1957's "Womaneater" (one word) was such an underwhelming British effort that it took a couple of years to cross the Atlantic, a rare starring role for George Coulouris, whose career had kicked off with the sublime "Citizen Kane," only to sink to the Grade-Z level of "The Man Without a Body" (from the same director, Charles Saunders), Richard Gordon's "Tower of Evil," even Italian rip offs such as 1974's "The Antichrist." His mad scientist is given the generic name of Doctor Moran, believing that life can be restored to the dead through a serum requiring fluid from a plant god worshiped by a tribe of Incas in the Amazon, Tanga (Jimmy Vaughan) returning with Moran to England as its caretaker. It's an odd and rather disgusting idea to feature a carnivorous tree that demands the soft flesh of pretty young maidens, and didn't work much better for Cameron Mitchell's "Maneater of Hydra" a decade later, nor one that devoured nude couples in 1972's "Please Don't Eat My Mother." On the rare occasions when we see it in action its tendrils reach out for each victim, a visual predecessor for those familiar with Roger Corman's 1981 "Galaxy of Terror," its slimy maggot creature raping its buxom female target (Taaffe O'Connell). Apart from that disquieting effect it's a substandard love story between a garage mechanic and an out of work carnival girl (Vera Day), she applying as housekeeper for Doctor Moran, to the envy of his former lover and head housekeeper Margaret Santor (Joyce Gregg). This jealousy angle was rehashed with Michael Gough as an oversexed mad scientist in 1961's "Konga," not very interesting on that occasion either, and the local police prove to be absolutely clueless when it comes to searching for missing girls. The evil foreign influence represented by Tanga became a staple in British titles like "The Plague of the Zombies," "The Reptile," and Peter Cushing's "The Ghoul." There's little for any actor to sink his teeth into, Coulouris coming off as restrained in comparison to the lip smacking Gough, and by the time Columbia picked it up it slipped out on the bottom half with Toho's lively, colorful and gruesome "The H-Man."
