Man-Eater of Kumaon

Wendell Corey is a very disaffected doctor traveling through India. On a safari, he shoots at a tiger and blows off part of its paw--but the animal manages to escape. Now, injured, the tiger has a hard time capturing fast prey and resorts to catching a very slow one...people! Now you'd think Corey might feel a tad responsible for this, but he's so busy brooding and feeling sorry for himself (he's lost his wife and given up his practice). Later, however, after he gets to know the people, Corey cannot help but go back to the jungle in search of this man-hunter. And now, it's either him or the tiger...

The one thing anyone will notice about the film is that apart from Sabu and one or two others, the rest of the Indian cast is made up of white and Hispanic actors in body paint. This is kind of offensive--perhaps they had trouble finding Indians (from India) in the States at that time, though I assume if they'd tried harder they could have. As the result of this and a script that seemed filled with the inevitable, it's only a minor time-passer. Not bad--just not particularly good.

By the way, while you see a toucan in the film, they are only found in the Americas--not in Asia nor anywhere near it.

OK, I know how this movie was made. On Day #1 the Producer said "We spent the whole budget on some great tiger footage and rights to a book we're not actually using. Everything has to be on shoestring." To which the Director replied, "we'll use generic Indian Village sets that will leave no doubt we've never left the sound stage. We won't even hire any goats and geese that might make it seem real for an instant." The writer chimed in "I'll use nothing but old cliches about Indian culture and Hemingwayesque white hunters. I won't even give Wendell Cory or Sabu anyone to play against!".

And the casting director said we'll hire white folks to read Indian proverbs!".

And thus "Maneater of Kumoan". The tiger scenes are great, the rest is boring cliches you've seen and heard before.

Believe me the book "Maneaters of Kumoan" is fantastic. Perhaps one scene from the book made it into this awful movie.

In typical Hollywood style this film asserts that everyone in India is terribly spiritual and stiflingly serious. They wander about saying profound things about the meaning of life, while nobly suffering in poverty. Add to this a laughably sententious narration and an American on a spiritual quest (which somehow will be helped by shooting tigers)played without a shred of humour by Wendell Corey, and you have a pretty bad film.

But there is the most wonderful tiger footage that makes sitting through the boring bits worthwhile. Well staged attacks on humans and animals, and a sensational sequence when the tiger fights a crocodile, are very exciting and beautifully photographed. No surprises that director Byron Haskin was one of the top cameramen of the silent era - it is when this film does not talk that it is at its best.

Tense direction, good acting by Corey and Sabu. Corbett was an animal rights enthusiast but shot and killed a lot of big cats in his day. Many Indian villagers owed their lives to him.

Many people look at sadistic murderers and tigers in the same way, i.e., it's not their fault. This to me is sickening.

Lovers of tigers need to know that tigers hunt and kill 300 villagers a year in the Sundabans mangrove swamps on the Bay of Bengal. Shamefully, the Indian government protects these tigers at the expense of its human population. This is not laudable to me. I'm sure PETA animal lovers would not wish to hunt wood in the swamps of the Sundabands, infested as it is with over 500 man-eating tigers.

So much for the romance of the big cats.

I'm not sure why "ceswart" chose the IMDb for his comment but I feel duty bound to point out that it contains three significant errors. First, the Sundarbans, to give the the area its correct spelling, are in Bangladesh, not India. Secondly, the Bangladeshi government maintains foresters who hunt down and kill man-eaters, just like Jim Corbett did for the Indian Forest Service almost a century ago. Third, the total number of humans killed by tigers in all of Bangladesh between 1984 and 2001 was 427, a terrible toll to be sure, but a far cry from 300 a year.

What's really interesting is that the increased prevalence of man-eaters in the area is caused by the increased salinity of the Bramaputra river water. This, in turn, is caused by development upstream, mostly in India, decreasing to total flow and allowing back wash from the Bay of Bengal. The extra salt damages the tigers' livers, enervating them to the point that they become man-eaters. Corbett was right!

I don't mean to be preachy but wouldn't it be better to restrict this forum to movie talk and put social commentary on more appropriate bulletin boards elsewhere on the net?