Pretty Good

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

On an expedition to a remote part of South America, Doctor Moran (George Coulouris) discovers a savage tribe who worship a carnivorous plant that feasts solely on young, beautiful, curvaceous women. No 'plain Janes', oldies, uglies, skinnies or fatties for this lean, green killing machine: it's only interested in attractive babes with impressive curves (quite how the plant has developed this discerning attitude towards its food is never explained).Having devoured it's prey, the plant produces a liquid that can purportedly restore life to the dead, something that greatly interests the doctor, who arranges for the ravenous shrub to be transported back to his home in England, along with one of the tribesmen, Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn), to help him with his work (quite how Moran came to this arrangement with the bloodthirsty natives is also never explained). Luring women back to his secure, basement laboratory, Moran sets about feeding the plant in an effort to create enough of the sap to revive the dead.Womaneater is made of the stuff that monster B-movie fans live for: there's the mad scientist with his creepy ethnic assistant, a ropey old tree creature with flailing limbs and tentacles, a bevy of buxom beauties in skimpy sacrificial robes, a pneumatic blonde heroine (sexy ex-funfair worker Sally, played by Vera Day), and a brave but chauvinistic mechanic hero, Jack Venner (Peter Wayn). As one might expect from a low budget '50s B-movie, the film is no Oscar winner, but what it lacks in logic or technical merit it sure makes up for in cheeze 'n' sleaze, with big helpings of both being served up by director Charles Saunders.The shonky monster is guaranteed to illicit more laughs than screams, as will the sight of Tanga in his adult-sized nappy banging the bongos; the seedier content includes Moran prowling the streets and bars of London for suitable victims and his misogynistic treatment of devoted ex-lover/housekeeper Margaret (Joyce Gregg).There's also an unexpectedly tacky moment when Sally helps Jack to fix a car: while Jack is in the foot-well, he eyes up Sally's impressive breasts (her '50s torpedo chest blatantly occupying the foreground), after which he rudely berates her for her inability to follow simple instructions. Considering how he has just asked her to marry him, the scene leaves the viewer wondering just how badly he might abuse her once the ring is actually on her finger.A fun finalé adds even more sleaziness, with sexy Sally narrowly avoiding becoming a meal for the monstrous weed, but not before her blouse has been torn to give viewers a tantalising glimpse of her bra (this being 1958, I imagine that's all audiences needed to get hot and flustered!).7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for the very lovely Vera Day as Sally.

Womaneater (1958) ** (out of 4) Silly horror flick from Britain about a mad scientist (George Coulouris) who goes to the Amazon and brings back a tree that can give off a serum that can be used to bring the dead back to life. The only catch is that you've got to feed the tree young girls. This forgotten flick certainly isn't a good movie and sadly the end result doesn't live up to the nice title but there are enough interesting ideas here to make it worth sitting through at least once. It's a real shame that some of the Hollywood productions of the day didn't put more thought into their films. Sure, the idea of a tree that needs to be fed in order to bring the dead back to life is a silly idea but at least it shows a bit of imagination, which is something that was missing from countless other films from this era. I think the biggest problem is that there's really not much done with the idea. For the most part the tree stays down in the basement and we get to see it in action about three times. Nothing too special as we see the women enter the tree and that's pretty much it. The entire "tree" sub-genre never really took off and it's easy to see why simply because you can't do much with it. The film was certainly inspired by the sexuality from the Hammer horror films. Vera Day plays the dumb blonde here and I must admit that I was really amazed by her. Not her performance because it's pretty horrid but her breasts. Yes, I said it. There's a sequence here where her mechanic boyfriend just looks out them as she holds a light on them. The amazing thing in this sequence is seeing how her sweater, so tight to her body, actually splits her in two. I won't even try to explain it but you'll know the scene when it happens. These tight sweaters to show off cleavage where a big thing in this era and how it's used here is certainly the highlight of the movie. Coulouris is decent in his role but he doesn't bring too much life to the picture. The tree effects aren't anything overly special but there's a very good music score by Edwin Astley. WOMANEATER has been forgotten to time and that's understandable. There's certainly nothing ground breaking here and it's only recommended to those who must see everything the genre offered up during this era.

The 1950's produced almost everything in sci-fi/horror and The Womaneater is the one about the flesh eating tree. I quite liked this.A mad scientist brings a flesh eating tree back from the Amazon that the natives used out there. This tree only eats women and he has to look round the local area for these. After it has eaten its "meal", the scientist then gets a serum and uses it to resurrect the dead. He employs a native to help him. The victims includes his housekeeper/lover and nearly her replacement too. The tree is burned at the end.The cast includes Gorge Coulouris (Citizen Kane), Vera Day (Quatermass 2) and Robert MacKenzie (Feind Without a Face). With Jimmy Vaughn as the Native assistant.If you wish to see another movie about a killer tree, take a look at From Hell It Came.The Womaneater is a must see for all 1950's sci-fi fans. Great fun.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

******SPOILERS****** Before coming back to civilization from the uncivilized and unexplored Amazon jungle Dr. Moran, George Coulouris, came upon a secret that the local natives had all to themselves for generations, the restoration of life for the recently departed among us. With his weird and creepy native drummer boy Tanga, Jimmy Vaughn, as well as an exotic plant that he brought back to the UK with him Dr. Moran created the same conditions for the secret native ceremony that he learned in the Amazon jungle from the locals in his basement laboratory to bring the dead back to life. With this the egotistical Dr. Moran planned to become the greatest man in the history of scientific and biological research that the world has even known and all the fame and riches and power that goes along with it. Now five years later with everything is ready for Dr. Moran's ground-breaking experiment to be tested all he needed was a human sacrifice for the flesh-eating tree and the only humans that the tree eats are well endowed young women needing them to get the tree to extract a secret serum that can give life to those that the serum is injected into.Tanga goes and captured a young women outside Sara, Susan Curtis, to be given to the tree for lunch. After extracting the serum and injecting it into what looked like a skull in his laboratory the pulsometer. The results showed that the serum wasn't enough for the tree to give the Doctor the jolt that he needed to bring back to life the dead-head that he had in the jar. Soon another unexpected complication arose for Dr. Moran when the young and buxom Sally Norton , Vera Day, came looking for a job at his home as a housekeeper. That didn't go too well with Dr. Moran's long-time housekeeper and lover Margaret, Joyce Gregg, who now has to compete with the much younger and far more attractive Sally for the doctor's affections.Although obsessed with his findings in life-after-death studies Dr. Moran let his amorous emotions get in the way of his scientific curiosity. Dr. Moran fell madly in love with Sally and didn't use her for his experiment as food-stuff for the hungry tree which made Tanga very mad. It was later that he got into a fight with Margaret over Sally where he strangled her. Kidnapping another young and will-built woman Judy, Joy Webster, at the local pub in town for the trees unquenchable appetite the serum is ready for Dr. Moran to see if he can bring the dead Margaret back to life. To Dr. Moran' great shock an surprise he finds out when he brings Margaret back to the "living" that Tanga his supposedly loyal and faithful assistant played a dirty trick on him. Margaret's body was alive but her mind was brain-dead! As the gleeful Tanga tells Dr. Moran " The body for you. The brain for us".Dr. Moran going berserk, with the knowledge that his experiments all these years were a bust, attacks Tanga and ends up with Tanga taking a knife out of his diaper and putting it in Dr. Moran's back. This happened after the doctor set the tree on fire. With that a crazed and despondent Tanga seeing his "God" destroyed he walks into the burning bush and together both go up in flames. Inspired acting by both George Coulouris and Jimmy Vaughn lifted the movie up to the point where your interested in watching it especially that of Coulouris' Dr. Moran. Coulouris who did such a good job of acting insane during the movie that even the few times that he was supposed to be normal he came across as deranged.