The Disembodied

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.

Tonda Metz (Allison Hayes) uses voodoo to hurt her husband Dr. Carl Metz (John Wengraf) in the jungle. Photographer Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke) is on an expedition which is taken in by the couple for a sick member of the group. It turns out that Tonda is a native leader of a voodoo cult.

Allison Hayes dons some tan makeup and a Chinese dress to play a jungle shaman. It's 50's B-movie exoticism. It's a busty white lady leading black native characters. It's more notable for some female gyrating than anything else. I actually expected more eroticism. The writing is basic. The acting is more basic. The filmmaking is extremely basic. It is what it is.

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.

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.