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Summary: Exotic fantasy done in exhuberent 30's style
Review: Strange, camp, and ornate. Most of the King Kong crew returns with some well-done special effects, great music, absurd dance numbers, and human sacrifice. Fascinating and very entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: This is not the story I remember...
Review: The actor who played She did not seem to portray the she I had in mind. I read this story as a little girl, or rather it was read to me. I remember She being the most beautiful woman on earth. This did not come across in the movie. At lot of illustration and characterization was left out. I did like the campy dance sequence in the movie, very strange and eerie. The music that went with it was ominious and quite effective. The stage sets were quite good, yet the story is taking place in the cold north, rather than Africa. She does convey an icy distance in her stance so I give the actor points for that, yet it is just lacking in story and plot to really hold my attention. Randolph Scott was handsome yet his acting looked very much like acting. I liked Tanya's eyes, they were really sparkly. The threesome, Scott's character, his sidekick, and Tanya, a girl who they met in Antartica, who had been abused by her father, went on a trek to find the eternal flame that bathed you in a mythical fire of youth. When the flame reverses itself the effects are quite good. The avalanches are pretty neat and the chase scenes in the frozen mountain glaciers are fun to watch. All and All not heartily recommended but not to dissuade you either. By all means read the book, it is exceptional. Lisa Nary
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Summary: An Icy Eternal Feminine
Review: The packaging for the DVD boldly announces this film as "From the Creator of 'King Kong'" and there are indeed such striking similarities between the two that She--produced by Merian C. Cooper during his tenure at RKO might well have been called Kong Goes North. (Cognoscenti of the earlier film will have no difficulty in spotting the monumental wall with its Babylonian-style gates that separated the inhabitants of Skull Island from the lair of the beast.) Once more a band of intrepid explorers intrude upon the sacred precincts of a "lost world" that has been cut off from contact with the outside for centuries--and with predictably disastrous results for all concerned, since the hero turns out to be a reincarnation of the man the immortal mistress of the chthonian realm of Kor had loved five hundred years before. In making King Kong, Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack had drawn upon their earlier documentaries like Grass and Chang, but She, based upon another febrile romance from the pen of H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines) is a wildly romantic creation that more resembles a Hollywood adaptation of Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde than any conventional adventure picture. In fact, what makes She still quite charming today is its highly anachronistic quality, especially evident in the extravagant sets designed by Van Nest Polglase, which hark back to the visual style of classic German films from the early 1920s like Fritz Lang's Destiny as well as Alla Nazimovia's silent version of Oscar Wilde's Salome. I would also surmise that She may have had a influence upon the look of some later movies including Frank Capra's Lost Horizon and Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz, and most interestingly of all upon Walt Disney's Snow White, whose evil queen bears a remarkable likeness to the one who rules over Kor. Helen Gahagan in her unique screen appearance is grandiosely malevolent as She Who Must Be Obeyed--as the movie styles the character. Randolph Scott is quite acceptable as the explorer Leo, and Nigel Bruce his usual solid self as Leo's companion Holly. But Helen Mack is ludicrous as Tanya, the mortal for whom Leo gives up the chance of eternal life, and Gustav Von Seyffertitz as the high priest of Kor is a prototypic example of old-time studio miscasting. As another reviewer pointed out, this DVD has been made from excellent print material and the picture quality is quite impressive, although I personally found the sound level had to be cranked up quite a bit.
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