Le mangeur d'hommes

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.

I fail to understand why people like ceswart and moxie-7 who have almost no understanding of the intricacies of tiger conservation make stupid and wrong statements... There several major mistakes in what they both have said.

1. Two-third of the Sundarbans is in Bangladesh while the remaining one- third is in India.

2. Neither Bangladeshi nor Indian rangers are permitted to kill tigers unless in self-defense (at a time when the tiger attacks someone in front of the ranger).

3. The tiger population in the Sundarbans in 270 as of 2013 and was less (around 220) in 2005.

4. The total tiger (Royal Bengal Tiger) population is just 1400 approx. and human population is close to 7 billion so it is necessary to protect tigers and they should be given preference over human beings in case of a conflict situation.

5. Around 150 individuals are killed by tigers in the Sundarban area (most of them are not killed by man-eaters but by tigers that feel threatened because people venture too deep into the tiger habitat and end up going too close to a tiger or its cubs).

Getting to the topic of this movie... it is very disappointing to say very the least.

Back in the 30's and 40's of the last century, Jim Corbett held the place in the popular imagination later taken up by Jacques Cousteau: an adventurer and passionate crusader for conservation. His books were enormous best sellers so it was inevitable that one would be bought for the movies. "The Man Eaters [note the plural] of Kumaon" described every tiger he had seen or heard of who attacked a human being. In every case he found that the beast was sick or wounded and only killed humans because he was unable to hunt wild game. You may think it a lame effort to exonerate dangerous animals but keep an open mind and then try to figure out how to make such a book into a movie. There might be other ways but this one works marvelously.

A man (an American doctor) shoots at a tiger just as night is falling. He knows he has hit but when he reaches the spot where the tiger lurked he finds one severed toe and a trail of blood. Out of cowardice (the sun is setting)or carelessness (what the hell, it's only a tiger) he abandons the wounded creature to its fate. That's the first two minutes of the movie, in case you miss it.

From here on, while sticking rigorously to Corbett's thesis, the movie utterly abandons his narrative and follows almost exactly the storyline of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." If the movie is not more believable than her book, it is at least easier to understand. The monster has to kill to stay alive and isn't it right,just, even necessary, that it seek out the man who made it a monster? Especially in light of modern ideas about hunting in general and tigers in particular, this version is a lot easier to swallow than Shelley's Man vs. God allegory. I'll go so far as to say that the final scene is so right, so perfectly right, that Shelley would have used it in her book if she had thought of it.

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.

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.