Womaneater [The Woman Eater] ** (1958, George Coulouris, Vera Day) – Classic Movie Review 12,594

‘REIGN OF TERROR FROM EARTH! See the Woman Eater ensnare the beauties of two continents! See the hideous arms devour them in a death-embrace!’

The sneakily enjoyable low-budget 1958 British horror film Womaneater [The Woman Eater] stars George Coulouris as a crazed scientist called Dr Moran, who feeds women to a phallic flesh-eating tree. 

Anyone for a killer tree movie? I thought so! Charles Saunders’s interesting, even sneakily enjoyable but fairly awful low-budget 1958 British horror film Womaneater [The Woman Eater] stars George Coulouris as a crazed scientist called Dr Moran, who feeds women to a phallic flesh-eating tree (actually it’s a woman-eating tree) blessed with dozens of writhing snakes, in return for a serum that can bring the dead back to life.

Vera Day also stars as Sally Norton, who is working at a sideshow at the local Fun Fair,, dancing the hula-hula to attract customers. Peter Wayn [Peter Forbes-Robinson] plays Jack Venner, who falls in love with her at first sight and suggests she approach Dr Moran about becoming an assistant to Moran’s housekeeper, Mrs Santor (Joyce Gregg). Moran, of course, gives Sally the job. Unfortunately, like most jobs, it comes with certain drawbacks.

To be fair, Coulouris proceeds with some dignity, he was in Citizen Kane after all, and keeps his dignity, and the carnivorous tree idea is an interesting one as trees go. Not your usual tree, exactly, a cousin of the Triffid, maybe, in The Day of the Triffids, a film with a much bigger budget and equally rotten effects.

The aged scientist’s lusty, or lustful cruising for young women near Soho is also interesting. and, as for his feeding women to trees, you can have a Freudian field day. Dr Moran is definitely an arch misogynist, whether the film itself is misogynistic or not is a matter of debate. We’re not exactly on the side of Dr Moran, or the 8-foot killer tree for that matter. It’s such a shame that the monster tree is so plastic and pathetic. Even so there is a reason, or an excuse maybe. An accidental fire just before shooting started reduced the original tree to cinders and left the prop department only days to construct the unsatisfactory alternative on screen.

At any rate, to be kind, you could call it a guilty pleasure, a bit better than so-bad-it’s-good, but still fairly awful, a victim of its cheap production when it could have been a contender.

Produced by Guido Coen, the film was released in the UK in 1958 by Eros Films in a double bill with the Swedish crime drama Blonde in Bondage (1957). It was released in a double bill in the US in July 1959 with a 1958 Japanese science fiction film The H-Man,

It is the follow-up by Coen, Saunders and Coulouris to the even worse The Man Without a Body (1957).

It was filmed at Twickenham Studios in Sussex with a fairly decent lab set, as well as shooting in the English countryside and a couple of interesting scenes shot on location on the streets of central London. The sequence where Moran goes on the prowl in Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue for another woman to feed to the tree were shot at night with Coulouris and Joy Webster] moving through real crowds. It’s a flashback to another world. The streets are still unswept and full of trash though. Special effects may improve as time goes by, but some things never change. Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue looked a bit smarter and more exciting back then though.

It is the second film of Marpessa Dawn (as Native Girl) and her only English-language film. Born in Pittsburgh, she moved to England as a teenager and started in small roles in TV before she went to Paris and her break as Eurydice in Black Orpheus (1959),

It is the first feature role for popular nude model Marie Devereux (as Prostitute).

Joy Webster (as Judy) is also in a similar role in Charles Saunders’s Jungle Street [Jungle Street Girls] (1960), starring David McCallum, Jill Ireland, and Kenneth Cope.

On the trailer and promotional material the title is The Woman Eater but on the film it is Womaneater.

The cast are George Coulouris as Dr Moran, Vera Day as Sally, Robert MacKenzie as Lewis Carling,  Norman Claridge as Dr Paterson, Marpessa Dawn as Native Girl, Jimmy Vaughan as Tanga, Sara Leighton as Susan Curtis, Edward Higgins as Sgt Bolton, Joyce Gregg as Mrs Santor, Harry Ross as Bristow, Peter Wayn [Peter Forbes-Robinson] as Jack Venner, Alexander Field as Fair Attendant, Joy Webster as Judy, David Lawton as Man in Club, John Tinn as Lascar, Maxwell Foster as Inspector Brownlow, Peter Lewiston as Sgt Freeman Roger Avon as Constable, Shief Ashanti as Witch Doctor (snake-handler), Marie Devereux as Prostitute, John Grant as Rescue Party Leader, Susan Neill as Orange-Juice Counter Girl, and Stanley Platts as Explorers Club Steward.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,594

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