The Woman Eater – review

Director: Charles Saunders

Release date: 1958

Contains spoilers

Another film I have to thank Simon Bacon for; this is an obscure British horror flick and has an interesting premise, a plot hole that a fleet of London buses can pass through and more 50s misogyny and casual racism attached to it than you can shake a stick at.

Not that it’s a totally terrible film, though this is mostly down to a sterling central performance by George Coulouris who plays the central antagonist role.

at the Explorer's Club

It starts off with Dr Moran (George Coulouris, Tower of Evil & A Clockwork Orange) going to the Explorer’s Club. He tells the story given by a dying explorer of a tribe in the Amazon, probably Inca in origin (who, of course, did not inhabit the Amazon Basin), who had a "juju" that could return the dead to life, and he was going out there the next week. He persuades a young man to go with him, despite another explorer warning that Moran is a strange fellow.

Marpessa Dawn as the sacrifice

In the jungle and Moran has jungle fever but they press on. They get to a clearing where a ceremony takes place. A native, Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn), plays Bongos as a witchdoctor dances and a woman (Marpessa Dawn) is mesmerised. The young Englishman charges in to stop the ceremony and gets a spear in the chest. The mesmerised woman is led forward to a tree with grasping arms and screams… An undisclosed amount of time later and other Englishmen recover Moran, now deep in jungle fever, and take him home. So, racism… it lies in the fact that the film codes anyone not white as part of a homogenous whole… there were Amazon tribes-people clearly of African heritage, the Incas, as mentioned, did not live in that part of South America and Juju itself is a term from Central and West Africa.

Jimmy Vaughn as Tanga

Anyway. Five-years later, in England and Tanga is playing the tom toms again, but in Dr Moran’s basement/laboratory and a woman is mesmerised until the moment before she is thrown into the grasping arms of the carnivorous tree. How Tanga and the tree came to be in England and more importantly why Tanga is working with Moran are points never answered – it becomes, however, the central plot hole as Tanga is, it transpires, only playing along with Moran. Moran for his part is having Tanga extract a fluid from the tree – produced after it has devoured a woman – which will bring the dead to life. He is then trying to boost its efficiency and testing it on a disembodied heart.

Jack and Sally

Moran is a mad scientist, yes, but also a representation of the misogyny in the film. He states at one point, when talking about his goal and the women he is sacrificing, “What's a few worthless lives compared to what I'm giving the world. It's turning death into life.” Women, to him, are worthless then and he treats his ex-lover turned housekeeper, Margaret (Joyce Gregg), with absolute disdain. Into the household comes Sally (Vera Day), a young lady looking for work. She is treated shoddily by her recently met beau Jack (Peter Forbes-Robertson) but agrees to marry him (though Moran has designs on her himself). The police are looking for a missing girl as well.

tree with victim

The tree is, one suggests, vampiric vegetation. It eats people, yes, but is more than just carnivorous as Moran suggests that those eaten become one with the tree. It then, as mentioned, produces a liquid that can bring the dead back to life. What Moran does not know is that Tanga and his people have only revealed half the secret and the body returns but not the mind – creating a zombie. Fire is effective against the plant given its nature. The plant does not give an indication, in film, of being conscious or sentient but it doesn’t attack the men when stood by it and only seems to go for women. It is worshipped by Tanga and his people as a God (so, again, how did Moran manage to get it). Despite the serious issues, however, there is fun to be had and George Coulouris, as mentioned, gives a sterling and deranged central performance. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK