Review of The Astounding She-Monster

A deadly, glowing woman pursues a gang of kidnappers and their victim who are hiding out in a geologist's remote cabin. This movie is about as bad as they come but lacks the goofy charm than makes some 'bad movies' so watchable. The negligible budget covered a single indoor set, no outdoor dialogue, an invasive and inappropriate score, one 'alien' suit (a shimmery leotard), virtually no camera work, and 'special effects' which include a spinning picture of the alien woman when she falls from a cliff and blurry double-exposures to suggest the she-monster's radioactive otherworldliness. The cast, playing simplistic caricatures, range from amateurish to mediocre and there is nothing interesting in the script or story. The film opens with ten minutes of pretentious and ludicrous voice-over that leads up to the silent kidnapping scene. Similar to the terrible (but still superior) 'The Beast of Yucca Flats' (1961), the monotone narrator punctuates his steady stream of ominous observations with strange pseudo-philosophical comments. Perhaps unique the genre, the omniscient narrator also deliberately misleads viewers in order to set up the 'twist' ending. Over-all, a time-waster only for the most dedicated of sci-fi 'life-listers'. Like the similarly themed 'The Terror from the Year 5000' (1958), the best thing about 'The Astounding She-Monster' is its astounding poster - lurid and exciting, the image of a curvaceous cavorting space-babe flanked by flying saucers and mysterious planets borderlines on criminal deception.