1968’s The Vengeance of She, Hammer’s sequel to their own She, is a curiously shoddy affair. While watching it, my wife remarked it was like watching two unrelated movies which had been edited together. As for myself, I felt like I had seen less than one movie.
Not that the previous film was anything special. It was one of those faux-historical things about an ancient civilization that modern-day archaeologists stumble into, where a queen rules with an iron fist.
Ursula Andress was the ruler in that picture, but she took a pass on repeating that role for the sequel. Apparently, many other actresses were offered the part and also declined. Given that, I suspect the script was a stinker, though I found myself marveling at one point in the runtime whether this had any script at all.
The role finally ended up being accepted by Olga Schoberová. This Czech actress had many parts before and after this in films I assume were made in that country. At least, this Hammer outing was, by some margin, her most high-profile English-language film. I find it difficult not to assume her being cast here was largely due to her being in Playboy, the first model from her home country to do so.
Needless to say, she has the physique to fill in for Andress, but her performance is appalling. To try to be fair to her, I assume there were language issues, and her deeply awkward line deliveries suggest she learned her lines phonetically. I know it’s an analogy I fall back on frequently, but dialogue spoken in such a broken and stilted manner always brings to my mind whoever did the voice of Sally in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Without having seen any of Schoberová’s other film appearances, I cannot honestly judge her acting chops overall.
Not that anybody would have been able to do much with this. Schoberová is possibly the reincarnation of the main character from the first film. At least, that’s what John Richardson is hoping, as he intends to reunite with the woman he believes is his lost love returned to the land of the living, and to also gain immortality. Well, she supposedly had immortality in the previous movie and was destroyed by the same means through which he hopes to live forever, so this doesn’t seem like a great plan to me.
Prepare to have the Bangles’s song “Eternal Flame” stuck in your head, because such a fire is the integral part of that process. But a person can only enter the flame when there’s a certain alignment of the stars, as prophesized by Richardson’s sorcerer, Men-Hari (Derek Godfrey). There’s another character named Za-Tor (Noel Willman). In general, you know what type of thing you’re getting into when there’s characters with names like “Men-Hari” or Za-Tor played by British actors in brown body paint. I was shocked to see André Morell similarly done up as Kassim.
Honestly, the film is doomed in the first minute of its runtime, as the first thing we see is our heroine walking clumsily down a serpentine mountain road in what was then the present day, all while her theme music plays. This piece of junk is gently strummed electric guitar and wailing sax, over which is some of the most overwrought singing I have ever heard. I recently learned Michael Stipe of R.E.M. gave himself a hernia on that band’s 1995 tour from singing too intensely, so I imagine whoever sang this shit likely spontaneously combusted from how much they strained themselves.
Anywho, she gets a ride from a rapey truck driver who ends up getting run over by his own vehicle, in a scene which makes as little sense as suggested by that description. She somehow makes her way down to the French Riveria beachside where she spends the night sleeping with only her luxurious fur coat for a blanket. Oh, the sad lives of the homeless of the French Riveria.
The next morning, she swims to the yacht of wealthy industrialist Colin Blakely as a night of debauchery is winding up. Jill Melford plays his wife, somebody who has long since decided to endure his indiscretions, of which she mistakes Schoberová for being yet another. She sets up the confused girl in a room and, in the only good line in the entire script, says, “I don’t throw [his] girls to the sharks. Not anymore. There’s not enough sharks.”
Blakely is wealthy enough, and troubled enough, that he has brought his psychiatrist (Edward Judd) along. Judd is instantly intrigued by the mysterious new arrival. Among her many quirks, she freaks out when the boat changes directions, so this is probably a helpful person to have around if you get lost, what with her innate sense of direction. I like to think that, if she was pointed north long enough, she’d grow moss on her face.
Apparently, she’s trying not to heed the psychic siren call from Godfrey that is drawing her towards the strange and terrifying locale she sees in her dreams. It is inevitable she will end up there, especially after Blakely dies while trying to save her from drowning. Odd how a certain Renior film is not titled Schoberová Saved from Drowning. It is much easier to say “Boudu”.
Something I always find baffling in bad movies like this is how nobody bothers to try to do anything like CPR once they have pulled Blakely’s body from the water. Then again, maybe nobody really wanted to save the life of this cad.
Judd will pursue her on the road to her former kingdom and there’s a few more opportunities for her to potentially get raped. For somebody who is supposedly the reincarnation of a great warrior, she does very little to prevent herself from getting into situations like being tied up in the desert. Still, I wondered why the people trying to bring her to them seem to always put her on the most treacherous path to get there. If it isn’t rapists, then it is narrow, crumbling paths over an abyss, etc.
Especially odd, given this is a Hammer film, are the subpar effects. And I’m not talking about effects which would have particularly taxed the studio at this point. These are the kinds of things they had been doing well for some time by then: matte paintings, miniatures, backdrops. There is one exceptionally poor backdrop of a sky where the seams between the sections are clearly visible. I can suspend my disbelief considerably in proportion to the age and budget of a work, and such shoddy craftsmanship is unacceptable on both counts.
The Vengeance of She is so unremarkable as to make its predecessor look like a masterpiece in comparison and, believe me, that film was no masterpiece. Much of the blame can be laid on Schoberová, who delivers a singularly bad performance. Aside from that, there is nothing here that hasn’t been done before and better, and even just in Hammer’s own work. As our heroine says at one point, “I’m beginning to have the feeling I have been here before.” Really? You’ve also seen too many movies like this?
Dir: Cliff Owen
Starring Olga Schoberová, John Richardson, Edward Judd
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray