She Demons (1958)

"What an amusing name for my specimens." 

Our latest adventure begins somewhere in the Caribbean, where four shipwreck survivors have just washed-up on the beach of some uncharted desert isle (-- I think, meaning I think they're in the Caribbean). Now, these castaways were all part of an ill-fated expedition to find a lost legendary land-mass, which had sprung many a strange and salty sea tale over the years; tales of demons and monsters and treasure, where sailors who dared go ashore were never heard from again.

But the skipper of this group, Fred Maklin (Griffin), steered them right into a massive hurricane instead, whose end result we see scattered all over the sand. Here, we meet the rest of his motley crew: his right hand man, Sammy Ching (Yung), his second mate, Kris Kamana (Opuni), and Jerrie Turner (McCalla) -- the spoiled socialite of the wealthy kook who financed this expedition in the first place. And according to her, as she bitches away about their current predicament, the only reason Dear Old Dad paid for all of this nonsense was not to find any secret treasure but to just get her out of his hair for as long as possible.

Well, we’ve only known her for a hot-minute but this theory tracks. Trust me. However! After a cursory view of the island, by dumb luck and dumb luck alone, Maklin is convinced they’ve actually found what they were looking for all along -- only now they find themselves stuck on it indefinitely. Eureka! And here’s hoping all those legends are just legends, amiright?

Anyhoo, as the group works to salvage what little they can, their malfunctioning, plot-specific radio sparks-off long enough to report that the search for them has been called off and they're all now presumed dead (-- wow, THAT was fast). And to make matters even worse, as Sammy tries to fix the infernal thing (-- it can receive but not transmit), the contraption then confirms that, one, the circling planes they see and hear overhead aren’t search planes but Navy scouts; and two, according to the pilot chatter, these castaways have had the misfortune of getting themselves marooned on a Naval bombing range! And the next bombardment is set to commence the following morning at 8am!

Thus and so, needing to find some better cover before those bombs start falling, Maklin leaves Kamana to guard their makeshift camp on the beach while he leads the other two inland and into the jungle to find more suitable shelter, where he and Jerrie snipe and snark at each other every, step, of, the, way. (Just kiss her already!)

Now, aside from a menacing snake, their cursory exploration finds the island seemingly deserted. I say “seemingly” because they keep finding trails of human footprints wherever they search, but no other sign of who -- or what, could’ve left them. But upon returning to the beach, the trio finds their camp destroyed, the radio smashed, and Kamana dead with several spears sticking out of his chest! They also find another body -- a native woman judging by her garb, rolling face down in the surf. Closer examination shows her face is hideously disfigured, twisted into a demonic mask of pure and adulterated e'yeecch.

Then, the sound of distant drums draws our curious castaways back into the jungle and further inland, where they eventually discover more scantily clad island girls -- only these beauties appear to be normal, engaged in some bizarre native ritual. 

But! This wild orgy of dancing and bongo drums is soon interrupted by the arrival of a squad of armed, jack-booted thugs decked-out in Nazi SS uniforms, who round up the girls and march them into several cages.

Here, we note some of those cages were already full of disfigured captives like the one on the beach. Meanwhile, one of the new captives is chained up by the wrists and then summarily whipped to death by a brutish lout named Igor (Roth) as an abject lesson to the others on what will happen if they ever try to escape again.

That's right, Fellow Programs. Not only has this doomed expedition managed to get marooned on an island that is inhabited by blood-thirsty She-Demons and scheduled for demolition by the U.S. Navy, but it's also serving as a refuge for a band of rogue expatriate Nazis. 

And the only thing that could possibly make this situation even worse is if this cursed island was perched on top of an active volcano. Well, Guess what? And, believe me, all of this accumulated shit is about to hit the fan most righteously…

Richard E. “Dick” Cunha’s She Demons (1958) opens with stock-footage of Hurricane Emily shredding the coast near Surf City, Florida, back in 1957; and that's a pretty apt metaphor when dealing with Cunha’s filmography, where cheapness, cheesecake and exploitative sleaze meld together into a volatile storm of eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty that tends to overwhelm audiences with there self-destructive tendencies.

But if you look a little closer, into the eye of this filmmaking hurricane, there's actually something pretty cool, unique, and even ground-breaking going on in the middle of all that chaos and dreck. Don't get me wrong. Logic or coherency do not apply here. Don't bother to think about them rationally -- that way leads to madness. But taken on their own, Cunhalogical terms, his films are twisted and absolutely bonkers. And! I honestly believe they serve as the absolute zenith of independently produced Grade-B schlock.

Richard Cunha (left), Frankenstein's daughter (right). 

“There was [only a certain amount] of dollars, and you don’t run over on these low budget films,” said Cunha in an interview with Tom Weaver (Return of the B Science Fiction and Horror Heroes, 2000). “You shoot the opening scenes and the end scenes, and then fill in the picture in between. And so, if you run out of money, somehow they’ll dissolve between what you missed and the next scene in there. Fortunately we didn’t miss anything -- or if we did, it wouldn’t have been missed (by the audience). Believe me.”

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Cunha, like a lot of his B-Movie brethren of this strata, got his first taste of filmmaking while serving in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. Before that, he had attended the Art Center School in Los Angeles and briefly ran a photographic studio in Hollywood before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. While in the service, he filmed reconnaissance missions around the globe -- Africa, India, China, and the Aleutians, and as a member of the Army Air Corps' First Motion Picture Unit he would later make training films at "Fort Roach" -- Hal Roach Studios, in Culver City.

After his hitch was up, he landed a job with Toby Anguish Productions, who provided industrial shorts, commercials, and other material for the new and expanding medium of television, including local programming like The Adventures of Marshall O'Dell and Captain Bob Steele and the Border Patrol.

When the boss retired in the mid-1950s, Cunha and his friend, Arthur A. Jacobs (-- often mistakenly identified as Arthur P. Jacobs, who produced the Planet of the Apes franchise), hocked everything they owned, bought Anguish out, and took over his extensive production facilities, which included a massive sound-stage, multiple editing rooms, and dubbing studios. And after rechristening themselves as Screencraft Enterprises, a lot of commercial work followed -- Texaco, General Mills cereals, and the duo seemed content with that lot until one of their stock copywriters put a bug in their ear about how maybe they should make a movie.

 “We had a friend, Ralph Brooke, who was interested in movies and things,” said Cunha. “And he kept egging us on, saying, ‘Why are you guys messin’ around here, wouldn’t it be better to just make a movie or something?’ He finally convinced us that it would be kind of fun to do, and that maybe we could make a dollar and a quarter out of it.”

Added Jacobs in that same interview with Weaver, “We were all sitting in the office one day, there was [Cunha], me, and Ralph, and screenwriter Frank Taussig -- and we wondered, ‘What kind of picture do we want to make?’ And then we said, ‘Well, we should do a monster movie.’”

Remember, during this period in Hollywood, every crackpot producer was crawling out of the woodwork, trying to make their own hair-brained Creature Feature with a prayer and a hope to cash-in like Hal Chester and Jack Dietz did at Warners with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). And if not that, well, cash in a little less with American International, Howco, or Allied Artists. And so, Cunha and Jacobs decided to scratch that itch, once they figured out what their monster would be for something tentatively titled, The Giant from Devil’s Crag.

According to Jacobs, at first, they tried to find a completed script to film. But after sorting through nearly 100 submissions, none of them passed muster -- mostly due to budget concerns. Said Cunha, “One of them had a giant lizard in it, and we couldn’t afford the lizard or any of those giant whatevers. About that time, Bert I. Gordon was making films with giant spiders and animals and things. We figured we didn’t have the talent for special-effects, so we needed some kind of inexpensive monster.”

