The Woman Eater

A mad scientist feeds women to an unconvincing plant-creature in this boring horror film.

A man wearing a loincloth plays bongos in a dungeon laboratory because why not, and a woman sways as though hypnotized while standing before a shaggy, leafy surfboard with rubber gloves for hands. The bongo guy shoves her into the clutches of the plant-like surfboard creature, which seems fine.

Suddenly, there's stock footage of the Amazon and the various flora and fauna that dwells there, then explorers chop through foliage that's definitely not in the Amazon but probably a soundstage in England. Then with very little warning, there's more bongos. The explorers stumble upon a strange jungle ritual, and by "strange" I really mean "boring and exploitative", and then there's even more bongos.

The bongo guy trades in his loincloth for a lab coat, and he helps inject a partially submerged and striated heart with a syringe, but the heart looks a little like the meat on a slowly turning spit you might find at a shawarma restaurant, and the scientist is unimpressed with the way it's pulsating. I don't know a lot about injecting pulsating hearts with plant fluid, but I do enjoy a good shawarma sandwich, and I really don't find it very appetizing when my sandwich is pulsating.

My life has been in complete turmoil since my favorite shawarma restaurant closed down a couple of years ago, and probably also since becoming vegetarian. I can't be certain that one didn't cause the other, but that's not important right now. The restaurant was dusty, and it was attached to a market filled with many expired food items. In fact, you had to blow a layer of dust off the canned goods just to find the expiration date. I'm not certain when the grill was cleaned last. The atmosphere was filled with the aroma of an unknown vegetable that has fallen behind something and liquefied, and no one has been able to find it. However, the most disturbing aspect of all was the enormous photograph of the owner, blown up to 6-foot by 6-foot in size, which hung directly over the owner's desk, which sat inexplicably near where you ordered your sandwiches. It was a little startling to see this huge, unnerving photo of a guy, who you would guess to be some mustached poet from the 1970s, but he's sitting directly underneath it, blinking at you while you're trying to order lunch, sometimes entering numbers on an adding machine. But in spite of all this, the sandwich they made was sublime, with the canned pickles, and the creamy garlic sauce, and the spicy hot sauce. In fact, I'm filled with rage that it doesn't exist anymore, and since it was made from chicken, I can't eat it either.

Anyway, back to the movie. Suddenly there's a funfair with carnival rides, a slightly important to the plot shooting gallery game, and a very important to the plot dancing girl. Blogger's autocorrect attempted to change "funfair" to "unfair", and I agree that it's very unfair I can't go the the funfair or get that shawarma sandwich since I'm now obsessed with the memory of it, but to be fair, I'm often obsessed by the thought of funfairs or sandwiches of some type or another.

Anyway, the story develops for a while, with a mechanic love interest, and a jealous housekeeper, and terrible draperies, and it's not very interesting. Very few women get eaten, but several get hugged.

The Woman Eater bores whenever The Woman Eater isn't onscreen, which is 90% of the movie. They probably should have called the film, "A Guy Dressed As A Fuzzy Surfboard Hugs Women To Bongo Accompaniment, But For Only About 10 Minutes Or So, Which Is Kind Of A Rip-Off Considering The Run-Time", but while technically correct, that title is probably too long for a marquee.