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.
Review of Voodoo Woman
