So, what are you planting for spring? If you're a filmmaker and you want to scare the green thumbs off audiences, why not plant a killer shrub or two? That way, you can add your deadly flora to...
They say April showers bring May flowers, but what lies beyond the normal growing season? You'd be surprised at what might take root if you're not careful. Since before "Jack and the Beanstalk" imaginations have run wild in fact and fiction with expansion on the traditional cultivating of plants as sources of food, beauty and for their legendary "curative" powers. In that latter category for example is the Mariphasa lupino lumino, the phosphorescent flower that takes its light from the moon and is the only known antidote for lycanthrophobia in Universal's Werewolf Of London (1935).
Then we have tana leaves, once plentiful in ancient Egypt and apparently stored away in sufficient quantity before becoming extinct. Brewing these leaves during the cycle of the full moon and feeding the fluid to the mummy Kharis restored life to this marauding monster starting with The Mummy's Hand in 1940 and on through its three sequels. And in producer Herman Cohen's Konga (1961) a balmy botanist (Michael Gough) uses the extracts of some carnivorous plants to grow a chimpanzee into the title monster. Of course not all plants are remedies or pick-me-ups. In The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946) the villainess (Gale Sondergaard) feeds arachnids and the blood of humans to her prize Drochenema plant.
In turn, this pernicious pretty's blooms are made into an untraceable poison to kill neighboring cattle and drive the farmers off the land so she can buy them back cheap. You have to wonder what her crops might have been like had her plan succeeded. In nature's scheme of things, there are in fact certain plants that are carnivorous, the Venus flytrap for one. But in the fabulous Fifties, our floral friends weren't content with bugs or mice or even sizable quantities of blood. In The Woman Eater (1957), the great Ju-Ju plant, a multi-armed, multi-mouthed terror resembling an oversized Muppet, is brought back from the Amazon jungle by a mad scientist (George Coulouris).
From it he hopes to extract a sap that will restore life to the dead. There's one catch, though. The plant thrives on beautiful young women (scantily clad, of course), who are hypnotized then tossed into the plant (which they become a part of) by the doc's jungle native assistant who seems to enjoy his work. Curiously, the doctor himself seems rather turned on when these gals meet their end, and unfortunately he decides too late in the game to turn over a new leaf. Possibly the most famous people-eating plant even had a name…Audrey Junior from Roger Corman's low budget killer comedy The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960). Here, the plant even talks, and in the off-Broadway version that followed (itself turned into a movie musical), would even sing! Alas, its dietary demands would remain the same. "Feed me!"
A supernatural tree man stalked the isolated island inhabitants of the laughably wooden From Hell It Came (1957). Tabonga's exploits are covered in detail in the archives of Horror-wood. More garden variety nasties sprout up briefly in The Land Unknown, Voodoo Island (both 1957), The Angry Red Planet (1959), The Lost World (1960), and as intelligent, strangling vines in one of the short stories in Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors (1965).
Living seaweed is just one of the perils in Hammer Films' The Lost Continent (1968), while a bloodsucking tree made visitors feel unwelcome on the Island Of The Doomed (1967), also known as Man-Eater Of Hydra. That film's star, Cameron Mitchell, co-starred with Elsa Bride Of Frankenstein Lanchester in a Seventies Night Gallery episode about the power of plants entitled "Green Fingers." All these were a tiptoe through the tulips, however, compared to what came from outer space, starting with The Thing back in 1950, a creature from a world where vegetable life underwent an evolution similar to that of animal life here. Instead of sunlight and water, guess what keeps the Thing going? What else…blood! What's more, when he loses a hand, another grows back. And leave it to one of those nutty scientists (Robert Cornthwaite) to cultivate a whole batch of little things in the greenhouse until the military's Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) puts the kibosh on them and their big brother (future Gunsmoke star James Arness). The Thing was merely the first wave. In 1956 the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers took root to grow into human-sized seedpods. Inside the pods are cold, emotionless duplicates of the human residents of a small California town. The humans would simply be replaced and more pods exported to other towns to create a whole new society. A chilling allegory of Cold War paranoia in full swing at the time, this remains one scary movie, effectively remade in 1978 and again in 1993.
In The Day Of The Triffids (1963, based on John Wyndham's novel) a colorful meteor shower blinds most of Earth's population. As if that wasn't enough, we're infested with plants that can uproot themselves, inflict a poison sting, and consume their victims. Sound attracts them, so be very very quiet. Oh, and keep lots of seawater on hand. Another carnivorous (actually omnivorous, all-devouring) plant is on hand in the seedy saga of The Navy Vs. The Night Monsters (1966). Scientists salvage some old plants from Antarctica. Chaos aboard the transport plane complete with vines in the propellers leads to a rough landing on a Navy base.
The only survivors on board are one man in shock and five trees that come to life in the dark and wreak havoc. Blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren, who sports some very fetching nurse outfits (reportedly of her own design) helps hold the fort 'til the men finally take out the trees with good old napalm (also effective against giant tarantulas). They say "you are what you eat," and this certainly holds true in a creepy 1963 Japanese number called Matango (also known as Attack Of The Mushroom People). Shipwreck survivors on a seemingly deserted island find themselves beset by previous survivors, now more fungus than human. The new group of folks finds out why upon eating some of the island's more taste-tempting mushrooms, much to the delight of the larger fungi, whose strange, high-pitched laughter echoes throughout the forbidding forest.
Radiation is definitely not the way to go toward getting your garden to grow. In Die, Monster, Die (1965, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space") the root of the problem is a glowing meteorite responsible for some overgrown (and ultimately dead) vegetation and some mutated animal (and human) life that likewise bites the dust. Another version of the tale, 1987's The Curse graphically depicts the effects on folks who eat the irradiated veggies. As far back as 1933's Island Of Lost Souls, Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) grew some king-sized plants and vegetables before moving on to animal experiments. In The Mutations (1973) a university professor played by Donald Pleasence crossbred some of his students with plants, and the results, notably the human Venus flytrap, were not too pleasant.
Also more plant than human is director Wes Craven's Swamp Thing (1981). Based on the D-C Comics and set in an unnamed swamp (naturally), where well meaning Dr. Holland (Ray Wise) is toughening up plants to survive under hostile conditions to feed an overpopulating world. Arch villain Arcane (Louis Jourdan) has other plans, and during a raid on Holland's compound, the good doctor gets a splash of his own formula, bursts into flame and dives into the swamp. What emerges later is a big green good guy (Dick Durock) with strange healing powers who rescues his beautiful human partner (Adreienne Barbeau) from Arcane's clutches and does battle with the villain who has used a variation of the formula to turn himself into an ugly monster. Good wins, though Arcane (Jourdan again) turns up as his handsome self in Return Of Swamp Thing (1989), a less successful, but still entertaining follow up with Dick Durock back in the title role, this time rescuing beautiful Heather Locklear from the bad guys.
More comic book characters come to life in Batman And Robin (1997), where the dynamic duo (George Clooney and Chris O'Donnell) plus Batgirl (Alicia Silverstone) take on the lovely but lethal Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and her garden of evil. Some astonishingly witless dialog makes a sap of almost everyone, though Thurman is an eyeful, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cool, cruel partner in crime as Mister Freeze. As compared to the movie, the D-C comic character of Poison Ivy is much more developed, first from her days as an adventuress whose chemical kiss would put men under her spell, to her later incarnation as an eco-terrorist immune to poisons, thanks to Jason Woodrue, the Plant Master, who himself would become the Floronic Man. Marvel comics answer to these was the villainous Plant Man, who would accelerate plant growth to the detriment of super heroes like the Human Torch, Sub Mariner, the X-Men and others.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, except when that rose is named Biolante. The result of crossing the cells of Godzilla himself with those of a rose bush is in full flower in this '89 sequel to Godzilla 1985. Offering a monster whose head initially looks like, well, a giant rose bloom, only to become a poison pollen-spitting monstrosity to rival the Big G himself, Godzilla Vs. Biolante is a bed of roses to some…and fertilizer to others. Whatever you try your green thumb at this season, keep in mind the care and feeding of these plants can be murder. Learn a lesson from the experts. Remember the seeds you sow can reap a bitter harvest. And if anyone asks, just say you heard it through the grapevine. Many thanks, Joe! When all of us get out and start hacking away on the lawn, maybe we'd better make sure the lawn doesn't hack back... Article copyright © Joe Winters
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