La Sorcière du diable

Fans of trashy B-movies will no doubt recognise the name of Allison Hayes, best known for cult sci-fi classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. In The Disembodied, Hayes plays voluptuous voodoo queen Tonda Metz, who lives with her reclusive older husband Dr. Carl Metz (John Wengraf) in a remote part of an unspecified jungle. When a group of wildlife film-makers stumble upon the Metz's jungle household seeking help, insecure Carl becomes convinced that their leader Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke) has caught his wife's roving eye. He's not wrong, the wicked woman seducing Maxwell in an effort to convince him to kill her husband (although what he's done to deserve her malice is never revealed).

With no cannibal natives, no deadly quick sand, no man-eating plants, and no killer gorillas, there's really only one reason to watch this cheapo jungle thriller-to get an eyeful of the sultry Miss Hayes, who struts around in a slinky dress that shows off her impressive curves, and gets partially unclothed for some sexy gyrating to a bongo beat during her voodoo rituals. The rest of the film is forgettable nonsense, so much so that I already can't recall much about how it all ended and I only watched it last night.

Fair jungle thriller set entirely on jungle sound stages with a native population consisting whites, blacks, Latinos and pacific islanders. The plot has something to do with the evil wife of the local doctor being a voodoo priestess and using her power to torment her husband while at the same time trying to pick up every good looking guy around. It might have been an okay film had there been any sense of realism, some decent performances or a script that at least explained why the wife was such a bitch. Mostly things just plod along at programmed rate until its appointed conclusion. Give it points for the priestess sexy dancing in dresses from Fredrick's of Hollywood, but take away more for a complete lack of caring anywhere else along the way.

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.

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.

Deep in the jungle of sub Saharan Africa (I'm guessing here because nobody ever says where this is taking place) a couple of men and their servant who are working on a movie crew carry their injured colleague, mauled by a lion, to a doctor's house. They supposedly came from several days away, so how they even knew a doctor's house was out here in the middle of the jungle I have no idea, but it won't be the first illogical thing that happens in this film. The doctor treats the man - Joe - but is not sure that he can save him, meanwhile the other three men camp near the house.

The doctor's wife is Tonda (Allison Hayes) a voodoo priestess. She has apparently married the doctor for his money and now intends to kill him for that money. She was in the process of doing that when the film started by tightening a noose around a doll made in the doctor's likeness, but she is interrupted. So she comes up with a rather complicated and not so cunning plan to have someone else kill him that involves the visitors. Why go through all of this aggravation? The next time she is alone she could just strangle his doll likeness and it would look like the doctor died in his sleep? I guess that's because then we'd have no plot, even thin and threadbare as it is. Tonda also makes the movie crew's injured friend into a zombie of sorts, to seemingly no purpose whatsoever. Zombie guy Joe just tries to kill his friends and then wanders into the jungle. Complications, many of them ultimately meaningless, ensue.

Except for Allison Hayes, who was queen of the B horror films in the 50s, the cast is completely anonymous. I wouldn't say the rest of the cast are bad actors, they are just completely non-descript ones. As for the supporting cast playing the natives, this has to be a record breaker for being a very early example of a multi-racial cast. Some of the natives are black, some are white in make up to look like - I guess Pacific Islanders? And then there is Tonda who looks completely white but allegedly is the local tribe's voodoo priestess. And then there is all of that very hard slapping going on. Observe their technique carefully - You might need to try it on yourself to stay awake through its running time.