She Demons


She Demons is a 1958 independently made black-and-white science fiction film, produced by Arthur A. Jacobs and Marc Frederic, directed and co-written by Richard E. Cunha, that stars Irish McCalla, Tod Griffin, and Victor Sen Yung. Made in the tongue-in-cheek style of Men's adventure magazines, Nazisploitation, and The Island of Lost Souls, the film was distributed by Astor Pictures in March, 1958 as a double feature with Cunha's Giant from the Unknown.

Plot

During a tropical storm, a pleasure boat is shipwrecked on an uncharted island and is presumed lost with all hands after the storm clears. The four survivors' shipboard radio can only receive but not transmit, and they hear that their castaway island will soon be used by U.S. Navy aircraft as a bombing target.
Finding strange-looking human footprints and hearing the sound of jungle drums, three of the party explore the island. They soon discover the island is populated by deformed, fanged women who are the product of scientific experiments of Nazis led by a mad scientist and war criminal, who rules the island with an iron swastika.
The survivors eventually manage to blow up the island before the Navy jets can do so.

Cast

After completing Giant from the Unknown, Astor Pictures told Richard Cunha that the film would only be accepted if he made another co-feature, to be released by Astor on a double bill. This led Cunha to make She Demons. Astor advanced $80,000, with Cunha completing the film for $65,000. Filming locations for She Demons were at Ferndale, California, Griffith Park, and Paradise Cove Pier in Malibu, California. David Koehler handled the special effects. H.E. Barrie, who co-wrote the screenplay, also wrote the scripts for two of Cunha's other 1950s films, Missile to the Moon and Frankenstein's Daughter.