Home :: DVD :: Classics :: Sci-Fi & Fantasy  

Action & Adventure
Boxed Sets
Comedy
Drama
General
Horror
International
Kids & Family
Musicals
Mystery & Suspense
Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Silent Films
Television
Westerns
The Woman Eater

The Woman Eater

List Price: $9.99
Your Price: $9.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The womaneater
Review: A stinkfest from start to finish...if it was priced at two dollars I d recommend it for kicks, but otherwise AVOID it!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: He loves the ladies
Review: Actor George Coulouris stars as the demented mad scientist in this little known and seldom seen British Horror from 1957. Coulouris who featured in Citizen Kane is pretty much wasted in this production but thats still no reason to put you off. Compare it with other Horror/Sci-fi/Adventure plot lines from the same era and with the same budget (The Monster from Green Hell / Mesa of Lost Women / Teenage Caveman) and you will get a good idea of what you are letting yourself in for, but this has to be one of the best of a crop of English and American productions from the same time. Trying to distill the formula that would produce a vaccine for death or even better bring the dead back to life our happy go lucky doctor set's up his lab and goes to work. Like most Scientist's however he doesnt call up the wholesalers and ask for assorted minerals and vitamins, no that mass produced rubbish cant hold a candle to the freshest things that he can get his hand's on and sadly for the locals it happens to be the ladies of the town. Formula mayhem ensues but if you like your films a bit wierd and twisted, have a good sense of humor and don't mind the set moving when the door's a shut this is a must for you.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: He loves the ladies
Review: Actor George Coulouris stars as the demented mad scientist in this little known and seldom seen British Horror from 1957. Coulouris who featured in Citizen Kane is pretty much wasted in this production but thats still no reason to put you off. Compare it with other Horror/Sci-fi/Adventure plot lines from the same era and with the same budget (The Monster from Green Hell / Mesa of Lost Women / Teenage Caveman) and you will get a good idea of what you are letting yourself in for, but this has to be one of the best of a crop of English and American productions from the same time. Trying to distill the formula that would produce a vaccine for death or even better bring the dead back to life our happy go lucky doctor set's up his lab and goes to work. Like most Scientist's however he doesnt call up the wholesalers and ask for assorted minerals and vitamins, no that mass produced rubbish cant hold a candle to the freshest things that he can get his hand's on and sadly for the locals it happens to be the ladies of the town. Formula mayhem ensues but if you like your films a bit wierd and twisted, have a good sense of humor and don't mind the set moving when the door's a shut this is a must for you.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Needs One More Scene
Review: George Coulouris and Vera Day star in this silly tale of obsession and plant monsters. British explorers witness an African tribe sacrifice a maiden to a plant monster. Five years later, with no explanation, one of the explorers has the monster and priest on his estate where he is doing experiments on raising the dead.

Women are given to the plant (it apparently does not like men) and fluid is drawn that become the elixir of life. The explorer, actually a doctor, falls for a new employee at his estate and appears to go slightly mad as his experiments near completion.

But add the girl's boyfriend (possible fiancé), madness, love, hate, a fanatic priest and a killer plant and you wind up with a film that climaxes and stops suddenly. It could have been better by simply explaining how things went from jungle to estate. One scene would have done it. It would have been in character for the doctor to gloat some more and give the explanation of his genius.

The ending is not what one expects but it does work into what little story there is. A must see movie for fans of bad monster films as this is one of the worst, but don't expect much.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Needs One More Scene
Review: George Coulouris and Vera Day star in this silly tale of obsession and plant monsters. British explorers witness an African tribe sacrifice a maiden to a plant monster. Five years later, with no explanation, one of the explorers has the monster and priest on his estate where he is doing experiments on raising the dead.

Women are given to the plant (it apparently does not like men) and fluid is drawn that become the elixir of life. The explorer, actually a doctor, falls for a new employee at his estate and appears to go slightly mad as his experiments near completion.

But add the girl's boyfriend (possible fiancé), madness, love, hate, a fanatic priest and a killer plant and you wind up with a film that climaxes and stops suddenly. It could have been better by simply explaining how things went from jungle to estate. One scene would have done it. It would have been in character for the doctor to gloat some more and give the explanation of his genius.

