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****SPOILERS*** It's the evil but beautiful Tonda Metz, Allison Hayes, who's behind all the death and carnage in the film "The Disembodied" using her Voodood spells to get whatever she wants with the sole exception of white hunter & photographer Tom Maxwell, Paul Burke, who's on to her from the word go. Tom out on a photo shoot in the African jungle had one of those with him Joe Lawson, Robert Christopher, attacked and badly mauled by a lion who's needs medical help immediately or else he'll bleed to death. Finding a doctor in the house or jungle in Dr. Karl Metz, John E. Wengraf, Tom has him put under his care who doesn't think that Joe will survive the night. That's until Metz's wife Tonda starts to do her Voodoo on him that has Joe miraculously recover from his near fatal wounds by sunrise.

Tonda who's been trying to unsuccessfully off her husband for some time sees in the handsome Tom Maxwell her ticket out of the jungle hell that she finds herself in. But as Tom soon finds out she's bad news and the kind of woman, as beautiful as she is, to keep as far away from as possible. With Tonda trying to win over Tom she uses her Voodoo to have his native guide Gogi, Paul Tompson, to be murdered by a self, no one seemed to have thrown it, inflicted flying spear as well as causing Tom's jeep to run out of gas. The biggest mistake that Tonda did was murder her helpless lover Suba, Norman Fredric, during a Voodoo ritual that his shocked wife native girl Lara, Eugenia Paul, witnessed! This in the end proved to be Tonda's undoing in finally putting her out of the Voodoo business.

****SPOILERS**** It's when Dr. Metz finally discovers what his wife is up to that would almost turns out to be fatal to him. With Dr. Metz stabbed by Tonda and left for dead Tonda starts trying to frame Tom and his partners both Joe and Norman Adams, Joel Martson, for her husband's , who's in fact still alive & breathing, murder. The only thing that Tonda forgot was that the native servant Kabar, Otis Greene, witnessed the entire event and his testimony can clear them and indite her if her husband dies. It's the vindictive Lara who finally puts and end to Tonda's black magic just when she's about to use it on her rejected, by him,lover Tom. That's by breaking her spell over those in the movie the old fashion way: With a knife in her gut!

P.S Check out Voodoo drum leader A.E Ukono doing his thing that's by far, in it being not more then a minute in duration, the biggest and most entertaining scene in the entire movie.

At least Maria Montez as "Cobra Woman" had Technicolor to spin around pointing at victims to become the sacrifice for King Cobra. This cheaply made drive-in theater is in black and white with a phony jungle setting, which leaves Alison Hayes looking quite evil and ridiculous in her store bought fashions made out of jungle resources. She looks a good five years older than her 27 years of the time, explaining Paul Burke, as a movie director, and John Wengraf fall into her trap, showing that in jungle movies like this that the male is not always the smartest of the species, even if they are the ones leading an expedition or doing research or or making decisions about the safety for their group of explorers.

So you get to see Burke and Wengraf a lot without their shirts on and the very leggy Hayes sneering quite a bit and exotuvally dressed natives banging on their bongos. Every stereotype that you can imagine appears in this movie that clocks in at only 65 minutes. Of course Hayes is forced to show some vulnerability which never completely, giving her another chance to be named worst actress of the year. Horrible sets, photography, editing and music turns out to make this as tedious as it is badly written and acted, and even at a short running time, it's interminable.

8:57 AM (0 minutes ago)

Sometimes, all it takes is one decent, interesting and/or sexy performance to salvage an otherwise lackluster film from complete uselessness. To demonstrate the veracity of this statement, I give you "The Disembodied," a rather silly and borderline confusing voodoo film that is of interest today solely for the performance of its leading lady, Allison Hayes. When "The Disembodied" was first released in August 1957, it was part of a double bill, playing alongside the now legendary "From Hell It Came," now regarded as one of the worst films of all time, its walking tree monster Tabanga a source of jokes and derision for over 60 years now. In retrospect, though, "From Hell It Came" is a fun albeit campy experience, and one that this viewer enjoyed a lot more than he thought he would. It is surely the superior film as compared to "The Disembodied," a film with no monsters, no real scares or suspense, and more plot holes than the proverbial screen door. But that Allison...oh my goodness! Is she ever something here!

