The Astounding She Monster is from the planet Anteris in the Scorpio constellation.
Gangsters Nat Burdell (Kenne Duncan) Brad Conley (Ewing Miles Brown) and Esther Malone (Jeanne Tatum) kidnap a rich socialite Margaret Chaffee (Marilyn Harvey). They head for their hideout in the San Gabriel Mountains. When their car crashes they look for a place to hold up. They find the cabin of geologist Dick Cutler (Robert Clarke) In the meantime a UFO comes down in the forest. Out of the UFO comes what is suppose to be a beautiful glow-in-the-dark female alien (Shirley Kilpatrick). She is blonde and wearing a skintight leotard. She sports Mr. Spock eyebrows and she can kill just by touching you.
When Conley sees the alien looking through the window Burdell orders him to run after her but don’t shoot her. He doesn’t want anyone to hear gunshots. Conley runs into the night but when she confronts him he shoots her anyway. The bullets have no effect on her and when she touches him he drops dead. When Burdell hears the shots he goes looking for Conley. He finds him dead and brings him back to the cabin. Back at the cabin Cutler figures out that Conley dies of "radium poisoning". He believes that carrying Conley’s dead body has now made Burdell contaminated. He believes Burdell has gotten a lethal dose of radium and needs to get to a doctor.
Now a little scared, Burdell wants to take a chance and escape into the night, even though Cutler’s jeep has no headlights. Just then the alien smashes through the cabin's window. Everyone runs outside. The alien catches Malone and kills her. When the alien tries to grab Burdell, he quickly sidesteps and she ends up falling down an embankment. Burdell, believing the alien is dead goes back to the cabin. Burdell now demands that they leave at once. They drive away. Not far from the cabin they round a corner. There in the road is the alien, still alive. As Cutler and Chaffee run away, the alien closes in on Burdell.
“The Astounding She Monster” was released in 1958 and was produced, directed and written by Ronnie Ashcroft. Ashcroft was a Roger Corman protégé. The movie had a budget of $18,000. That tells you something. This is a really, really bad movie with a really big following. It’s not just a so bad it’s good, it’s a so bad you love it. I, however, can’t go that far. I can’t even say it had its moments. I found it blah, but I suspect that the ones who did love it either remember it from childhood or had the hots for Shirley Kilpatrick in her painted on body suit. A lot of movies that are crap have something that you can at least point to and say, “At least that was OK”. The only thing I can say about “The Astounding She Monster” is I’ve seen worse. No much worse. Even the “surprise” ending was meh. Oh, one other good thing. It was only 62 minutes long.
The “alien” Shirley Kilpatrick was a former stripper.
The Spring House Brewing Company in Pennsylvania has an Astounding She Monster beer. It is an American IPA style beer. “Our juiciest beer features ripe mango and tropical hop aroma on the nose followed by a mild bitterness from the Citra and Falconer's Flight hops and some alcohol warmth to balance out the sweetness of the fresh mango.”