The mermaid myth is a peculiar one, locating its menace in a combination of the sexual predation of Spencer's "Fairie Queen," the Native Americans' "vagina dentate," and the beast-within of Lycanthropy. It suggests that the proverbial sexy beast isn't revealed in a sudden Edward Hyde-ian pubescence, but rather concealed in the comely changeling form of a young woman from the vast feminine expanse of the ocean. She doesn't turn into a beast, she turns into Daryl Hannah (or, just as terrifyingly banal, Ariel); in the case of the Stan Winston-produced She Creature, she appears in the form of professional looker Rya Kihlstedt, and for that extra added Jungian twist, the titular man-eater becomes a nude model every full moon.

A low-budget made-for-cable period mix of Species and Alien³, She Creature is the first in a series of films paying tribute (they borrow the titles and fromage, if little else) to the films produced by legendary B-movie magnate Samuel Arkoff and his American International Pictures. (This film more closely resembles 1957's The Astounding She-Monster than 1956's She Creature, realizing all the while that this is beside the point.) A mermaid (Kihlstedt) in a Bauhaus tank is stolen by a traveling freak show led by Angus (Rufus Sewell) and the lovely Lillian (Carla Gugino) and secreted away in the cargo hold of a turn-of-the-century transatlantic ship. Because Bram Stoker's Dracula was published seven years prior to the events of She Creature, Angus and his merry crew have no excuse for not foreseeing their inevitable fates.

For as much as I appreciated the darkening of the popular perception of the mermaid mythos, Kihlstedt's lack of inhibitions in being wet and topless, and the attempts by writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez to insert an element of Rosemary's Baby reproductive paranoia into the stew, the fact remains that She Creature--besides suffering mightily from the lack of Arkoff regular Vincent Price--is derivative, squeamish, and slow-moving. Its quaintness is its only real selling point (not even the Stan Winston Creature Shop's mermaid beastie is much to marvel at), resembling at its best Harryhausen's neat-but-mouldy Gorgon from Clash of the Titans. She Creature "borrows" shots entire from not only Arkoff's extensive exploitation library, but also the aforementioned Alien³ in one particular sequence and thematically through its sequestered, mostly-male population with the warring animas manifested in a pair of diametrically opposed femmes.

While the performances are game and a few scenes now and again stick in the craw, She Creature is mostly forgettable fare featuring an unusually able cast and the kind of KY and latex special effects that, sadly, seem only to find the spotlight in uninspiring stuff like this. I hate CGI and it pains me to dislike a film that gives Winston's gushing faux-flesh puppets a stage, but She Creature, save for a few fun opening moments, is closer to Leviathan than John Carpenter's The Thing, and no amount of good intentions and lack of self-importance can salvage this interminable sinking ship.

Presented on the same side of a DVD in both 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and the cropped 1.33:1 aspect ratio in which it was broadcast on Cinemax, the video quality of this Columbia Tri-Star release is television-grainy though consistent and appealing. Dark levels, vital in creaky horror flicks, are good, as are contrast and shadow detail. The Dolby Digital 5.0 audio is likewise solid but unspectacular. The atmospheric early sequences are honoured, with sounds of the raging sea in the second half of She Creature receiving a nice, forceful presentation. That said, "workmanlike" is the term that swims to mind when summarizing the mix--a word that happens to approximate the feel of the film itself.

A feature-length yakker with Stan Winston and F/X supervisor Shane Mahan is a disappointment in that it vacillates between wide-eyed veneration of its cast ("Rufus is such a great actor" and "Carla is such a great actress" and "Rya is such a powerful presence" and...) and entirely disinteresting descriptions of the special effects process. Puppets are needlessly pointed out and entire sequences are spent marvelling at how well Rya could hold her breath while a lucky diver manipulated her animatronic tail. It's one of those talk-tracks that seems informative at first because of the volume of information imparted, yet ultimately reveals itself to be just for those people to whom the revelation that the She Creature is fake will come as a surprise.

The disc is rounded out by a two-and-a-half minute "making of" featurette that's really just a glorified trailer; actual trailers for the "Creature Features" series, Wolf, Savini's unforgivable remake of Night of the Living Dead, Bram Stoker's Dracula (interestingly enough, Coppola got his start in the Arkoff-produced Dementia 13), and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein; sparse filmographies; and a photo gallery.-Walter Chaw