Body of the Prey

This is a really weird Japanese movie about a scientist forced to take time off because he's so stressed out. Then it gets really weird. It's about what you expect based on the poster and title and is hard to find a DVD of but easy to get online because it has fallen into the public domain.

"Venus Flytrap" AKA "Revenge of Doctor X" AKA "Body of the Prey".

What an awful film but it is strangely entertaining! I couldn't help but to get a few giggles out of this one. The first hour or so of the film you will find "Dr. X" going to Japan & meeting his new beautiful female Japanese assistant who's father has several resorts but one that is abandoned with a greenhouse way up in the mountains. He and his assistant move into the resort and start building the greenhouse back up again. He has a Venus Flytrap that he carried with him from the U.S. and he decides to cross it or hybridize with another Flytrap that lives in the ocean in order to prove that all life, including mankind, has come from the ocean from evolution! In the meantime he and his assistant are falling in-love. It's the last half hour in Frankenstein style that "Dr. X" brings energy to the plant via lightening and that is when we get to see the Plant Creature! The creature can walk and ends up terrorizing a local village. This is where the film will remind you more of Frankenstein: the villagers go after the creature with torches!

The film is simply fun and sometimes funny. When the film first started, I thought I was either going to turn it off or fast-forward to watch it but I got caught up in the movie - I found it oddly entertaining yet awful at the same time.

6/10

Written by Ed Wood, Revenge of Dr. X is an abysmal story about a verbally abusive NASA a-hole, James Craig as Dr. Bragan NOT Dr. X, who grunts and screams his way into an emotional breakdown. With a much needed vacation coming up, hopefully permanent, Dr. Nakamura suggests to the loudmouth Bragan that he should visit his home country of Japan. After the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the arrival of Dr. Bragan becomes the third greatest foreign tragedy on Japanese soil. Dr. Bragan uses this time to pursue his true passion of botany with Dr. Nakamura's niece Noriko. His piece de resistance is a Venus's flytrap he procured from a backwater snake salesman's lot in North Carolina. Using the "rain as your mother" and "lightning as your father" the bad doctor descends into insanity as he creates, quite possibly, the dumbest creature in movie history. This Frankenstein ripoff even comes with a Japanese hunchbacked assistant.

James Craig not only allows the viewer to watch him chew the scenery but also to defecate it out as well. I've never seen a character so abrasive to everyone around him. He constantly screams at his assistant Noriko who in turn offers him coffee to placate him in every instance. I know some Asian women are subservient to their male counterparts but I was begging her to liberate his fat head from his body via a samurai sword. The creature is definitely of the Horror at Party Beach caliber. The only reason this did not receive a rank of one star is the out of nowhere scene of topless female divers that is thrown into the movie almost to say we know this movie sucks so here's some boobs, please don't turn this movie off! For Ed Wood fans that are gluttons for punishment only.

How can a film so awful be so awful, if you know what I mean? We've got a terrible rubbery monster, a hypertensive mad scientist and his lovely ethnic assistant, and some boobs, but for some reason this film feels as if it's as long as Barry Lyndon and much less eventful.

Overworked, cranky scientist guy gets sent from NASA to Japan for some R and R and ends up instead trying to prove that mankind is descended from plants by getting a Venus flytrap and some underwater plant and sewing them together to make a man-plant that feeds mainly on dogs, it seems.

Now look at that last paragraph - that's gold to a bad movie guy like me! But in reality this film will send you into a coma. An awfully long time is spent by the scientist talking botany with his assistant (and as a guy who has an allotment, keeping a plant in a box away from sunlight don't seem like such a good idea, plus I only use lightening on my carrots and only feed dogs to my onions. Hollywood eh?) If you can stay awake long enough for them to reveal the beeping man-plant (the inclusion of boobs might help), then the last third of the film isn't so bad, but there's no gore whatsoever and you might miss the ending if you blink. Yes, the monster looks ridiculous but I felt cheated by the lack of blood and sauce. I watched this years ago and thought it was crap then. Wish I'd written an IMDb review back then and saved myself the time of watching it again.

James Craig plays a scientist in need of a vacation in this Ed Wood scripted b-movie masterpiece. He takes one in Japan and decides to make a monster plant while there. For fans of Wood this movie is a must see as it's full of that familiar over the top Wood dialogue. "I refuse the word impossible." "Unless I miss my guess.My creation is so powerful now it could devour anything." Good luck tracking it down and don't be fooled by the Regal Video version box art which identifies a whole different movie (MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND). This lost Wood classic deserves to be seen by his fans and anyone who enjoys so-bad their good films.