Thus, needing a giant monster that required no special-effects and was cost-effective (re: cheap), the producers finally found what they were looking for with the six-foot-seven Buddy Baer -- brother of heavyweight boxing champ Max Baer, and uncle to Max "Jethro Bodine" Baer Jr. And with Baer’s hulking frame serving as inspiration, a script was soon cobbled together -- credited to Brooke and Taussig, where an ancient conquistador named Vargas comes back to life after hibernating in the snow and ice of the High Sierras for a couple of centuries to terrorize the town of Pine Ridge.

A surprisingly moody and effective thriller, with a nice Hitchcockian wrong-man twist when the hero is initially blamed for the rash of animal mutilations and mounting homicides, this film venture was shot in just six days for the princely sum of $54,000. Said Jacobs, “We had $30,000 in cash, and so we had about $24,000 that we owed when we finished -- but we had deferments at the lab and so forth. From the time we decided to do the picture until the time we finished the answer print was sixty days -- two months altogether.”

The only “special effect” present in the film was a lone optical when Vargas falls to his doom during the climax. Here, the production ran into some good luck courtesy of some bad luck. Apparently, there was an elaborate fight staged between the hero and the monster at an old mill near a waterfall -- a dilapidated set leftover from Henry Hathaway’s Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). But, “We had worked until midnight shooting the fight sequence and discovered at the end of the night that the shutter in the camera was closed,” said Cunha. “And so, we had absolutely nothing.”

Thus, the climax had to be completely reshot -- and in a hurry, too, due to running out of both time and money and a sudden snowstorm, which worked out in the end because the wintry elements added a strange sense of cinéma vérité to the new ending.

 The Wolf Man (left), Jack Pierce (right).

Some of that budget was also splurged on makeup effects, provided by the great Jack Pierce, who had recently been dumped by Universal after years of service building all those monsters we hold so dear -- Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Wolf Man (1941), and was desperate for a job. “I’m not even sure we did any tests on that,” said Cunha. “We had no idea what the monster should look like. It was all determined by who we cast.” Added Jacobs, “Pierce took Buddy aside, put him in the chair, and started working on him. I think it took about two, three hours.”

The production also shelled out for some costuming and wardrobe -- namely the fiberglass armor crafted by Harold Banks, who would go on to design the Gumby-like rock creatures for Cunha’s even more Cunhalogical feature, Missile to the Moon (1958). “[Banks] did all the armor, the hat, the swords, the skull,” said Cunha. “It was our first experience with fiberglass -- that was brand new at the time.” Added Jacobs, “We couldn’t afford the real ones, and he said he could make them out of the fiberglass. And I remember it stunk up the whole studio.”

 From The El Paso Times (January 30, 1958).

But these expenditures were worth it. For when you combine their efforts with Baer’s imposing size, armed with his trusty battle-axe, it made for quite the menacing figure as the thawed-out Vargas. However, according to Jacobs, “Buddy Baer was actually too sweet to be a monster. He was such a nice guy.” 

Like his brother, Baer was also a boxer, whose career might've taken a completely different path if he hadn't lost a controversial title bout with Joe Louis back in 1941. And this wasn't his first feature either, having already starred in a couple of Abbott and Costello vehicles, Africa Screams (1949) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1952), where he played -- What else? -- the giant.

Cunha and Jacobs also managed to save even more money by skirting around the unions, sending their representatives to the wrong locations while they shot somewhere else with non-union extras. And as originally intended, Cunha was to only serve as the film's cinematographer but he slid into the director's chair because, honestly, they couldn’t afford to hire anyone else.

Not surprisingly, it took longer to find a distributor for their inaugural effort than to actually film it. Luckily, Jacobs had some ties to Astor Pictures, a company based out of New York, who agreed to distribute the film -- once they settled on a title, which ran from The Giant from Devil’s Crag, to The Giant of Diablo Pass, to The Diablo Giant, to finally, Giant from the Unknown (1958).

However, there was a catch. The catch being that in those days of double-bills, Giant from the Unknown needed a co-feature; a co-feature that Astor was willing to pay for if Cunha and Jacobs were up to providing it. This they were, and the end-result was the ultimate Cunhalogical flick, She Demons.

