"The Disembodied" (1957) on Warner Archive Instant

       "The Disembodied" is a dark tale of voodoo, murder, and the sound of native drums in the night. But, mainly, it's a jungle cheesecake fest with the primary goal of showing star Allison Hayes in as many form-fitting and revealing outfits as possible, and at that it succeeds.

     Made the year before Hayes' iconic turn in "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", it's the story of Tonda Metz (Allison Hayes), who lives in a jungle shack with her much older, Germanic husband Dr. Carl (John Wengraf) and their hunky manservant Suba (Dean Fredericks, here billed as "Norman Frederic"). Wengraf's line readings in this are great, sounding like a Teutonic version of Peter Cook in "The Princess Bride": "Dwums! What do they say?... Get wid of dem. Fwighten dem off!" The character of Tonda is established immediately, as the opening credits play over a scene of her trying to kill her husband by suffocating a voodoo doll. She's interrupted by the the intrusion of Suba.

     Tom Maxwell (Paul Burke), his partner Norman (Joel Marston) and their guide Gogi (Paul Thompson) arrive at the camp with their injured buddy Joe (Robert Christopher); "He was attacked by a lion while we were shootin' motion pictures". And they ask the Doctor to patch him up.

     Soon enough, Tonda is on the porch showing off some leg for Tom and giving him all kinds of "do me" looks. Suba spys, and when Tom leaves he confronts Tonda. She makes out with him, then slaps his face and it is here that we begin to realize there's an s & m vibe happening in this flick.

     Tonda visits Joe in his room and begins doing some kind of ritual, then we cut and all of a sudden she's in the jungle doing a full-on voodoo ceremony. Hayes is the embodiment of lurid, pulp cover hotness. In the sexpot sweepstakes I'll take her over Jane Russell any day. Suba is tied up, and Tonda throws a chicken on him, then stabs a voodoo doll. And with that, Suba, beefiest and most obviously Caucasian of jungle butlers is dead...or is he??

      The next day we find that Joe is all better. It would seem that Tonda's ceremony healed him. If black magic can cure people why aren't there voodoo hospitals? Why doesn't the Voodoo M.D. genre exist? "Nurse, I need two chickens and a sacrifice victim, stat!"

     Suba's wife Mara (Eugenia Paul) confronts Dr. Carl and accuses him of killing Suba. The doctor slaps her. Man, this couple loves to slap natives. What a couple of jerks.

     After discovering that Suba's heart has been cut out and that the same goes for the chicken at the voodoo ceremony site, Norman and Gogi head out with the intention of getting their jeep so they can leave. While they do this, Tom makes some more time with Tonda and later has a discussion with the doctor, who it is revealed is actually a Doctor of Psychology. The two talk voodoo and we get this gem of a line: "Pythagoreans? Weren't they the ones that believed in metempsychosis?" Which, I guess, is the transfer of consciousness from one body to another.

     Remember those question marks after Suba's death? Well, guess what? Joe soon tries to kill Paul and we find that Suba ain't dead...he's been metempsychosis-ized (eat that, spell check) into Joe's body!

     Tom and Tonda eventually end up making out and then she tries to convince him to kill her husband. He slaps her, and she says, "Beat me, if you want. Go ahead, beat me." This picture is one kinky, voodoo noir, and Hayes is a black magic femme fatale. When taken alongside "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", it seems she carved out a one-woman niche of dominant female roles in genre pictures.

     Tonda ends up stabbing her husband, with the intention of framing Tom. She kills the only other witness, Kabar (Otis Greene), but Tom and Norman use some "Weekend at Bernie" trickery to fool her into thinking he's alive. In an effort to to save her husband before the authorities come, she attempts to sacrifice Tom. In the climax we get another (not unwelcome) black magic ceremony scene, complete with plenty of (not unwelcome) ecstatic writhing about by Hayes.

     There's nothing better than an unapologetic B-movie. This picture is like a Val Lewton production if Val Lewton wasn't a genius and didn't have guys like Wise, Tourneur and Musuraca working for him. It was directed by Walter Grauman, who did the intense 1964 thriller "Lady In a Cage" and the film that inspired the Death Star trench attack scene in "Star Wars", "633 Squadron", along with endless amounts of television. This movie has what so many other B-pictures of the era lack: a sense of pacing. At a swift 66 minutes, this flick moves along, there's no filler and scenes never overstay their welcome. With a handful of set's and a minuscule budget, "The Disembodied" is an enjoyable psychotronic movie that fully embraces its exploitative elements.