Akuma no niwa (1967)

- The Revenge of Dr. X
A real mess of a movie, 14 October 2017

What a disaster of a movie! It's billed as Ed Wood's lost "classic", but I'm not sure Wood is to blame for the mess that is this movie. Most of his films are light-years better than this. In The Revenge of Dr X, Dr Bragan (James Craig) leaves the stress of his high-powered job at NASA and seeks the solitude provided by a remote Japanese retreat. There, he begins experimenting with plants by splicing together different Venus Flytrap type plants to create his own super, meat- eating monster.

First, what's with all the title confusion? This thing seems to have been billed under several wildly different names – The Revenge of Dr X, Venus Flytrap, Body of the Prey, and more. It's even listed on IMDb under two different names with two different release years – Venus Flytrap (1970) and Akuma no niwa (1967). Finally, the copy I saw listed Eddie Romero as director. Romero might have been responsible for a lot of junky movies, but as far as I can tell, he had nothing to do with this mess.

There are so many issues with The Revenge of Dr X that listing them all would be impossible. I'm not even going to try to enumerate all the technical problems – suffice it to say that it's a technical disaster. Instead, I want to write about a few of the illogical plot points presented in the movie drove me nuts:

1. I understand that the pressure of being a top-dog at NASA might lead you to want to take some time off to relive stress, but why go to the middle of nowhere Japan? Wouldn't a few weeks in Palm Springs or Club Med have recharged Dr Bragan's batteries? And would he really leave the US just after a spacecraft he was responsible for was launched. I would think that even the most stressed person would want to know the outcome of their life's work. Not Dr Bragan. He never so much as mentions NASA again.

2. I'm not sure how Dr Bragan was able to achieve anything at NASA given his wild mood swings. This man takes bi-polar to a whole new level. And why would his Japanese assistant stay with him? He treats her like complete dirt. It makes no sense.

3. I haven't researched Japanese customs regulations from the late 60s, but I have trouble believing the Japanese government would allow Dr Bragan to bring a non-native plant species into the country so easily. Wouldn't it have had to go through quarantine or something similar?

4. Dr Bragan needs "heart blood" to feed his new creature. As movie luck would have it, there is a ready supply at a nearby sanitarium for Dr Bragan to take advantage of. That sanitarium was never mentioned until Dr Bragan made his late-night visit. How convenient!

5. Did Dr Bragan buy the Venus Flytrap with the wild idea of creating his killer plant creature? It seemed like more of an impulse purchase with little thought behind it. Next thing you know, Dr Bragan and plant are in Japan staying at a large remote, abandoned facility that just happens to have a greenhouse and other equipment that he needs for his experiments. You'd think that his plan of splice plants together to create a new living creature and all that was required would take years of planning to pull off. Here, Dr Bragan just sort of stumbles into being a mad scientist with a fully stocked lab.

That's probably enough. Writing about the many problems of this movie is like taking candy from a baby – it's way too easy. The lone highlights for me are the creature design and the decision to let Atsuko Rome (if I've got the right person) use her own voice instead of dubbing her. But that's the extent of anything positive I have to say.

2/10