Yeah, with the combination of titillating cheesecake, the sleaze of sexual malfeasance (-- there’s a scene in Giant from the Unknown where Vargas, aroused by watching another woman disrobe in silhouette, attacks a teenage girl, his intentions clear before we cut to black), and punctuated by outbursts of startling violence, by design or by accident, Cunha stuck with this formula for that follow-up feature -- but then amped things up even further. 

“She Demons used women as both sex objects and figures of horror, giving Cunha his status as a maker of rotgut kitsch,” said author D. Earl Werth. (The Sleaze Creatures, 1995). “In sex, gore, and a feeling of general ugliness, these were the 1950s nearest thing to R-rated shock as black and white American-made films went.”

Co-writing the script with H.E. Barrie, Cunha’s sinister island adventure probably drew inspiration from those lurid pulp novels and men’s “Sweat” magazines of the era -- though a check of publication dates on a lot of those mags makes one wonder as to who inspired who? Said Cunha, “I [wrote] it because we needed a script and … I was there.” Added Jacobs, “Who else was gonna do it? Somebody had to!”

Also around this time there was a lot of global buzz about the hunt for escaped Nazi war criminals, namely Josef Mengele and Adolph Eichmann; the former providing the inspiration for Cunha's vile villain, Carl "The Butcher" Osler (Anders), whose dubious experiments in glandular secretions are only matched by the callous disregard for his test-subjects -- all of those pathetic and distorted “She Demons.” Says Osler, “It's only the unimaginative who cannot believe that man is incapable of improving upon nature."

Also of note, after a lot of digging, the only other expatriate mad Nazi scientist angle I could find that predates this flick was Sam Katzman's Creature with the Atom Brain (1955). And right or wrong, a lot of deviant medical / sexual Nazisploitation flicks -- from Love Camp 7 (1969) to Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS (1975) -- were destined to follow.

And believe it or not, She Demons also beat the likes of Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Jess Franco’s The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962) to the cinematic punch on the whole kidnapping nubile young women for some dastardly face-swapping experiments to restore the beauty of a disfigured loved one; in this case, Osler's wife, Mona (Tana). 

And in point of fact, the revelation of Mona's damaged face is one of the more unjustly unsung *bleaugh* moments of this or any other cinematic era.

See! *bleaugh*

And not only is the mad little Nutzi dabbling in God's domain in a glandular sense, he's also tapped the Earth's molten core for an unlimited source of energy in a scene that rivals Edward D. Wood Jr.'s take on the horrors of solarmanite in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) in both concept and execution. Neither made one damned bit of sense; and while both, I believe, were totally unnecessary to the plot, both were completely necessary as padding to get the much needed 7th reel of film to break the magic 70-minute barrier.

Anyways ... Luckily for Cunha's marooned party, Mona's guilty conscience, when combined with her husband's less than subtle attempts to dump her and get Jerrie in the sack, finally gets the better of her. And through her, the others manage to engineer their escape. For while the She Demons get their revenge on Igor, Mona openly defies her husband and saves Jerrie, who was strapped to a gurney and about to have her glands scrambled, too.

Meantime, those Navy bombers have finally arrived; and as the island is pasted, Osler's lava machine overloads, killing him. Thus, with no hope for a cure, Mona remains behind as more bombs fall, the long dormant volcano erupts, and our trio valiantly shoots their way out of the Nazi compound and head back to the beach, where the late Mona’s promised escape craft awaits as the whole island implodes in a hellish inferno of Navy ordinance and molten lava, taking all of Osler's evil with it.

Wow. All of that crammed into 77-mad-cap minutes. Again, Wow. But to be honest, about half of that runtime is still fluffed-out with ah-lot of padding -- and watch for one helluva nasty head-shot by Maklin there at the end, followed by a spectacular dummy death plunge.

