May 20th, 2015 - Womaneater (1958)

aka The Woman Eater

The titular Womaneater is a plant from deep in the Amazonian jungle. A native tribe worships the huge plant as an idol, and regularly holds ceremonies where they beat some drums, chant a bit, and feed it a young woman. Somewhere in there is the secret to raising the dead. (Why wouldn't it be?) English (mad) scientist Dr. Moran has not only witnessed this ritual in person, he's also become obsessed with harboring the plant's regenerative powers. Since he's a typical mad scientist, he is hungry for the fame and fortune he'd get if he could, in fact, raise the dead. He somehow (it's not shown) managed to get the HUGE plant back to his secret laboratory in his estate, along with a native servant named Tanga (the probably not actually Amazonian Jimmy Vaughn) to help him figure out how it works.

The only problem for Dr. Moran? Being the Womaneater, it needs women to eat. It's a lot easier to come by women to feed it in the Amazon than it is in the big city. The doctor is a little apprehensive about killing random women, but he justifies that it's for the greater good. He manages to find the occasional victim here or there, but the police are getting suspicious. And just so we have a main character to care about, Dr. Moran hires a young woman by the name of Sally. Will she be safe from Dr. Moran and the nefarious womaneater? Tune in to find out!

The elephant in the room here is the womaneater itself. (Why does it only eat young women? Who knows... Dr. Moran never tries feeding it men.) It really is just a big tree looking thing - it doesn't stalk its victims or anything - it can really only kill someone if they stumble (or get pushed) into it. It's not a terrifying looking creature - think a big mossy tree trunk with a few moving arms. My guess is that there are two or three puppeteers flailing about behind it. Basically, for the eating scenes, Tanga beats on some drums, the victim is somehow hypnotized, and then Tonga waits until she snaps out of it and she screams... and then he shoves her into it. The Womaneater's "arms" just sort of wrap around her - you don't see any actual eating or anything. (Not that you'd expect to, being 1958 and all.) But still, it's kind of disturbing the first time you see it RIGHT at the beginning of the film, but it really loses its effectiveness each successive time. Showing it once right away, then again just a few minutes later was not such a good call. By the time you get to feeding number three, the whole thing is pretty toothless. Plus, that's really the only "horror" the film has to offer. Sure, Dr. Moran has a cool mad scientist set-up in his secret lab, but he's relatively restrained otherwise. He doesn't get any good cackling speeches about how he's going to take over the world or anything like that.

For a while, it just seems like we're going to hang around with Dr. Moran, but we meet our true main character when Sally and her romantic interest Jack are introduced late in the first act. Jack runs a garage near Dr. Moran's house, and Sally is new in town and looking for a job (the way the two meet is too stupid to get into here). Jack thinks Sally could work for Dr. Moran, and the doctor becomes instantly smitten with her and hires her as a housekeeper. But Sally is suspicious of her new boss... will she get out in time?

Also, in classic 50's movie fashion, Jack and Sally are apparently in love after seeing each other only three or four times, and are maybe going to be married? Despite the fact that they only recently met, and doubly despite the fact that Jack is a total dick to her. It fulfills the requisite romance angle, but it sill makes no sense.

Overall, there just isn't that much to Womaneater. There's nothing outright bad about it - sure it's a little cheesy, but nothing offensive. But it just sort of plods along, hitting all of the notes you expect it to. There isn't anything that sticks out - no really memorable performance or special attention to atmosphere or anything like that. I had hoped for something a little more exciting. This just felt as generic as a "woman-eating plant" movie could. You could do worse, but still:

I would   not recommend   this film.