Voodoo Woman

Random thoughts that popped into my head while watching "Voodoo Woman":

1) Poor Tom Conway. Either he thought this role was beneath him (but took it anyway to keep the wolf from the door) or he was completely out of his depth, because he gives a completely squirrelly and disconnected performance where he is obviously reading from cue cards most of the time. Plus...that HAT!!!

2) Poor Lance Fuller. The guy had a certain way about him, but alas his talent is strictly 3rd tier, and it doesn't help that the character he plays is a greasy slimeball.

3) Poor Mike Connors. He pretty much carries the movie, but he should have carried it straight out the door and into the dumpster.

4) The lead female - someone should have gently taken her aside and told her the difference between "tough noir temptress" and "irritating, hateful harpy". She actually looked pretty good in the role, but every time she opened her mouth, I wanted to punch her.

6) The final scene where the murderous harpy tries to retrieve the final remaining chunk of gold from the edge of the volcanic pit where it came to rest, only to lose her balance and fall in...is the single most badly staged and unbelievable choreography of a "fall" I can remember seeing. Apparently it never occurred to the poor lady to bend her knees.

7) This wasn't nearly as bad as earlier AIP fodder like "Beast With A Million Eyes", and I am sure someone had fun watching it as the bottom half of a Drive in double feature...but 40+ years down the road, it has not aged well. Good AIP/Corman stuff almost always had the germ of something interesting and creative driving them...but this poor cast- off just comes off trite, rote, and derivative.

8) At the end of the day, people who were trying to make a living in the movie business got paid. At least there's that.

We don't worry about motivations when it comes to guys who want to create new women. Unfortunately, the products aren't very good. Tom Conway, one of Hollywood's least memorable actors, is the jungle man with the cool hat who discovers something rather unsavory is going on among the trees. Well, of course it's an evil scientist. If you want to giggle, just listen to the dialogue. It is overly dramatic and stiff. This one doesn't even have the recommendation of being sort of funny. Unless we have a unique sense of humor.

Let's face it, this is a pretty bad film.However if you go in ready to make fun of it you can survive the experience.Okay, you'll scream in agony a lot.African jungle fun in a dopey kind of way.

Tom Conway (who spends most of the film wearing a funky chapeau) is using the local witch doctor and mad science to create a "perfect" being.It looks like a varmint that has been on a six week drunk and is in a sack dress.Ugly is being kind.But it won't kill for him because he's using a good girl as his subject.He needs a bad bad girl.

Marla English and Lance Fuller are two petty crooks in search of African gold.Acting lessons for Ms English should have been at the top of the search list.She's a bad girl and lets everybody know it in a performance worthy of a junior high school play.Mike "Touch" Connors is the white guide English & Fuller con into leading the expedition.

English & Conway finally meet and it is a match made in hell.She is the perfect subject to become his voodoo creature because she'll do anything (stress anything) to get what she wants.You will do anything to stop the agony of this movie at this point.

What made this movie interesting for me was Conway wearing that funky tribal hat/headdress/floral piece!Still trying to figure out what kind of dead animal it was.Guess he thought if he pulled it down low enough over his eyes nobody would recognize him.

Truly bad cinema.

Voodoo Woman (1957)

* (out of 4)

Really bad film about a mad scientist in the African jungle turning a woman into a monster by using voodoo. I love these old "B" movies and AIP was always one of the best but this film here is just downright boring, slow and not interesting in anyway. The film is full of dialogue, which is poorly written and slows everything down. The performances are all equally bad but not bad enough to where we can laugh at them. The film is bad from start to finish but it never gets to the point to where you can laugh at it, which means the film is just hard to watch.

Looking for gold in a remote African village, a team of explorers stumble upon a mad doctor working with the natives to create a race of people using black magic to rule the world, and that the first test subject is stalking them in the jungle along their journey.

This one here wasn't all that bad of a low-budget voodoo effort. What really gives this one a lot of enjoyable elements here is the fact that it really generates a pretty intriguing atmosphere with the use of the voodoo angle to really help sell this one's connection to the jungle setting here. This one gets that element off to a great start here with the opening voodoo ceremony being performed where the gathered crowd gets whipped into a frenzy as the ritual items placed on her and the enhanced dancing before the transformation makes which for a great start to this, and with the ever-present tribal drumming throughout here as well as the jungle- dwelling atmosphere that really helps to solidify the voodoo-filled atmosphere of this part of the film. As well, this also makes use of one of the strongest and most vital aspects of voodoo about it not being able to force someone to do something they usually wouldn't do, and it really sells this aspect of the religion by forcing a critical plot-point to come from this and to be able to stick to conventions is to be commended. Other fun here comes from the scenes with the voodoo-raised creature as the different resurrections in the bunker are incredibly creepy and the action scenes of it charging into villages and destroying everything are quite fun, though it's the finale that really sells this one. Bringing into play the ceremonial altar deep in the fog-enshrouded jungle, the wild dancing and chanting being quite fun and there's the fine set- pieces of capturing the wife as well as the different battles to be found at the ceremony which is where this one really makes for a great time here. With the fantastic creature design and the low- budget charms on display, this one is enjoyable enough to overcome the few minor flaws here. The main issue against this one is obviously the cheap, low-budget nature of the film which doesn't really make any part of this one look like anything else here except for a cheap cash-in. The sets, the simplicity of the locations and the whole atmosphere is so obviously and easily seen as such it really takes a lot out of the film in that state. Likewise, that continues into the overall length of this as the film takes on barely enough to reach the hour mark and really only gets there with only a few minor set-pieces that stretch that length out with the rather lame scenes of her being kept hidden in her room, the time- wasting scene in the motel room where they get held up from going on their trip and the scenes of them in the jungle wrestling for control with each other are quite lame and really just seem stretched out variations just to get it to a proper running time. These issues, along with the rather cheap look, all lower this one somewhat.

Today's Rating/PG: Violence.