Body of the Prey

What a disaster of a movie! It's billed as Ed Wood's lost "classic", but I'm not sure Wood is to blame for the mess that is this movie. Most of his films are light-years better than this. In The Revenge of Dr X, Dr Bragan (James Craig) leaves the stress of his high-powered job at NASA and seeks the solitude provided by a remote Japanese retreat. There, he begins experimenting with plants by splicing together different Venus Flytrap type plants to create his own super, meat- eating monster.

First, what's with all the title confusion? This thing seems to have been billed under several wildly different names - The Revenge of Dr X, Venus Flytrap, Body of the Prey, and more. It's even listed on IMDb under two different names with two different release years - Venus Flytrap (1970) and Akuma no niwa (1967). Finally, the copy I saw listed Eddie Romero as director. Romero might have been responsible for a lot of junky movies, but as far as I can tell, he had nothing to do with this mess.

There are so many issues with The Revenge of Dr X that listing them all would be impossible. I'm not even going to try to enumerate all the technical problems - suffice it to say that it's a technical disaster. Instead, I want to write about a few of the illogical plot points presented in the movie drove me nuts:

1. I understand that the pressure of being a top-dog at NASA might lead you to want to take some time off to relive stress, but why go to the middle of nowhere Japan? Wouldn't a few weeks in Palm Springs or Club Med have recharged Dr Bragan's batteries? And would he really leave the US just after a spacecraft he was responsible for was launched. I would think that even the most stressed person would want to know the outcome of their life's work. Not Dr Bragan. He never so much as mentions NASA again.

2. I'm not sure how Dr Bragan was able to achieve anything at NASA given his wild mood swings. This man takes bi-polar to a whole new level. And why would his Japanese assistant stay with him? He treats her like complete dirt. It makes no sense.

3. I haven't researched Japanese customs regulations from the late 60s, but I have trouble believing the Japanese government would allow Dr Bragan to bring a non-native plant species into the country so easily. Wouldn't it have had to go through quarantine or something similar?

4. Dr Bragan needs "heart blood" to feed his new creature. As movie luck would have it, there is a ready supply at a nearby sanitarium for Dr Bragan to take advantage of. That sanitarium was never mentioned until Dr Bragan made his late-night visit. How convenient!

5. Did Dr Bragan buy the Venus Flytrap with the wild idea of creating his killer plant creature? It seemed like more of an impulse purchase with little thought behind it. Next thing you know, Dr Bragan and plant are in Japan staying at a large remote, abandoned facility that just happens to have a greenhouse and other equipment that he needs for his experiments. You'd think that his plan of splice plants together to create a new living creature and all that was required would take years of planning to pull off. Here, Dr Bragan just sort of stumbles into being a mad scientist with a fully stocked lab.

That's probably enough. Writing about the many problems of this movie is like taking candy from a baby - it's way too easy. The lone highlights for me are the creature design and the decision to let Atsuko Rome (if I've got the right person) use her own voice instead of dubbing her. But that's the extent of anything positive I have to say.

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.

I watched this movie last night in a state of total confusion. The opening credits read "Directed by Eddie Romero" and some other guy and "Starring John Ashley and Angelique Pettyjohn" so like any devoted B movie fan I was expecting lots of fun Blood Island Hijinks. The movie starts and it feels like a Larry Buchanan epic on a (slightly) bigger budget, but minutes drag by with excruciating slowness and there's no sign of the putative stars. Next thing you know we're in Japan and some mad scientist is trying to create humanoid life from a Venus flytrap in a scene that looks like a cross between FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUTATIONS. And all to background music that sounds like it was swiped from a local kiddie show from the 1950s! And weirdest of all, with all these surreal goings on I'M STILL NOT HAVING ANY FUN!!!!! Thank god for the IMDb! All has been explained and my world makes sense (sort of) again. Exit Eddie Romero, enter Ed Wood, and leave all hope of quality behind. I'm hesitant to use a phrase like "worst movie of all time" but I believe I have finally found that elusive worst movie. No entertainment value, not even of the camp or inadvertent variety, just 90+ minutes of stultifying ineptitude. Okay, there's one scene where the scientist is apparently seeking the help of a group of female divers and all the girls standing around listening to his half assed theories are topless, so for a few brief moments there are some pretty cute boobies on display. That's the sole redeeming feature of this film, and believe me it's not enough.

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.

Despite this movie's alleged contributions by the immortal Ed Wood, THE DOUBLE GARDEN is an often soporific and ordinary project, lacking in Wood's monogram naive charms. Still, it's not undeserving of certain bad-movie encomiums...for instance, the pitiful creature costume is an utter riot, an upright-walking, turnip-headed rubber monstrosity with flytrap feet and hands which occasionally mewls like a baby. Similarly amusing is the stereoypically subservient Asian female lead who seems obsessed with serving mad doctor James Craig coffee and cocktails. Craig's role is pretty laugh-inducing, as well...he goes zero-to-sixty bonkers almost instantly, and the film is entirely unable to keep up with his unchained, ham-in-orbit thespian rampage.

While THE DOUBLE GARDEN isn't a total washout, it's mostly slow-going, and there's not really much to it. 4/10