
++1/2
Middling effort that re-works H. Rider Haggard's novel in some very important ways, yet manages to stay true to its own internal logic. Three Englishmen are lured into a quest to find a lost city in Africa, where they find a beautiful queen (Ursula Andress) who has little regard for her subjects, yet is delighted that one of the Englishmen (John Richardson) appears to be the reincarnation of her former lover, a man of ancient Egypt. Significantly, the queen is introduced as She-who-waits; though she is later called She-who-must-be-obeyed, the damage is done: this She, in power and beauty, is a pale shadow of her literary counterpart, and much less interesting as a result. Does, however, include one nice, if particularly cruel, scene in which a daughter is returned to her father. Peter Cushing also stars. Followed in 1968 by the semi-sequel, The Vengeance of She.
Middling effort that re-works H. Rider Haggard's novel in some very important ways, yet manages to stay true to its own internal logic. Three Englishmen are lured into a quest to find a lost city in Africa, where they find a beautiful queen (Ursula Andress) who has little regard for her subjects, yet is delighted that one of the Englishmen (John Richardson) appears to be the reincarnation of her former lover, a man of ancient Egypt. Significantly, the queen is introduced as She-who-waits; though she is later called She-who-must-be-obeyed, the damage is done: this She, in power and beauty, is a pale shadow of her literary counterpart, and much less interesting as a result. Does, however, include one nice, if particularly cruel, scene in which a daughter is returned to her father. Peter Cushing also stars. Followed in 1968 by the semi-sequel, The Vengeance of She.