She (1965)

Starting off my Hammer boxed set is the, well, thriller I suppose; She.  Full title: She who must be obeyed!  Her Sunday name I guess.  Played by Ursula Andress, She (actual name Ayesha) is an ancient Egyptian who has hung around for a couple of thousand years waiting for her lover to come back to her (after she killed him for infidelity!).  Her lover is Leo (John Richardson), part of a trio of World War One vets (also including Major Holly - Peter Cushing, and his valet Job - Bernard Cribbins) who are based in Palestine and who go looking for the fabled city of Kuma.  If the story sounds kinda familiar, that's because it is!  It's essentially The Mummy with some gender reversal.

 
This certainly isn't anything special, but it's interesting and I wasn't bored by it; probably for the most part due to Peter Cushing.  When he's on screen, it's clear who the main actor is, even though he's not the main character.  Bernard Cribbins over-acts if anything, but is good; and John Richardson is okay.  Christopher Lee is also in the cast as the head priest of Ayesha's cult; but it's a shame that he doesn't really get much to do.  The camera work was fairly point and shoot, and the special effects were quite ropey (I couldn't tell if the ruined Egyptian city we were looking at at one point was meant to be a model or real (or whether the effect was a bad model or a worse matte painting!)).

                                                                 I dunno, you tell me.

Overall, quite an ordinary film with a re-hashed Mummy plot, but interesting enough not to be boring due to a pretty solid cast.