At this point in her life, Hayes' career was just starting to take off, and 1957 would prove to be a banner year for the then-27-year-old, West Virginia-born actress. That year, she would also star in such "psychotronic" favorites as "The Unearthly," "The Undead" and "Zombies of Mora Tau"; it wasn't until the following year, though, that Allison attained true cult status, via her title role in the renowned camp classic "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman." Sadly, her cinematic career never really took off, and as her work in "The Disembodied" demonstrates, that is to be regretted, as she really could be quite sexy and effective when given half a chance.

In the film in question, Allison plays a character with the unusual name of Tonda, whose feelings and intentions are plainly spelled out even before the opening credits have stopped rolling. During those credits, we see the sultry brunette strangling a voodoo doll with a string, while her scientist husband, Dr. Metz (John Wengraf), chokes and asphyxiates downstairs. Tired of living alone with the older man in the middle of the steamy jungle, Tonda is doing everything in her power(s) to get out, and her outlook on life becomes suddenly brighter with the advent of three white men, who appear in their jeep one day from out of nowhere. One of them, Joe Lawson (Robert Christopher), has just been mauled to the point of death by a lion (and the fact that he WAS injured by a lion is the only way the viewer has of knowing that we are in the African jungle; no precise locale is ever mentioned, but lions are to be found nowhere else, I believe, right?), and Dr. Metz tells the other two that he will do what he can, although things look rather bleak. Tonda quickly takes a hot-blooded fancy for one of the other two men, Tom Maxwell (surprisingly well played by Paul Burke), who, along with his other filmmaker buddy, Norm Adams (Joel Marston), can only sit around and hope for the best. Later that night, the two men are surprised to come upon a native voodoo ceremony deep in the jungle, at which Tonda herself is seen dancing frenziedly in sarong and halter, later using a dead chicken as part of her eldritch rite. The following day, Joe is miraculously better, and although scarred, seems to have been brought back from the brink of death. But what the men don't know is that one of Dr. Metz' servants had been killed during that jungle rite, and his soul, via the process of metempsychosis, kerplopped into Joe's body, which body is now Tonda's slave! Maxwell is effectively seduced by Tonda's steamy advances (what red-blooded male wouldn't be?), but then rejects her when she tries to get him to murder her husband. Thus, our sexy voodoo queen decides to use other methods to get her way, leading to knifings, long-distance voodoo murders, and other jungle shenanigans....

"The Disembodied" has been directed by Walter Grauman in a relatively styleless manner--he would go on to a career largely in television, his only other major film credit being for the terrific Olivia de Havilland thriller "Lady in a Cage" in 1964--but its major problem is its grossly incompetent script, by one Jack Townley. It is a decidedly lazy piece of writing that is--unlike Ms. Hayes--very inadequately fleshed out. Thus, we never learn about Tonda's background, or her unusual name, or even how she became the local voodoo queen of the nearby natives. And while I'm carping, how it it that Tonda, as adept as she is at the voodoo arts, has not murdered her husband the doctor LONG before the action begins in this film? Simplistic as "The Disembodied" is, it is yet confusing at times as regards those mind/body switches (no wonder my beloved "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" calls it "fun jungle nonsense" and a "confusing voodoo feature"), and although it is well acted by its uniformly fine and straight-faced cast, it yet manages to achieve some one-liners of hilarious groanability (my favorite: when Maxwell, listening to the native drums in the distance, says "Seems to be coming from the jungle"!). To its credit, Townley's script DOES make it unclear whether or not Tonda or the doctor is responsible for many of the voodoo happenings early on in the film, but that uncertainty on the viewer's part is sadly short lived. The use of black AND white actors to portray the jungle natives only adds to the risibility factor, while the noninclusion of any stock footage or actual outdoor photography (the entire film was shot on studio sets) only adds to the hermetic and cheapjack feel of the production. Thus, as I say, thank goodness for Allison Hayes, whose every body movement and line reading is either a challenge or a sensual come-on, and who slinks and glides her way through this film in her skintight and formfitting skirts, bodices and capris as if she were in a NYC nightclub, rather than in the heart of the Dark Continent. (SHE, happily, is hardly DISembodied, if you get my drift!) Without her vital presence, "The Disembodied" would surely be a waste of anyone's time, but as it is, the picture is a fun and entertaining 65 minutes that few will regret sitting through. See it with your 12-year-old nephew, who just might enjoy it immensely...AND get his puberty jump-started by watching Ms. Hayes go through her motions!