Konterr
Brilliant and touching
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Leofwine_draca
WOMANEATER is a film that has much in common with the American-made B-flick FROM HELL IT CAME, as both movies are about carnivorous trees that demand sacrificial human victims. However, this is by far the worse movie, as it's just too cheap and stodgy to entertain. Scenes of the tree attacking people only occur a couple of times during the film, and for the most part it's talky and dull.It's certainly of interest to British horror aficionados, as I enjoyed the colonial background of the tale which has some stylistic similarity to THE REPTILE and THE GHOUL; malign foreign influences corrupt otherwise decent British folk and lead them to murder and madness. It's a shame, then, that the execution is so lacklustre and the horror moments so limited.Still, B-movie freaks might still enjoy this one, and it's not all bad. B-movie king Charles Saunders contributes brisk and efficient direction, although he can't disguise the problems with the script. George Coulouris (CITIZEN KANE) is fine in one of those down-on-his-luck-famous-actor-makes-a-B-movie type roles. Vera Day is the very definition of the blonde and buxom '50s starlet. But for WOMANEATER to really shine, I needed more cheese, more dodgy effects, and simply more action, as that way it would have been more fun overall.
Chris Gaskin
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.
ferbs54
For those of you wondering whether Pittsburgh-born beauty Marpessa Dawn ever made another film besides 1959's classic "Black Orpheus," here is your answer. She appeared two years earlier, as an Amazonian native at the opening of "Womaneater," being sacrificed to a carnivorous tree. That tree is stolen by English scientist George Coulouris, who finds it necessary to keep this houseplant well fed with curvaceous lassies in order to harvest the tree's life-giving sap. Things get a bit complicated, however, when he falls in love with his new housekeeper, Vera Day... This picture is certainly pretty bad, objectively speaking, but I've gotta tell you, I've seen a lot worse. The film looks like it cost around 200 pounds to make (although it probably cost twice as much!), and has a tawdry, sleazy aura hanging over it, but the acting isn't all that atrocious, the script doesn't waste our time with unnecessaries (the whole thing is a scant 70 minutes long), and Vera Day, almost looking here like a poor man's Anne Francis, is pretty good as the bird in distress. The killer plant itself is certainly nowhere near as scary as those apple trees in "The Wizard of Oz," however. IMDb viewers looking for a better killer-plant flick should investigate "Day of the Triffids" (1963); even the hilarious 1960 "Little Shop of Horrors" offers more shocks and entertainment value. "Womaneater" (you've gotta love that title!) is decidedly a bargain basement affair; I suppose the producer's name, Guido Coen (!), should have tipped me off. And speaking of tips, potential viewers should know that this picture DOES offer two salient high points: Vera Day looks absolutely smashing in her 1950s-style bullet bra!
thefountainmenace
This is an enjoyable British 50's sci-fi film. More knowledgeable buffs have exhausted the actor references, so let me suffice to say that this film is slow, even by 50's standards, and a tad disjointed. But if you're interested in that good old quaint 50's vision of horror, then it's definitely worth a gander. Funny carnival scenes and several London street scenes from that era, including double decker buses advertising cream crackers and Van Heusen shirts. The whole intro in the jungle is almost needless, as it is never quite explained that the doctor brings back the native with him, who willingly stays with him for years even though we learn later (minor SPOILER) that he's not really all that fond of him. Seems kind of a long playout for a joke, to me. And the scenes of the girls being hypnotized by the wild and uneven bongo playing of said heathen were hard to swallow, especially as they seem to wake up right before they are pushed into the "Womaneater" and start screaming and resisting. And of course there's the silly looking Womaneater tree, comparable to the invading pickle in "It conquered the World." (Hence my catchy title.) So - although most of you won't find this little ditty at your local 'grope and mope'(Blockbuster), if you do run into it, AND you like 50's movies for what they were - BY ALL MEANS watch this movie.