She (Digitally remastered in colour) [DVD] [1935]

Legend Films and RKO Pictures present "SHE" (July 12, 1935) (95 mins) (Fully Restored/Dolby Digitally Remastered) --- now in COLOR and Glorious Black and White --- "She," adapted from H. Rider Haggard's timeless tale, starring the imposing Helen Gahagan as She (Who-Must-Be-Obeyed), the eternally beautiful ruler of the lost kingdom of Kor --- Helen Gahagan, in her only film, is striking in her portrayal of She, a woman as tragic as she is blessed - to whom others' paltry, transient lives mean nothing --- Randolph Scott, as the direct descendent and physical embodiment of She's long dead lover, brings a believable good performance in a role that calls for top of his form energy. Nigel Bruce is very fine, as usual, this time playing the scholarly friend accompanying Scott on the search for The Flame --- Helen Mack is well cast as the young lady who finds herself caught up in the adventure --- The only film appearance of Gahagan, a noted stage and opera star who later entered the political arena as Helen Gahagan Douglas --- "She" represents Depression Era escapism at its very peak.

Under Lansing C. Holden (Director), Irving Pichel (Director), Merian C. Cooper (Producer), H. Rider Haggard (Book Author), Dudley Nichols (Screenwriter), Ruth Rose (Screenwriter), Roy Hunt (Cinematographer), Max Steiner (Composer (Music Score), Alfred Herman (Art Director), Van Nest Polglase (Art Director), Vernon Walker (Special Effects), Benjamin Zemach (Choreography) - - - - This film exists today only because silent film star Buster Keaton had a copy of the original print stored in his garage, which he gave to film historian Raymond Rohauer for preservation --- The sets, costumes, etc. were all prepared for a color film. At the last minute, RKO pulled Merian C. Cooper's budget, and so, he was forced to shoot the film in black and white. Friend Ray Harryhausen and Legend Films later colorized the film as a tribute to Cooper.

the cast includes:
Helen Gahagan ... She
Randolph Scott ... Leo Vincey
Helen Mack ... Tanya Dugmore
Nigel Bruce ... Horace Holly
Julius Adler ... High Priest
Ray Corrigan ... Guard
Jerry Frank ... Guard
Arnold Gray ... Priest
Lumsden Hare ... Dugmore
Samuel S. Hinds ... John Vincey
Noble Johnson ... Amahaggar Chief
Jim Thorpe ... Captain of the Guard
Gustav von Seyffertitz ... Prime Minister Billali
Bill Wolfe ... Priest

BIOS:
1. Randolph Scott (aka: George Randolph Scott)
Date of birth: 23 January 1898 - Orange County, Virginia
Date of death: 2 March 1987 - Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California

2. Helen Gahagan
Date of Birth: 25 November 1900 - Boonton, New Jersey
Date of Death: 28 June 1980 - New York, New York

3. Nigel Bruce
Date of Birth: 4 February 1895 - Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico
Date of Death: 8 October 1953 - Santa Monica, California

4. Ray Harryhausen
Date of Birth: 29 June 1920 - Los Angeles, California
Date of Death: Still Living

BONUS FEATHERS:
1. Audio Commentary by Ray Harryhausen
2. Interview with Ray Harryhausen
3. Film Process with Ray Harryhausen
4. Additional Scenes
5. Legend Films Trailers
6. "She" Trailers

Hats off and thanks to Les Adams (collector/guideslines for character identification), Chuck Anderson (Webmaster: The Old Corral/B-Westerns.Com), Boyd Magers (Western Clippings), Bobby J. Copeland (author of "Trail Talk"), Rhonda Lemons (Empire Publishing Inc), Bob Nareau (author of "The Real Bob Steele") and Trevor Scott (Down Under Com) as they have rekindled my interest once again for Film Noir, B-Westerns and Serials --- looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage serial era of the '20s, '30s & '40s and B-Westerns ... order your copy now from Amazon where there are plenty of copies available on DVD --- stay tuned once again for top notch action mixed with deadly adventure --- if you enjoyed this title, why not check out Legend Films where they are experts in releasing long forgotten films and treasures to the collector --- all my heroes have been cowboys!

Total Time: 95 mins on DVD ~ Legend Films Video. ~ (11/28/2006)

"I am yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I am sorrow and longing and hope unfulfilled. I am She Who Must Be Obeyed!"

There's never been an entirely successful sound version of H. Rider Haggard's She, but on re-viewing, the 1935 version comes far closer than any of its rivals. After five silent versions of varying degrees of popularity, a lavish version reuniting many of the team behind King Kong must have seemed a box-office slamdunk (though not enough of one for RKO to approve the cost of filming in Three-Strip Technicolor), yet proved a flop on its original release. Subsequently cut for reissues, it was only because Buster Keaton had a print of the film in his own collection that it initially survived being lost altogether.

At first sight there are a lot of changes from Haggard's novel. Leo Vincey is no longer the reincarnation of She's lost love of centuries earlier Kalikrites but a descendent of a 15th century explorer She fell in love with. Thematically the novel's repressed homosexual undercurrent is (understandably for 1935) lost, as are its early reflections on people's assumptions that those blessed with beauty are also exceptionally gifted, intelligent and innately decent (in the novel Leo is distinctly dim and ultimately lacking in moral stature despite his looks, while the slightly deformed but good-hearted and extremely intelligent Holly is regularly taken for a sinister dullard). Even the nature of Leo's quest has been changed - no longer a search to find She and his own destiny but a search for the Flame of Life and the lost kingdom of Kor, now relocated from Africa to the mountain ranges of Muscovy. Yet even with the reinvention of much of the first third of the book (borrowing heavily from the Tibetan mountain setting of the first of Haggard's three follow-up novels, Ayesha: The Return of She), Ruth Rose's adaptation cuts to the heart of the book: this is about the desperate desire for what we cannot have and how that longing can erode what makes us human.

Just as Leo's uncle has destroyed himself with his experiments to artificially create the Flame of Life with radioactivity, She's all-consuming obsession with a love that never really was has burnt out her very heart and soul, her passion, like her empire, one of the imagination: it's the possibility of immortality that Leo's fascinated by, not her, and he'll play her toyboy and cut out his companions without a second thought to attain it. Gifted with one of the great screen entrances of all time, silhouetted behind a wall of smoke at the top of a flight of palatial steps, Helen Gahagan is a very different interpretation of the role from the usual babe you'd crawl over broken glass to get to, more a matron weighed down by time and loneliness and freed from the moral code of mere mortals. Her scream of pain on seeing Vincey for the first time in several lifetimes is a genuinely shocking moment.

Broadway star Gahagan would take the lion's share of the blame for the film's failure, never making another movie and going into politics where she later become smeared as `the Pink Lady' by Nixon during the McCarthy era, though not before popularising his nickname `Tricky Dicky.' In truth the film's failure might be more down to its lack of action (though it does throw in a terrific avalanche and a vivid escape sequence at the end) and its lack of obviously sympathetic characters. Randolph Scott is suitably bland as Leo while Nigel Bruce, still four years away from his bumbling Dr Watson, is a convincingly determined and grounded figure here to act as counterpoint to the hero's growing loss of self, but it's left to Helen Mack's romantic interest to carry the torch for basic human decency. The greatest impact is made by former silent film director Gustav Von Seyffertitz, a combination of the figure of Friederich Von Leidebur and the voice of Bela Lugosi, as a wonderfully imposing high priest Bilali: when he says "There are marvels to be seen here today," you believe him. (The eagle-eyed may also spot Native American Olympic medal winning athlete Jim Thorpe, later played onscreen by Burt Lancaster, also in there as the captain of the palace guards.)

Although more than ably directed by Irving Pichel and Lansing C. Holden with some superb and ambitious camera work courtesy of J. Roy Hunt, it's clearly producer Merian C. Cooper who's the driving force here. The model for King Kong's showman Carl Denham, he goes all-out to best his previous pictures here and nearly manages it despite the odd bit of studio penny-pinching. He certainly got his money's worth from Van Nest Polglase's truly magnificent design which shows real vision in details great and small, from the massive ceremonial halls to the mausoleum steps worn away over the years by She, although criminally the film's sole Oscar nomination went instead to Benjamin Zemach in the "They had an Oscar for THAT?" category of Best Dance Direction for the film's most relentless sequence of prolonged camp prior to a human sacrifice.

For a long-forgotten flop, it certainly left its mark on many who saw it. Just as the novel was clearly an influence on James Hilton's later Lost Horizon, the film is very obviously a big influence on Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with She Who Must Be Obeyed rendering judgment in a costume the wicked queen would borrow for her little chats with her mirror. Ray Harryhausen took much from the film for his last Sinbad adventure, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, as well, not least the frozen sabre-toothed tiger that comes memorably to life, a sequence that at one time been mooted for Cooper's film before budget cuts meant dropping Willis O. Brien's planned stop-motion animation setpiece and leaving the beast encased in ice.

Harryhausen, along with Cooper biographer Mark Cotta Caz, provides the audio commentary on Kino's new 2-disc Region 1 NTSC DVD, but sadly much of the commentary is about the colorization process (the film is included in both black and white and colorized versions), which is considerably less than state-of-the-art. While Cooper had intended the film to be shot in color, it's doubtful he'd be impressed with the results. The ice sequences and avalanche look impressive, but flesh tones are still unconvincing and much of the colorized version has the look of an old magic coloring book. On the plus side, for the first time the film has been fully restored with the deleted scenes sourced by James D'Arc at the Brigham Young University (where Cooper and composer Max Steiner's collections are held) put back into the original black and white version as well as the colorized one. There's also a good interview with composer John Morgan about Max Steiner's acclaimed score.

I ordered this DVD last year and it came very quikly. I'll admit that this isn't one of the best DVDs ever, beacause ther are no extras and it's only the colour version and not the black and white version. But I don't care a bit. And I just don't know why some people make a huge deal out of it like it's the worst DVD ever released. At least it's Region 2 and not Region 1. The film its self is fantastic. The sts are stunning, the acting is great, the special effects are beautiful and on this version the colour is just gorgous. Legend Films are truly the best colourization company there is. Some people may like the Region 1 better, but I like this one, because I can lie in bed and watch it. Buy the Region 1 if you like, but I prefer this edition.