Major studios currently have one rule when it comes to horror – remake, remake, and remake again. Slasher flicks are the norm, usually with a tired, post-Scream makeover for the ironic/not-ironic-but-don’t-actually-know-any-better audience. With this in mind, it may come as a surprise to find STS championing a remake, especially one that doesn’t even have the benefit of decent source material. Be under no illusions, She-Creature contains all the ingredients for a crap-fest of epic proportions.
Taking a bloody awful 1956 Samual Arkoff movie as source, She-Creature thankfully plays fast and loose with it, originally billing itself as ‘the mermaid chronicles part 1’ it seems they couldn’t be bothered to make any follow-ups. Either that or they had so much fun with this that they knew it couldn’t be topped.
Let’s have a look at the mix: First off, your script requires a roisty-toisty, rollicking Oirishman of the highest order. Who do you choose? Why, Rufus Sewell seems an ideal fit! A strange choice after his almost-breakout in A Knight’s Tale, Sewell never the less has a fine ‘ol time begorrah, swaggering around the screen and spouting blarney about making it big in America to his ‘some sort of generic cockerney ought to do it’ girlfriend, a pre silk spectre Carla Gugino, who seems to be enjoying the chance to show a bit of cleavage, and comes off as game and sexy.
Travelling carnies already have a bad rep, and it’s no surprise if they behave like these two. Playing off the punters with fake zombies and mermaids the two come across a mad old wino at a show, and on finding out he has a cannibalistic, low-level telepath mermaid chained up in his living room –as you do- decide to nick it and head to America, where Sewell is convinced he’ll make it big – What could go wrong?
Of course, once on board ship, things go pear shaped pretty quickly. The previously ex-playmate faced mermaid sprouting odd fins and webs, invading the dreams of young Carla – and playing havoc with her menstrual cycle- and eventually roaming the decks and chowing down on hapless crewmen. Meanwhile the ship is hopelessly lost in a huge storm, and headed toward Mermaid Island!
Mermaid Island!!
“Hang on – this is just bloody stupid” you’ll be thinking, and it is! That’s why it’s great. The set design is high-school play quality, and everyone performs like they’re in a 17th century morality play. Which they are. Weirdly, it’s the whole shouty, badly-put-on-play nature of the thing that lifts it out of the doldrums. If they’d had cash for a CGI beastie, it would just be another piece of SDVD crapola filling up the bargain bin or bottoming out the netflix lists of bored teenage boys. As it is, there’s a nightmarish, hypereal quality about things, with fever-dream Giallo colouring. The whole thing shot in the style of Hammer, lots of slow pans and dodgy handheld shaky-cam, and it’s fantastic. Dry Ice swarms around, yapping cannibal eel-maids await in inky black waters, and at the end, we finally see the name of the ship.
Yep, it’s The Marie Celeste.
She-Creature is brilliant, dazzling rubbish that’s born out of time. This tale spins out like a carnival hawkers cries. Brash, overcooked garbage with enough strange turns, grains of truth and half remembered elements from childhood stories to make it stick with you – well worth £2 of anyone’s money!
