SIN CITY - The She Beast

SIN CITY: Many films have attempted to faithfully bring their comic book characters to life. Richard Donner’s Superman was always my personal reigning champ...until Sin City came along. More “translation” than “adaptation,” director Robert Rodriguez collaborated extensively with creator Frank Miller to recreate his nightmarish noir visions into a terrifying reality created almost entirely on a green-screen set. Working from three hardboiled stories featuring some of the ugliest mugs in the business (Mickey Rourke, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen and Bruce Willis), Sin City revels in its violent misogyny while it dazzles with a black-and-white tableau splashed with blood. Rourke’s segment, The Hard Goodbye, is the most effective. With his already disfigured face even more brutalized, the actor pummels his way through a variety of thugs (and a creepy Elijah Wood) to avenge the death of his angelic one-night-stand. And there’s no shortage of skin on display either, with Jessica Alba gyrating atop a collection of retro detective dames, mouthy barmaids and two-bit hookers. But none of it would work without Rodriguez’s gusty move to create a “motion comic,” inserting his actors into actual panels from the original graphic novel. Having been shot in a direct-to-digital format, Sin City’s landscapes look mind-blowing on Blu-ray. Extras on the two-disc set include the Recut, Extended, Unrated Version which presents each story in order with several additional scenes, plus a Blu-ray exclusive interactive comic book feature. THE SHE-BEAST: Truth be told, I was never a card carrying member of the Michael Reeve’s fan club. The British director’s reputation is based on the slow-burn success of Witchfinder General (1968), which gave Vincent Price one of his most memorable roles of the AIP era. But Reeve’s death by accidental overdose a few months after the film was released saw all his potential filmmaking talents wasted. Dark Sky Films now presents The She-Beast, Reeve’s directing debut two years earlier, shot in Italy with a starring role (shot in four days) for horror icon Barbara Steele. Traveling through modern-day Transylvania, a honeymooning couple spends the night in a small village cursed by a witch who had been improperly disposed of several generations earlier. There’s no disguising the low-budget origins, but Reeve’s manages to imbue the conventional Hammer plotline with several layers of political commentary and his usual sharp wit. The odd mix of slapstick comedy and gothic scares are often at odds with one another, so those looking for a traditional cheesy monster-on-the-loose scenario will be disappointed. The She-Beast is best appreciated as the genesis of Reeve’s three-picture career that showed so much promise that was tragically never fulfilled. And Dark Sky’s extras really deliver in that department, with an excellent commentary from producer Paul Maslansky and actors Ian Ogilvy / Barbara Steele.