Good concept, poorly executed.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Dismal cheapie from AIP that stars a rough-looking Tom Conway as a mad scientist in the jungle using voodoo to turn women into monsters. It's a mostly dull affair with a few campy moments that are worth some laughs. But these are sadly few and far between. Most of the time it's just boring. Conway has seen better days. He looks sickly here. But he still (over)acts his pants off, which is appreciated. Marla English makes for a fun bitch; she's easily the highlight of the movie. Mike Connors is the "hero" who exists just to give the mad scientist's put-upon wife (Mary Ellen Kay) a stud to walk into the sunset with. The monster suit for the 'voodoo woman' is the same as the suit from The She-Creature with some minor changes. She-Creature is a much more fun movie, though. Also the drum beat played throughout sounds a bit like the opening to Sympathy for the Devil.

Not going to mince words: Eddie Cahn's "Voodoo Woman" is terrible. Tom Conway deserved better than this, but when the roles aren't there and you need work then these kinds of films are what you're stuck with. He's a mad doc in voodoo tribe trying to use their magic with his science in the hopes of creating a monster to be shown to those colleagues who might have found his theories balderdash. Mary Ellen Kay is the pretty, blond wife trapped in a home, with posted tribal guard wielding a mean spear. Marla English is greedy and bad, hoping to gain gold possibly found at the tribe of Martin Wilkins' priest, Chaka. Her fiancé, Norman Willis, is equally repellent. Following Marla, the two commission Mike Connors as knowledgeable guide to lead them to the tribe, but the triangle deteriorates as they get closer to their destination. Conway must manipulate the tribe and keep his standing among them respected so they won't turn on him. Dealing with the tribe gradually becomes more and more difficult. Conway's mad dream might see reality when he meets Marla. Willis strangles a tribal girl he seemingly was trying to sexually assault which gets him in deep trouble. Meanwhile Connors meets Kay, the two planning escape. Marla is to be turned into the monster (documented to be a costume held over from She Creature) by Conway but, of course, that goes awry. Conway didn't age well due to his alcoholism, and this film is so far distant from the classy pictures he made for Val Lewton a decade earlier. His suave and smooth vocally rich tenor remains his best asset, but the role he's stuck with, a rotten soul bound and determined to make himself a monster, is no great shakes. Marla kisses and peddles her sexual wares to secure a profit, broke and without any future prospects, owing even a bar tab, needing either Willis or Connors to get her near something valuable... she'll never be confused with a bona fide thespian. Neither will Kay who crashes to her bed and cries into the pillow, overwrought as Conway insists, with the occasional insult or slap to the kisser, she never leave...Conway does like to scare her with what he's doing with the tribe beauty in his basement. Connors is often held at gunpoint or spear, just wanting to leave, eventually joining forces with Kay. The voodoo tribe and their use in horror in the 40s and 50s wouldn't fly today. Predating the cannibal jungle horror of Italian vintage twenty years, films like Voodoo Woman could be seen as a precursor...the ways of a tribe in the jungle were viewed here as primitive, often easy to deceive and frighten by Conway's cunning scientist, capitalizing on their beliefs and worship practices to benefit his own diabolical agenda. Conway, though, puts himself in danger by having his monster attack the tribe, and places his own body in harm's way. Marla's fate at a pit because she didn't kneel to pick up a gold artifact is laughable. The plot regarding how the monster is manufactured is preposterous.

Random thoughts that popped into my head while watching "Voodoo Woman":1) Poor Tom Conway. Either he thought this role was beneath him (but took it anyway to keep the wolf from the door) or he was completely out of his depth, because he gives a completely squirrelly and disconnected performance where he is obviously reading from cue cards most of the time. Plus...that HAT!!! 2) Poor Lance Fuller. The guy had a certain way about him, but alas his talent is strictly 3rd tier, and it doesn't help that the character he plays is a greasy slimeball.3) Poor Mike Connors. He pretty much carries the movie, but he should have carried it straight out the door and into the dumpster.4) The lead female - someone should have gently taken her aside and told her the difference between "tough noir temptress" and "irritating, hateful harpy". She actually looked pretty good in the role, but every time she opened her mouth, I wanted to punch her.6) The final scene where the murderous harpy tries to retrieve the final remaining chunk of gold from the edge of the volcanic pit where it came to rest, only to lose her balance and fall in...is the single most badly staged and unbelievable choreography of a "fall" I can remember seeing. Apparently it never occurred to the poor lady to bend her knees.7) This wasn't nearly as bad as earlier AIP fodder like "Beast With A Million Eyes", and I am sure someone had fun watching it as the bottom half of a Drive in double feature...but 40+ years down the road, it has not aged well. Good AIP/Corman stuff almost always had the germ of something interesting and creative driving them...but this poor cast- off just comes off trite, rote, and derivative.8) At the end of the day, people who were trying to make a living in the movie business got paid. At least there's that.

Let's face it, this is a pretty bad film.However if you go in ready to make fun of it you can survive the experience.Okay, you'll scream in agony a lot.African jungle fun in a dopey kind of way.Tom Conway (who spends most of the film wearing a funky chapeau) is using the local witch doctor and mad science to create a "perfect" being.It looks like a varmint that has been on a six week drunk and is in a sack dress.Ugly is being kind.But it won't kill for him because he's using a good girl as his subject.He needs a bad bad girl.Marla English and Lance Fuller are two petty crooks in search of African gold.Acting lessons for Ms English should have been at the top of the search list.She's a bad girl and lets everybody know it in a performance worthy of a junior high school play.Mike "Touch" Connors is the white guide English & Fuller con into leading the expedition.English & Conway finally meet and it is a match made in hell.She is the perfect subject to become his voodoo creature because she'll do anything (stress anything) to get what she wants.You will do anything to stop the agony of this movie at this point.What made this movie interesting for me was Conway wearing that funky tribal hat/headdress/floral piece!Still trying to figure out what kind of dead animal it was.Guess he thought if he pulled it down low enough over his eyes nobody would recognize him.Truly bad cinema.