“She’ll become part of the plant, and from it I’ll get the serum to bring the dead back to life! She won’t have died in vain!”

The flesh-hungry tree film. Yes, such a thing really does exist. And it is everything you’d expect from a film about a carnivorous plant, made on a shoestring budget, with a title like “Womaneater”.

Of course, this film isn’t alone in its recognition of the tree as a potential scare device – let us not forget that in the Brit horror pantheon, shrubs positively run amok The Mutations. And Joan Collins plays the wronged lover who is sup-planted by a tree in her husband’s affections in Tales That Witness Madness.

Now a lesser reviewer might take the lazy option and pepper their review with assorted tree puns. Rest assured, the only way that will occur on this website is if I get to the last paragraph and realise I need to up the yuks. As if that’s ever going to happen.

Let us begin our odyssey in the Amazon – it’s the usual case of distant tom-toms, sweaty Europeans and top-heavy women shakin’ their booty at the camera, in between much use of the National Geographic’s film library.

Doctor Moran (George Coulouris) has travelled there to look into the possibility of the natives’ ju-ju magic being able to bring the dead back to life, but as he watches the ceremony unfold it becomes clear that these particular stereotypes aren’t so much into zombification as watching their young women get chewed up… by a tree. We assume, as we don’t actually see this happen.

Five years later, Moran is busy at work in his cellar, where he has installed a tree of his own. How he’s managed to grow a tree in a cellar is never explained. But I feel that sixty years after filming, it’s a question which needs asking. Because of course, apart from this galloping lack of logic, the rest of the film makes perfect sense…

He’s using his tree to re-enact the jungle scene from half a decade ago, and as another young lady gets munched up, he gibbers: “She’ll become part of the plant, and from it I’ll get the serum to bring the dead back to life! She won’t have died in vain!”

Now forgive me if I’m being naive, but how does this work? If you’ve got to kill people to bring other people back to life, what’s the point? And, what’s the big thing about bringing the dead back to life anyway? I’m not sure they’d particularly thank anyone for it.

To see if the serum works, he injects it into a very dead heart, connects it up to his “pulse-ometer”, and surprise, surprise (drum roll) – it doesn’t work. Surprise surprise (part two) he needs more serum.

Luckily enough, a huge outlet of busty young women arrives in town that very moment (the bustiness of the young woman being intrinsic to the quality of the serum, apparently), in the form of a travelling fairground. 

A chap called Jack (Peter Forbes-Roberson) goes for a night out, takes a shine to fairground worker Sally (Vera Day), and gets her the sack by punching out her boss (thanks for that). Fortunately, he’s got a suggestion for a new career for her. Unfortunately, this means working for Doctor Moran.

Meanwhile, the not-so-good doctor is up to his usual tricks, following his next victim down a packed city street (brilliantly, the passers-by keep staring straight into the camera with a “what’s that bloke filming me for?” look on their faces). He takes the girl back to his house, and makes mad passionate love to her before letting her go. Actually, he just feeds her to the tree, but I had you going for a moment there.

Sally gets the job as housekeeper to Moran, who immediately announces his love for her and asks if he can show her something… in the cellar. Guessing that what all modern girls want to see from a prospective partner is a spot of dead body reanimation (smooth), he gives some of the serum to her predecessor Margaret (who he killed). Unfortunately, things don’t quite go according to plan, and undead Margaret isn’t all she’s cracked up to be.

“Only the body… not the mind!” Shouts a now-clearly-nuts Moran. “They cheated me! They cheated me!”

Things then progress to a muddled climax which manages to tie up none of the loose ends at all.

Womaneater is simply an exploitative title and little else – it’s a film with no bite (although quite a lot of bark). Nothing rings with any sense throughout, from Moran’s ridiculous “scientific” experiments to the idea that a cartoon tree (similar to the kind you used to get in the less upmarket pub gardens) could possibly look anything less than rubbish on screen. There’s no real hero to root for. They must have been bark-ing mad, anyone could twig it wood-n’t work. With ideas like this it’s best to leaf it as a daft idea. It’s a good job it was only 80 minutes long, I would have been sycamore. And calling it “Womaneater”? Well, these days, alder and wiser, we know that’s chestnut oak-ay.