Now, even with an increased budget of $80,000 provided by Astor, She Demons was still brought in after just six days of shooting. The beach scenes were shot at Malibu (-- not far from where Jim Rockford's trailer sat according to star Tod Griffin), the familiar nooks and crannies of Bronson Canyon provided the caves and quarries, while the jungle and laboratory sets were built at Screencraft's own mammoth facilities.

But while those jungle and lab sets were pretty keen, She Demons sorely missed the efforts of Pierce as the makeup effects provided by Carlie Taylor are pretty shabby. With the notable exception of that brief glimpse we get of Mona’s scarred visage (-- played by Cunha’s wife, Kathryn, for that reveal, doubling for actress Leni Tana, who had refused to wear the make-up), the island demons appear to be nothing more than dime-store fangs and a slice of Mortadella bologna slapped onto their faces, which was then glued on with what appears to be dried oatmeal. But before we dogpile too hard, it should be noted Taylor was the only one listed in the credits for makeup, so the blame for this dubious creation very well could belong to someone else.

On the positive side, production wise, and there’s more than you’d probably think at first glance, I will unashamedly trumpet the merits of Nick Carras’ rousing score, which brings the percussion hard and heavy and adds a little gravitas to the ears when by all rights there shouldn't be any by what we're seeing with our eyes.

Also, positive mention should be made of a trio of action set-pieces courtesy of FX man Dave Koehler that really stand out; namely the stunt where Osler meets his doom and is buried alive in lava; or the fire effects when Mona accepts her fate and casually walks back into the inferno; and best yet, a truly effective matte shot when a wall collapses behind our fleeing heroes to reveal a raging river of lava.

Still, despite these minor technical triumphs, the gaffes and goofs in this fractured flick still rule the day; and none stand out more ridiculously than the epic fistfight between Maklin and Igor that kicks off the climax. 

Sure, it was edited together quite competently from many takes and cuts -- except for the bits where they went back and re-shot a few angles with a stuntman, who is so not Tod Griffin, and then cut them into takes with the real Tod Griffin that one can only watch and boggle: 

Tod Griffin. 

Not Tod Griffin.

“I never saw the double,” Griffin explained to Weaver in a separate interview (Science Fiction Confidential, 2002). “When I was shooting that scene, I never saw any part of it, and I didn’t know there would be a double in there.” He honestly thought the scene was finished. It wasn’t. Said an exasperated Griffin, “And they picked somebody that couldn’t be any further from me! He was half my size, blonde hair -- it seems to me they could’ve gone to a little bit more trouble! Color his hair or something! It was so obvious.”

But in the end, Griffin was pretty pragmatic about his experience on She Demons. “I know they were on a really small, small budget because I don’t recall too many takes. If you got it half-right the first time, you’d hear, ‘Print it!’ We did that picture in a hurry.”

Still, in spite of the haphazard production, our cast of heroes managed some actual chemistry and played well off of each other. And though most of the overt comedy falls flat on its face there are some truly hilarious zingers to be heard if you keep your ears open.

She Demons was a rare feature for Griffin, and would be his only headlining role. After serving as a pilot on a B-24 bomber during World War II, who flew 40 missions over Europe, taking damage every time, Griffin was a bit player and TV actor by trade, whose biggest credit up till then was starring in a Captain Video knock-off called Operation Neptune (1953).

“She Demons was one of the few theatrical movies I was in. And [laughs] it’s a terrible movie,” said Griffin. “The reason I did it was my agent said he wanted some film on me. Well, I couldn’t be too choosy at that point, I needed work. So I saw the casting people, like, on a Friday, and we were shooting on Monday!”

Victor Sen Yung, his faithful sidekick, broke into the industry as one of Charlie Chan's innumerable Number One sons, starting with Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) and ending with The Feathered Serpent (1948). This was to be one of Yung's last theatrical credits, too, before he switched mediums and moved out west to cook for the Cartwrights on the Ponderosa in syndicated perpetuity on Bonanza (1959-1973).

And just by browsing their credits on the IMDB easily shows this wasn't Rudolph Anders' or Gene Roth's first rodeo on the whole Nazi thing; and Anders really has a ball as the smarmy and amoral Wütender Wissenschaftler. 

