By Hank Parmer
Two Sides of Vegetables -- That Want to Eat You: The Woman
Eater (1958) and The Man-Eater of Hydra (1967)
As my readers are probably all too aware by this point, I
can be a bit ... well, obsessed with oddball film genres of the mid-20th
Century.
And you can't get much more obscure than vegetable horror. I
don't mean lobster-clawed pickles from outer space or "intellectual
carrots" like The Thing from Another World or the
occasional oversize carnivorous jungle plant with a sweet tooth for starlets.
I'm talking straight-up horror films featuring murderous monster veggies. These
make up a remarkably small share of Fifties and Sixties B-movie output, and
none of them seem to be as well-known as parodies like Little Shop of
Horrors and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
Although this essay's cinematic tag team might be utterly
deserving of their obscurity, you must admit there's an appealing symmetry to
this pairing: Think of them as the botanical equivalent of Jack Sprat and his
wife, when it comes to anthropophagy. (To forestall any nit-pickers, though, I
should mention that the Maneater isn't quite so selective about its meals,
gender-wise.)
One possible explanation for the relative rarity of this
horror sub-genre is that right off the bat, there's a big drawback inherent in
casting a member of the plant kingdom as your principal nasty, namely, limited
mobility. Unless it's a Triffid, if the monster wasn't foresighted enough to
secure a very large planter and a Hoverround it tends to stay rooted in one
location.
This presents the screenwriter with a dilemma: how to lure
enough victims within its reach to justify a feature film's run time.
Obviously, the trick is to give the thing a human accomplice. In the case of
today's double-feature George Coulouris and Cameron Mitchell, respectively,
will be our Judas Goats.
Coulouris is of course familiar to classic movie buffs as
Charles Foster Kane's despised guardian and financial nemesis, the banker
Walter Parks Thatcher. It's been quite a while, though, since his glory days
with Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater. This role is clearly a data point well
on the downward arc of the actor's career.
The Woman Eater kicks off with a brief
establishing shot of the entrance to the famed Explorer's Club in London.
Inside, Dr. Moran (George Coulouris) holds forth to his audience: Lewis
Carling, and another guy who merely rates a credit as "Man in Club".
The doctor has a map he obtained from a dying explorer, which Moran claims
shows the way to a lost Inca tribe. And if that's not sufficient to pique his
listeners' curiosity, these strange and mysterious natives are rumored to be
able to revive the dead. Which is just like catnip to your budding mad
scientist. So of course Moran is in a lather to go haring off to the backwaters
of the Amazon.
He manages to interest Carling in his expedition; the doctor
gives him an invite and hurries off to make final preparations for the trip.
The Man in Club warns his friend that Moran is the end product of a long line
of major loons, but Carling shrugs it off.
Some stock footage of an airliner, then a biplane -- they
must have boarded a connecting flight in Hooterville -- then a quick detour to
Africa via clips of crocs sliding down a riverbank and a tree full of
camera-shy birds, and voila, the doctor and his companion are hacking their way
through some rubber plants on a soundstage. Moran appears to be a bit under the
weather, but he assures Carling he's had the "jungle fever" before --
and he won't let it get him down. (The randy little bugger!) They follow the
sound of tom-toms and soon stumble upon a native ceremony in progress.
One remarkable aspect of this cheesy tableau is that casting
was apparently unable to locate any extras who might, if you kinda-sorta
squinted your eyes right, appear as if they were in fact descended from a lost
Incan tribe -- or any other indigenous inhabitants of South America. Instead,
the filmmaker decided to go with sub-Saharan African, plus a smattering of
European brunettes in heavy body makeup.
A very fetching young woman (Marpessa Dawn, just before she
got her big break playing Eurydice in Black Orpheus) is
swaying dreamily to the pulsating rhythm of the drums. There's also a guy
wearing an ostrich-feather headdress, leaping and prancing about, raising and
lowering his arms while he grips a fairly large snake in each hand.
Pretty much your standard Grade-Z-movie voodoo, really --
except for that stump with the shaggy pelt and flapping claspers, plus a couple
of puny pincers thrown in up top to balance the composition. It looks like an
emotionally needy refugee from the creature-of-the-week stable for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
Carling senses something unpleasant is in the offing. He
barges onto the scene, shouting "Stop it, you devils!" This untimely
interruption earns him a spear through the chest. (Remember: There are no small
parts.)
Dr. Moran wisely stays put and continues to surreptitiously
observe the ceremony. As tonight's offering is led toward the plant, she
suddenly has second thoughts about this hookup. But it's too late for that. The
luckless sacrifice is seized by a couple of men and hustled toward the
monstrous thing. Blackout.
Sometime afterwards, Dr. Moran, delirious and raving about
the secret of Life, is rescued by another party of explorers.
England: "Five Years Later"
There's something peculiar going on in the dank, gloomy
cellar of this country estate. Tanga the Drummer Boy whales on a couple of
drums, while another young lovely has been enthralled by that irresistible
beat. This gorgeous redhead seems mildly horrified ... and yet, aroused, as she
stares past the camera at something.
Fully recovered now from his harrowing ordeal, Dr. Moran is
up in his study, scribbling away. He pauses to consult a volume in his library,
jots down a few more notes, then crosses to a curtained alcove. He unlocks a
steel door that leads down to the cellar.
Where, in addition to Tanga and his date, there are also a
bunch of test tubes, flasks and bubbling retorts. The Drummer Boy ramps up the
tempo, then abruptly stops, stands up -- my, that silk diaper doesn't leave
much to the imagination, does it? -- and slowly approaches the girl. Standing
beside her, he puts his arm around her shoulders and gently but firmly urges
her toward the camera.
"And let's see who
our lucky bachelorette's picked for her Dream Date!"
After his near-fatal jaunt to the Amazon, has Dr. Moran
found a more rewarding hobby, perhaps involving moving pictures tailored to the
gents? But no, he must have brought a seed or a cutting back with him, because
the doctor now has his very own woman-scarfing stump. And it really wants a
hug. This should totally wow them at the Royal Horticultural Society's next
shindig!
But once again, the stump's intended balks at the last
moment. Tanga glances meaningfully at Dr. Moran. His boss gives him the nod and
she's shoved into the creature's greedy clutches, while the Drummer Boy grins
maniacally.
As this victim is being devoured off-camera, the doctor
informs the audience he's only feeding her to the stump for the sake of
Science: "She'll become part of the plant, and from it, I'll extract a
serum that can bring the dead back to life. She won't have died in vain!"
Well, if he puts it that way ... I'm certain the lady would
have found this a great comfort. But scientific breakthrough or no, if truth be
told Moran looks as though he's manfully yet not altogether successfully
suppressing a chubby.
