"SEE the Woman Eater ensnare the beauties of two continents! SEE its hideous arms devour them in a death-embrace!" Released in the United States as THE WOMAN EATER, a tentacled tree that can revive the dead unfortunately can't put any life into this plodding production.
BETWEEN 1960 and 1967, there were a slew of murderous plant movies: Roger Corman's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS had a florist assistant cultivating flora that feeds on human blood; Howard Keel's version of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS was released; the homicidal creeping vine segment was part of DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS; specimens of frozen tundra turn into acid-secreting carnivores for NAVY VS THE NIGHT MONSTERS; and MANEATER OF HYDRA sees Cameron Mitchell play a reclusive scientist crossbreeding dangerous varieties. But the dawn of this subgenre occurred in 1957 and 1958 with stories of more exotic origin: Dan Milner's FROM HELL IT CAME has a vengeful walking tree from the South Seas; and in this Charles Saunders picture, an Amazonian tribe possess a trunk-idol that can resurrect the departed, as long as it is regularly fed with nubile young woman to keep its secretions flowing.
Scientist and explorer James Moran (George Coulouris) transports the aforementioned "miracle-working Ju Ju" back to his English estate with loin-clothed Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn), who drums potential victims into a hypnotic state in a basement laboratory. Housekeeper and former lover to Moran, Margaret (Joyce Gregg), becomes resentful to new recruit Sally Norton (Very Day), an attractive ex-funfair worker who has started a relationship with mechanic Jack Venner (Peter Wayn). The scientist inadvertently strangles Margaret, who fleetingly returns as a brainless zombie; it is revealed that Tanga has kept the full secret of the tree to himself and his people ("only the body, not the mind!")
Blonde bombshell Vera Day makes for an appealing kidnap victim. Other credits for this London-born model/actress include QUATERMASS 2, GRIP OF THE STRANGLER and TOO MANY CROOKS.
WOMANEATER has the feel of a ponderous Bela Lugosi/Monogram film from the 1940s, and is a tired attempt to hang on to voodoo as an undead trope. The laboured script is played out by a disinterested and underdeveloped cast: the police force is unbelievably wooden and Coulouris - whose acting career spanned everything from CITIZEN KANE to BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB - stares blankly under a weight of research and family insanity ("several of them have been sent away.") Moran's plan is clearly at an early stage - he is having to kill people to revive them - but the most ludicrous notion is why Tanga has spun the situation to waste so much time, particularly as his prized idol burns over the closing credits.