As for our bevy of beauties and dried oatmeal-faced demons, I give you the Diane Nellis Dancers. Alas, all further research on them proved about as fruitless as the attempted synchronized choreography of their salacious dance number. But the real casting coup was landing Irish McCalla, who totally deserved her top billing.

Coming off her own TV-series as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1955-1956), the former Glamor Queen and Pin-Up idol -- she was an original Vargas girl, and was an artist herself -- was hired for her looks first and her acting talent last according to Cunha. Still, I kinda dug the spunk and unsuspected backbone she brought to her character that, honestly, was sketched out as nothing more than “rich bitch with the gooey center.” I absolutely adore the scene where she backs down Igor in a battle of wits, claiming she "swished onto the island on a dry martini."

Look, by no means does McCalla show anything here that would suggest any kind of career beyond these eye-candy roles. But ya gotta admire how she wasn't afraid to get into the middle of the stunts or how she butted heads with her director and refused to back down when Cunha kept pushing her to show more skin in the cheesecake sequence on the beach, where she changes clothes behind a makeshift curtain. And when she wouldn’t cooperate, they tried an end run on the actress.

“I remember holding that blanket up,” said Griffin. “And I remember that, on the side, they had tried to get me to hold it lower. I just wouldn’t do it. I lowered it a little, but not enough to satisfy ‘em. But, I’ll tell you, it would have attracted more people if they had made a porno out of it!”

After Giant from the Unknown and She Demons hit theaters, Astor was so pleased with the box-office returns on both ends of this wonky double-feature that they immediately commissioned Cunha and Jacobs for two more, which turned into the nigh inexplicable, even by Cunhalogical standards, Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) and the aforementioned Missile to the Moon -- a cheaper remake of Astor's already dirt cheap Catwomen of the Moon (1953). (I think they even recycled that ratty giant spider-prop.)

But before filming began, Cunha and Jacobs amicably dissolved their company when Jacobs moved onto greener TV pastures. (Truthfully, you can kinda sense his guiding absence in these follow up features.) And so, Cunha joined up with Marc Frederic, an investor in their first feature, who formed Layton Film Productions for Frankenstein’s Daughter and Missile to the Moon.

Cunha’s last directorial effort was also for Frederic, Girl in Room 13 (1960), which was also his last writing credit, too. He was also credited as a co-director of the “English version” of Gustav Gavrin’s whopper of a crime caper gone wrong, Dog Eat Dog (Einer frisst den anderen, 1964). He would also serve as the cinematographer on Ralph Brooke's Bloodlust (1961), a teenage take on Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game, which is nowhere nearly as dumb as that sounds, and Ken Kennedy’s The Silent Witness (1962), where a young boy witnesses a murder.

This, sadly, marked the end of Cunha's theatrical output. After which, he returned to television, serving as the director of photography on several episodes of the western Branded (1965-1966) and the anthology series, Death Valley Days (1952-1970), but mostly focused on making commercials. And that, dammit, truly and odiously sucks -- and a crying shame.

For, though his gruesome oeuvre may be small, one cannot deny Cunha's impact and influence on what followed. And with films like She Demons, Fiend without a Face (1958), The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959), The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (1962) and The Flesh Eaters (1964) kicking in the door, they paved the way for the grittier and more explicit fare that followed as we moved later into the 1960s, culminating with another independent production, also made by a company known for their local TV commercials, shot ten years later outside of Pittsburgh. Maybe you've heard of it?

Originally published on October 1, 2011, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

She Demons (1958) Screencraft Enterprises-Astor Pictures / P: Arthur A. Jacobs / AP: Marc Frederic / D: Richard E. Cunha / W: Richard E. Cunha, H.E. Barrie / C: Meredith Nicholson / E: William Shea / S: Irish McCalla, Tod Griffin, Victor Sen Yung, Charles Opunui, Rudolph Anders, Gene Roth, Leni Tan, The Diane Nellis Dancers