The Astounding She-Monster

The Astounding She-Monster (1957)

A creature from beyond the stars. EVIL... BEAUTIFUL... DEADLY...!

A scientist and a gang that has kidnapped a rich heiress come up against a beautiful but lethal alien who has crash-landed her spaceship on Earth.

Date of release
1957-04-10
TMDB
4.0 / 10 (24)
Runtime
1h 2m
Genres
Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Ronald V. Ashcroft

Casting

Interesting facts

The Astounding She-Monster is a 1958 science fiction horror film starring Robert Clarke and directed, co-written and produced by Ronnie Ashcroft for Hollywood International Productions. The film focuses on a geologist, a gang which has kidnapped a rich heiress, and their encounter with a beautiful but deadly female alien who has crashed to Earth.

Production

The film was picked up for distribution by American International Pictures (AIP) and issued as half of one of its double feature programs. Edward D. Wood, Jr. was an unofficial "consultant" on the film. Ashcroft and Wood knew each other, Ashcroft having been assistant director on Wood's Night of the Ghouls. The working titles of The Astounding She-Monster were Naked Invader and The Astounding She Creature.

Few locations were used for the film. Critic Bill Warren notes that interior shots were done "in one poor mountain cabin set" and exterior shots "in some well-traveled woods nearby." Frazier National Park, outside of Los Angeles; Griffith Park in Los Angeles; and Larchmont Studios in Hollywood are named as specific locations.

According to the American Film Institute (AFI), The Astounding She-Monster was originally planned as a $50,000 production with a seven-day shooting schedule. But film critic Bryan Senn writes that the film actually only cost $18,000 to make and was sold to AIP for $60,000.

The four-day shooting schedule had an unexpected effect on Kilpatrick. On the first day of filming, the back of her costume split open when she bent over. Without time for repairs, she was directed, for the rest of the film, to walk backwards out of all the scenes that she had walked into frontwards. According to Clarke, "Shirley was big in the behind and big in the bosom. As an actress, she didn't do a lot and she didn't have to.

Salaries for the actors were reasonable, according to Clarke, who told film critic Tom Weaver in an interview that "Ashcroft paid me $500 a week, which I thought was a good salary for this type of picture, and he promised me 4 percent of his producer's share.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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