Leofwine_draca WOMANEATER is a film that has much in common with the American-made B-flick FROM HELL IT CAME, as both movies are about carnivorous trees that demand sacrificial human victims. However, this is by far the worse movie, as it's just too cheap and stodgy to entertain. Scenes of the tree attacking people only occur a couple of times during the film, and for the most part it's talky and dull.It's certainly of interest to British horror aficionados, as I enjoyed the colonial background of the tale which has some stylistic similarity to THE REPTILE and THE GHOUL; malign foreign influences corrupt otherwise decent British folk and lead them to murder and madness. It's a shame, then, that the execution is so lacklustre and the horror moments so limited.Still, B-movie freaks might still enjoy this one, and it's not all bad. B-movie king Charles Saunders contributes brisk and efficient direction, although he can't disguise the problems with the script. George Coulouris (CITIZEN KANE) is fine in one of those down-on-his-luck-famous-actor-makes-a-B-movie type roles. Vera Day is the very definition of the blonde and buxom '50s starlet. But for WOMANEATER to really shine, I needed more cheese, more dodgy effects, and simply more action, as that way it would have been more fun overall.

oscar-35 *Spoiler/plot- The Women Eater(Womeneater), 1958. A scientist hears about and travels to the Amazon jungle to find about a legendary tree of life. He finds the tribe and tree. He takes the tree home to England for experiments that cause disastrous crimes and disappearances.*Special Stars- George Coulouris, Vera Day, Peter Wayn, Joyce Gregg, Jimmy Vaughn.*Theme- Wanting to re-animate the dead has its problems.*Trivia/location/goofs- British. Soft sex-ploitation, where film male roles are vicious, misogynist jerks. To review another killer/monster tree from the Amazon, view 'From Hell it Came'.*Emotion- An odd combination of horror and sexual exploitation elements contains in this film with an very obvious exploitation title. Every lead role of the film is harshly presented in gross extremes. The villains are very unlikeable and the victims are very innocent. With the roles that heavily defined and presented there are many times the viewer will find this film to be campy or laughable in the wrong plot points. This film became unbelievable and very comic-book from the beginning for me and so I found it more humorous that scary. I'm not sure that response is what the producers wished from their audience.

Michael O'Keefe British horror flick that reminds me of Saturday double features as a child. Not a great movie; definitely not a bad movie. Very predictable, but fun to watch. Dr. Moran(George Coulouris)returns from South America with assurance he has found a serum to rejuvenate life. He hides a stolen flesh eating 'tree' in the basement of his mansion. There is also the native Tanga(Jimmy Vaughn)that puts women in a trance with a bongo solo. The victim is fed to the arm waving tree that is suppose to produce the essence of life. After five years or so, the mad professor becomes disillusioned with the hideous ritual.Obviously low budgeted with just enough substance to keep you to the end. It doesn't hurt having some beautiful women in the cast. Other players: Vera Day, Peter Wayn, Joy Webster, Sara Leighton, Edward Higgins and Marpessa Dawn.

gavcrimson SPOILERS INCLUDEDThe Woman Eater was one of two cheap and cheerful horror films made by the producer-director duo of Guido Coen and Charles Saunders who usually specialised in second feature crime thrillers. The teams initial venture into this territory, The Man Without a Body is sadly a bore despite a plot which features Nostradamus' severed head being brought back to life and concludes with a mini-rampage from a monster that resembles a tall man with a pillow case on his head. Opening with location defining shots of the Thames, their second attempt at the genre is an equally ludicrous but much more fun and spirited example of B-movie horror. At the ‘explorer's club' Dr James Moran (George Coulouris, the lead in both the Saunders-Coen horrors) entertains young associate Colin with the tale of a tribe that can bring the dead back to life. Ignoring warnings that insanity runs in the Moran family, Colin joins the doctor on a trek to the Amazon cost cuttingly evoked by stock footage and a few jungle sets at Twickenham studios. Stumbling across the tribe performing a black magic ceremony involving a woman being fed to a monster tree, Colin makes an ill-fated attempt to halt the proceedings (`stop you devils') and ends up with a spear in the chest for his troubles. Moran is later found babbling and suffering from jungle fever. Five years later Moran has decamped to a sleepy village in England where hidden in his basement lies the bizarre spectacle of Tanga (Jimmy Vaughan) one of the tribe, hypnotizing various women in order to feed them to the monster tree. (Best not to question how Moran got both a tribesman and a carnivorous tree from the Amazon to provincial England without anyone noticing, especially say customs). Moran eases his conscience by ranting ‘she'll become part of the plant, she won't have died in vain' convinced the tree's juices can bring the dead back to life. ‘With this our people make live…the dead… master' remarks Tanga in his broken ‘native' English, a theory demonstrated by Moran injecting the juices into a pulsing heart which he keeps in a jar. In his search for tree food –the preferred victims being buxom women- Moran takes a furtive walk around Piccadilly Circus and Soho, ignoring prostitutes in favour of following a woman to a crummy late night watering hole. After he buys her a drink she asks him if he's a talent spotter for the movies then jadedly adds ‘all men are talent spotters in one way or another'. Soon after she's thrown to the monster tree who sports some barely mobile vines and oven glove like claws, the surreal effect suggests a man who has disguised himself as a Christmas tree in order to grope a passing starlet. Despite a brief running time of 71 minutes and a plot that drafts in a zombie woman on top of a monster tree and a mad doctor The Woman Eater does contain a fair deal of padding and plot diversions that hasn't endeared the film to many critics over the years. In fairness these moments aren't completely without interest though. 50's pin-up Vera Day a kind of proto Barbara Windsor, plays the heroine, an ex-hula hula dancer whose appearance in the village turns the heads of both the local mechanic and the mad doctor. ‘As a scientist I'm more interested in things with six legs rather than two' proclaims Moran at one point but soon changes his mind when he hires Vera to look after his house. Given their Butchers films backgrounds its no surprise that Coen and Saunders also have a tendency to dwell on the police investigation side of things with the forces of law and order quaintly represented by village detectives who wear trench coats and smoke pipes and a cheery copper who gets about on a pushbike. Saunders' chief claim to fame is that he would later direct Britain's first nudist camp film Nudist Paradise (1958) which was still playing in London as late as 1967 and also wound up as a visual gag in a Carry On film, while Coen would end his career producing sex comedies. You can see slight hints of what was to come in The Woman Eater, Coen and Saunders seem to enjoy flirting with salacious sights that never actually materialise, the heroine is introduced hula-hula dancing at a carnival as a barker promises we'll see ‘south sea island belles…all for a bob' and an advert for a West End play called Nude with Violin is used in a almost subliminal message way. Slightly more risqué is one of the film's few scenes played for a comedy in which Vera helps her mechanic boyfriend mend a car only for him to become distracted by staring at her chest. Less the censor suspect the hero (or the cameraman for that matter) is meant to be having amoral thoughts about Miss Day, moments later he's doing the honest thing and asking her to marry him, even though they've only ever met three times. It could all of course play on Sunday afternoon television today without anyone raising so much as an eyebrow but this was what a British exploitation film looked like in 1957. The Woman Eater also anticipates many a home-grown horror effort (usually the ones starring Michael Gough) in which dedicated mad doctors become distracted by something blond, half their age and in a tight sweater, leaving their repressed middle aged housekeeper fuming with envy and putting the spanner in the works that eventually causes everything to (literally) go up in smoke.