Product Description

Stranded in the frigid wilderness, explorers searching for the fountain of youth stumble onto a colony of ferocious cave dwellers who guard Kor, a fantastic, subterranean lost kingdom ruled by an independent and powerful woman known as She.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #240859 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
Randolph Scott is his usual stiff but smiling self as Leo Vincey, the long-lost American heir to a British family legacy, sent by his estranged father to reclaim the legendary "Flame of Life," discovered five centuries ago by his explorer ancestor. Producer Merian C. Cooper, best known for directing King Kong, changes the locale of H. Rider Haggard's classic adventure from Africa to the Arctic (which, apart from a spectacular avalanche, looks positively stagebound), but he pulls out all stops for the magnificent underground kingdom hidden in the icy mountains, complete with a cavernous throne room with vaulted ceilings and a massive staircase that would look right at home in the Ziegfeld Follies. The cruel She Who Must Be Obeyed (Helen Gahagan) is a beautiful but icy queen driven ruthless by her centuries of loneliness. The film takes some time to get started but once She makes her impressive entrance through a mist-enshrouded arch, we're plunged into a dangerous, exotic world of strange ceremonies, human sacrifices, nefarious plots, and the gorgeous whirlwind of light that is the Flame of Life. Though the dialogue is often flat and uninspired and the performances by Scott and Gahagan rather arch (costars Nigel Bruce and Helen Mack fare much better), this grand adventure concludes with a rousing climax full of impressive set pieces and breathtaking effects. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

An Icy Eternal Feminine
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.

Largely Forgotten But Greatly Influential--And A Lot of Fun!
If the 1935 SHE reminds you vaguely of the 1933 KING KONG do not be too surprised: both films were produced by Meriam C. Cooper, who endowed them with similar visual styles--and who tweaked the 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard to create a similar story line as well. Starring Broadway actress (and later two term Democratic congresswoman from California) Helen Gahagan in her only film role as The Eternal One, SHE did not, however, meet with the same financial success. It lost a tremendous amount of money for RKO, was withdrawn, and for many years was thought to be completely lost.

Although the film alters the Haggard novel in a great many ways, it retains the basic elements. Lured by a family legend, Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott) braves the frozen European north with family friend Horace Holly (Nigel Bruce, best known for his appearances in the Sherlock Holmes series) and innocent Tanya Dugmore (Helen Mack, popular 1930s ingenue.) When an avalanche exposes a cavern, the three find that the Vincey family legend is not quite so fanciful after all.

Most particularly, they find themselves at the mercy of She Who Must Be Obeyed, a woman who recalls talk of Jesus Christ in the Jerusalem market place, a woman two thousand years old who preserves her life by bathing in a radioactive flame that vents from the volcanic floor of her hidden kingdom. She (known here as Queen Hash-A-Mo-Tep) has been waiting for the reincarnation of her long-dead love, and Leo is his spitting image.

The acting styles are stiff even by 1935 standards and although Miss Gahagan is attractive in a 1930s way she lacks the stunning beauty attributed to She by the Haggard novel--but the great draw of the film was never intended to be great acting: like KING KONG, it is an action-adventure film with knockout sets (a few of them actually lifted from KING KONG), memorable special effects, and remarkable cinematographic set pieces. Even as it borrowed from earlier films such as the 1932 Boris Karloff THE MUMMY, it would also influence later films in turn; it is hard, for example, to imagine the 1937 Ronald Coleman LOST HORIZON without it, and even the look of the evil queen in Disney's 1938 SNOW WHITE is said to have been inspired by Gahagan's look and performance.

The film has been released in several editions to the home market, and fans may be tempted by less expensive editions. A word to the wise: Don't. The film shows its age and there is no significant bonus material, but the Kino Video release (be it on VHS or DVD) offers what is probably the best print short of a digital restoration. Recommended for fans of 1930s fantasy cinema.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

SHE's the one...
This is in response to the viewer who wanted more details about the 2-disc special edition of SHE. Without giving away too much of the plot, the story basically involves some brave adventurers who head off on an expedition to a faraway land with the hope of finding a lost civilization rumored to possess a mysterious power source that can give eternal youth. After a perilous journey, the explorers eventually locate the ancient people but run into trouble when they meet the cold-blooded female leader of the kingdom.

This new edition of SHE includes both a colorized version of the film and a restored print of the original B&W feature, along with a second disc full of bonus material. For me, however, the main reason for getting this newer release of the film is that it's an expanded version that runs about 8 minutes longer than the original.

As for the film itself, SHE is one of the all-time great adventure movies. One might quibble that there could have been a little more action instead of some lengthy sequences dealing with the sacrificial ceremonies and such, but it still has a thought-provoking mix of mystery and excitement that truly holds your attention. If you liked the original KING KONG or JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH with James Mason, you're bound to enjoy this movie and it's certainly worth adding to your collection.

If you already own the previous Kino edition of SHE, this new version does indeed offer some impressive enhancements, so if you really love the movie I'd say it's worth the price to replace your old copy. If you're just a casual fan, though, the older DVD is perfectly acceptable. Bottom line: SHE is always a winner.