The Disembodied

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed by Walter Grauman; Produced by Ben Schwalb for Allied Artists release. Screenplay by Jack Townley; Photographed by Harry Neumann; Edited by William Austin; Music by Marlin Skiles. Starring: Allison Hayes, Paul Burke, Eugenia Paul, John Wengraf, Joel Marston, Robert Christopher and Dean Fredericks.

Following the usual stupidly written prologue comes a B-movie classic featuring jungle voodoo and zombies, as the natives worship a great white goddess personified by Allison Hayes. Before hitting it big on TV in "Naked City", her handsome leading man is none other than Paul Burke. Endlessly shown in syndication TV packages.

Two men and their guide, who are part of a crew filming in the jungle, rush an injured man to the nearest doctor, who just so happens to be an old white guy. The doctor reluctantly agrees to help. While the injured man recuperates one of the men, Tom (Paul Burke), becomes enamored with Tonda (Allison Hayes), the seductive young wife of the doctor. What he doesn't know is that the wife is secretly a voodoo queen. Tonda uses her powers and sexy ways to try to get Tom to kill her husband.

Other reviewers say it's dull and maybe they're right. For me, I enjoy just about anything with Allison Hayes in it. As far as jungle thrillers go, it offers very little action. Wild animal attacks are referenced but never shown, for example. The natives appear to be a multicultural mix. Shapely B movie queen Allison Hayes is the whole show here. She connives and seduces her way through the picture. Cutie Eugenia Paul has the only other prominent female part. Paul Burke is forgettable. It's a nice little low-budget movie that fans of Hayes will enjoy more than most. Particularly her sexy voodoo dances.

Disembodied, The (1957)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Allison Hayes plays Tonda Metz, a beautiful woman living in the jungle with her much older husband (John Wengraf) who just happens to be a doctor. A group of men are making a movie in the jungles when one is attacked by a lion so they take him to the doctor and soon the wife tries to get her hooks into Tom (Paul Burke) but he feels something is wrong and he's correct because the lady is a voodoo princess. THE DISEMBODIED has a pretty bad reputation and after viewing the film it's easy to see why so many people want to forget this turkey because it really is as bad as everyone says it is. The film runs just 66-minutes but that's about an hour too long and for the life of me I can't figure out why the wife went through all the trouble she does when she could have accomplished her goal with very little effort. I won't spoil what she's doing but once you figure it out you'll really want to talk to the screen and explain to her that she's wasting her time as well as our time. The screenplay never seems to realize what it wants to do or perhaps Allied Artist simply ran out of money and demanded certain scenes to be removed or shot for cheap. I'm not sure which it was but the screenplay pretty much has characters sitting or standing around talking about what they're going to do and it's just downright boring. There's even a scene where one man threatens to shoot another and he's going to give him a ten-count and then we have to sit there the entire time while he counts this down. The film's one saving grace is that we do get a couple nice performances. I thought Burke was fairly good in his role and at least gave the film a little boost in terms of entertainment. I also enjoyed Wengraf, although it's never really explained what he's doing in the jungle and how he got such a young wife to go out there with him. Hayes will always be remembered for ATTACK OF THE 50FT WOMAN but she's pretty good here as well. I thought she manages to play the femme fatale quite well as she was certainly believable in the part and I felt she really was "strong" enough to control these men with her powers. However, even these nice performances can't save the film and make it worth viewing. There were several voodoo films released in this era and the majority of them were pretty bad and this one here might be the worst.

Only four reviews for 1957's "The Disembodied," while its cofeature, the deadly dull "From Hell It Came," has 35? Both films were prominent fixtures on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater back in the 1960s, airing 5 times apiece, each running just over an hour, probably shot on the same studio jungle sets, etc. Guess the Tabonga from Hell gets more love than the sultry Allison Hayes, who practically oozes sensuality every moment she's on screen in "The Disembodied." "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" may be more famous than this Allied Artists potboiler, but you must admit she was certainly the right actress to heighten the temperature of any self respecting male viewer. The bored wife of an older jungle doctor (John E. Wengraf) moonlighting (literally) as a voodoo priestess, captivating every man she comes across, except for the one she wants most (played by a game Paul Burke); her easy seduction of a native servant proves to be her undoing however. The main drawback is hazy character motivation, though the actors carry far more conviction than the somnambulists walking through "From Hell It Came" (the native girls are younger and prettier too). Director Walter Grauman later became a pioneer of the network TV movie, with a pair of early titles featuring John Carradine, 1969's "Daughter of the Mind" and 1970's "Crowhaven Farm." While she got to play her share of good girls ("The Unearthly"), Allison Hayes shows why she truly excels as a baddie, and like Barbara Shelley in "Cat Girl" demonstrates real star quality by maintaining interest whenever she's on screen, her finest showcase with no giant aliens to distract us from her feminine wiles (shake that thang!).

This low rent dreary voodoo pic may be one of the dullest low budget horror/science fiction films from the fifties. The film is set in some nondescript jungle where a band of adventurers arrive at the remote jungle home of a "white doctor" and his native wife. The wife is always putting hexes on her doctor husband whom she hates, although the reason for her malice is never explained. The sets consists of a few cheap jungle sets, and the interior of the house. The native population is a strange polyglot mix of blacks, whites and what looks like Indonesians so often found in cheap jungle pictures. The only reason for watching this (other than if you are completest like me) is the presence of Allison Hayes, who looks gorgeous in a flower print sarong. THE DISEMBODIED is one of a handful of cheap Voodoo pictures made in the fifties. Most of these weren't any good, but some like ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU at least have a kind of campy, cockeyed charm that makes them appealing. THE DISEMBODIED is a film so dreary and uneventful that it is no wonder it is mostly forgotten today except by fans of the lovely Allison Hayes.