The ending is not what one expects but it does work into what little story there is. A must see movie for fans of bad monster films as this is one of the worst, but don't expect much.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: THE TITLE SAYS IT ALL.....
Review: I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I love this movie. Lurid title and all. It's a b&w low budget British pot boiler about a crazed scientist who brings a big cheesy looking "tree" back from the Brazilian Amazon that eats women---but only pretty ones. Mumbo jumbo about tribal rituals have intoxicated the doctor (George Coulouris) into believing the serum derived from the tree can restore the dead to life. But AFTER it's eaten a pretty woman. So, he lures young women home---drugging one (Joy Webster from "Burn Witch Burn") with a "funny cigarette"---to his laboratory/dungeon. There, his whacked out "Brazilian native" assistant Tanga (Jimmy Vaughan) dresses them in a sexy outfit complete with bracelets and puts them in a trance by wildly beating bongos. Tanga gets VERY turned on (and sweaty) and pushes the girls into the writhing lobster claw arms of the tree. Will the doc's blonde and pretty new "housekeeper" (Vera Day) be the tree's next meal? And will the nosy OLD "housekeeper" wind up a zombie? Turn your brain off and watch this 70 min. wonder and just enjoy. Nice DVD print from Image makes this rainy day flick a keeper for lovers of old b&w cheesy horror movies like myself. Oh, and that's beautiful Marpessa Dawn (from the Oscar winning "Black Orpheus"---also 1959) at the beginning as the jungle sacrifice to the tree. Interesting career leap. Thanks Image.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A mildly enjoyable waste of time
Review: In this (ho,hum) typical quest for an elixer to prolong life, the villain will stop at nothing to obtain his syrum, feeding it to his wife while giving the bodies to a vegetable like creature returned from the jungle along with a worshipper. BORRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGG!!! This flick is not quite as good as KONGA and not quite as bad as anything else (see Ed WOOD). It probably qualifies for some laughs.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Pathetic jungle opus
Review: In this (ho,hum) typical quest for an elixer to prolong life, the villain will stop at nothing to obtain his syrum, feeding it to his wife while giving the bodies to a vegetable like creature returned from the jungle along with a worshipper. BORRRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGG!!! This flick is not quite as good as KONGA and not quite as bad as anything else (see Ed WOOD). It probably qualifies for some laughs.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I'm Curious...
Review: Maybe films should be made by film makers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pure, Lurid Entertainment
Review: There is something strangely appealing about this low-budget, nearly forgotten British horror film from 1957. It made the US rounds on the B side of horror double features in the late 50s and then pretty much dropped out of sight. Most movie review tomes dismiss it as a waste of time, but the horror genre (apart from a few "monstres sacres") is generally dismissed as a whole by these surveys. If approached within the confines of the late 1950s monster/horror movie genre, "Womaneater" holds it own quite well.

In terms of acting, there is really nothing to criticize. George Coulouris seems, for better or worse, born to play a faustian madman. He can achieve a wide-eyed look that is frankly rather disturbing. Joyce Gregg, as the housekeeper and frustrated former lover, is also successful at suggesting turmoil under the surface.

The film has the perfect horror-film look of its period: stock jungle footage plus shadowy studio interiors. Edwin Astley's soundtrack is heard to advantage on the DVD, and it's appropriately creepy. There is an overall luridness about this film that is just plain compelling. We first experience it in the so-called "dance of death", during which the native girl victim (Marpessa Dawn) does no dancing whatsoever, but rather swoons to an intoxicating drum beat. Later, a potential victim has her blouse ripped just enough so that we may glimpse her bra-strap. And when the mad doctor needs more plant food, he visits what looks like a seamy district of Soho (a highly effective location sequence, by the way). Such little concessions to a prurient audience add to the charm of the film. In addition, there is a walking dead scene that harkens back to the 1930s Universal horrors.

On to the monster. Here is where the film makes a tiny claim to immortality. This is no vampiric stalker, resurrected dinosaur, or bloodthirsty alien. It is, quite simply, a tree. But what a sinister, malevolent-looking tree it is! This fairly nightmarish invention is covered with shaggy tendrils and has two kinds of apparently powerful tentacles with which to grasp its prey. Of course, the prey must be placed into, or forced to enter the clutches of the tree, but that contributes to the originality of the conception.

This little gem has been out of circulation for many years. Previous video incarnations have been extremely shoddy, using broken elements with nearly inaudible sound. The DVD issue presents "Womaneater" in what must be the best condition possible, which is pretty good. See it, if you dare.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates