, Wilson, (Robinson) is on the trail of Franz Kindler, a psychopathic genius who made the Nazi concentration camps the efficient centers of death they were. No pictures exist of him, but when Wilson traces Kindler to a small Connecticut town, clues start mounting that well-liked newcomer to town college professor Charles Rankin (Welles) who just married the beloved daughter of the town's leading citizen, Mary (Young), is in truth Kindler.


"The Stranger" is a greatly underrated Orson Welles movie. It's a little slow in the wind-up, but once it gets gong, it moves along its suspenseful story-track with great deliberation and all of the elements working together in perfect time, just like the mechanisms of the clocks that Rankin and Kindler both enjoy working with.

Full of great acting, great camera work, and a perfectly paced story that first keeps the audience guessing and then keeps them on the edge of their seats as it builds toward its spectacular finale high atop the town's clock tower. Welles is in top form here, both as an actor and a director, and if you are a fan his work, of "film noir", or if you enjoyed recent films like "A History of Violence", you need to track down a copy of "The Stranger."

(Trivia: This was the only film Orson Welles produced/directed that turned a profit, primarily because he stayed on schedule and under budget for this one and only time.)

The Alcatraz Three vs. the Third Reich

Hitler, Dead or Alive (1942)
Starring: Ward Bond, Dorothy Tree, Paul Fix, Warren Hymer, Felix Basch, Bruce Edwards, Bob Watson, Frederick Giermann and Russell Hicks
Director: Nick Grinde
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Three recently-released-from-Alcatraz gangsters (Bond, Fix and Hymer) head to Nazi Germany to collect a $1 million dollar bounty placed on the head of Hitler (Watson) by an eccentric industrialist (Hicks).


"Hitler, Dead or Alive" was a war-time action/comedy that was clearly intended for kids and teens. I think that even in 1942, adults would either chuckle or sneer (depending on whether they had a sense of humor or not) at the ludicrous scheme of our three heroes.

Without spoiling the film, here's the gist of the plan: The Alcatraz Three join the Canadian Airforce as paratroopers and steal a transport plane during a training mission and head to Germany with no more of a plan than to claim they are Nazi agents with an important message that can only be delivered to Hitler in person... at which time they intend to shoot him. They only get as far as they do because the SS officers and troopers they deal with are even more thick-headed than they are, and because the leader of an underground railroad helping prisoners escape the Nazis becomes curious about what the three knuckleheads are up to.

Of course, the film is primarily comedic in tone, so some of the outrageousness of the storyline can be forgiven and even appreciated. Even the hokey dialogue can be enjoyed if this movie is approached with fun in mind. The overall package here is so silly and strange that the film would be a perfect addition to a Bad Movie Night, especially one focusing on war movies.

"Hitler, Dead of Alive" reaches the height of goofiness when the heroes contact the German underground by hearing a man walking along whistling "Yankee Doodle Dandy." The leader of the gangster, Steve, says, "That's the one song no Nazi would whistle!" And when Hitler arrives on the scene, the way he's portrayed is only slightly less goofy... it's almost as if Hynkle crossed over from Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" for a guest appearance. I think this film also features one of the weirdest, yet fitting, demises for Hitler ever put on screen.

The strangest aspect of the film is the sudden shift in tone it takes during its closing minutes. The comedic tone--with the dimwitted gangsters and even stupider Nazis and antics involving dressing up like a string quartet in order to get close to Hitler--is suddenly thrown overboard when the Nazis start lining children up against walls and gunning them down. It's an abrupt change... and it might be a reflection of the American psyche as the full scope of the horrific acts of Hitler and his Nazis could no longer be covered up or ignored by sympathizers and appeasers.

(The lack of knowledge of the part of Americans is clearly on display in this film as the three heroes are briefly imprisoned at Dachau, a place we now know was one of camps where the Nazis carried out their agenda of genocide but which here is portrayed as an internment camp for political prisoners. It's a clear illustration of the fact that even those making anti-Nazi propaganda films couldn't imagine the true monstrosity of what was unfolding in Germany and the countries it conquered.)

"Hitler, Dead of Alive" is actually the sort of film that I wish someone in Hollywood would have made back in 2002 or so... "Bin Laden, Dead of Alive" would have been a movie worth seeing, a movie where even criminals come to recognize who the real bad guys are, even if they are initially motivated by greed.

Biopic of Goebbles paints him as an 'Enemy of Women'

Enemy of Women (aka "The Mad Lover") (1944)
Starring: Paul Andor, Claudia Drake, Donald Woods, H.B. Warner, Robert Barrat Gloria Stuart and Crane Whitely
Director: Alfred Zeisler
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Failed playwright and chief Nazi propagandist Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbles (Andor) uses his power to first build then destroy the career of an actress he has desired since they first met (Drake).


"Enemy of Women" traces both the rise of the Nazi regime and one of its cheif image-makers, Joseph Goebbles. The film mixes facts--Goebbles failed literary ambitions; Goebbles spearheading the Nazi-grip on German media, culminating with the breaking of any outlet that didn't agree with Hitler and the Nazi philosophy; his power-struggles with Himmler (including the time when Goeblles himself almost fell victim to one of Himmler's purges) and snippits of speeches that Goebbles actually gave--with the fictional tale of a young actress who resists Goebbles romantic overtures. In the process, the film delivers a message about how the tyranny of dictatorial regimes and the destruction of indvidual freedoms allow unsavory characters to engage in the worst of excesses... excesses that will eventually doom the tyrant and everything he touches.

The film is well-written and decently acted, with Paul Andor giving an especially remarkable performance as Goebbles. There is absolutely nothing likable about the man--and this is also something that's based in historical fact... he was such a narssacistic egomaniac that he had his own children murdered as the Russians overran Berlin, because he couldn't stand them carrying on after he had failed--yet Andor still manages to bring some touches to his performance that make him human. A prime example of this comes in the film's closing moments when Goebbles' is sitting in the bombed-out wreckage of his home, everything he has strived for destroyed. The viewer still hates and is disgusted by him, but one also can't help but feel a little empathy for him--and sorrow for the lives we've just witnessed him destroy because of his monstrous ego.

And this is where one of the strengths of this film comes from. It treats its main subject fairly and with as much respect as someone like Goebbles deserves. He is not portrayed as a cartoonish ogre or bufoon--as is how many films portrayed the Nazi leades--but as a intelligent, manipulative and utterly evil man who like all of us had hopes and dreams.

The director was further insightful enough to eshew the put-on German accents that were so common in movies of this type. Instead, the actors speak as they normally would, with a few German words thrown into the dialogue for good measure. Only Andor speaks with a German accent, but that's because he did have a German accent. (Andor immigrated to the United States in 1933, just as the character he portrays in this film was rising to his perch of power.)

Finally, the film is beautifully shot. Cameraman John Alton really had a talent for framing a scene and for using shadows and light to emphasize mood. The film's final scenes onboard the train and in Goebbles' Berlin home would not have been as effective as they are if they hadn't been so expertly filmed.

Interestingly, while the film ends with the full story of Goebbles incomplete as it was produced and released while WW2 was still raging, there wouldn't have been much more to tell: This film was released in November of 1944, and in May of 1945, Goebbles would be dead and the Nazi regime ended for all time.

"Enemy of Women" may have been made as a wartime propaganda film, but it holds up nicely some 64 years later, thanks to an excellent cast and superior craftsmanship on the part of the director and cinematographer. It's also quick-paced and straight-to-the-point. Someone should send Oliver Stone a copy; maybe his next psuedo-biography film won't be a crushing bore if he takes some pointers from this one. (If someone still has to buy him a Christmas present, why not get him a copy of this movie? It costs less $8 at Amazon.com, and they'll even send it straight to his house and gift-wrapped if you ask them to.)