This should have been a great film. The subject matter--an exotic adventure blessed with a cast including Hammer stalwarts Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee plus the radiant beauty of Ursula Andress--provided a perfect opportunity for Hammer to shine. Alas, the film is a great disappointment. Cushing and Lee contribute their usual solid performances, but regrettably they are both merely supporting characters. Andress perfectly embodies the unearthly but somewhat cold and imperious beauty the eponymous character, She Who Must Be Obeyed, requires, and she plays the part quite well, so well that it's easy to see why even a good man might be tempted to throw his entire world away for a chance to live throughout eternity in her arms. All the same, the production is lackluster in most other respects. The biggest problem is the pacing. Everything moves very slowly without much excitement to liven things up. For all that She is supposed to be an adventure story, there is very little action and what there is tends to pass quickly. The climax steps things up a little as it brings everything to a head, but it's far too little too late. The movie should have inserted a little more intensity into the narrative, which could have been rather easily accomplished by making Christopher Lee's ambitious and enigmatic character a larger part of the story. As it is, She stands as a sumptuous, attractive period drama with a few sci-fi/fantasy touches that has no energy whatsoever. For a much better treatment of the same story, see the earlier Randolph Scott film instead. It lacks the luminous Ursula Andress, but in most other respects is a far better movie.
