#Susan Chapple

[videomessiah]

Quarantine (1989)

[wdcgardener]

In the latest #GardenDC podcast episode, we talk with Holly Chapple about floral design. The plant profile is Black-eyed Susans and I share my thoughts on Gardening by Rules. Listen at washingtongardener.com or wherever you get your podcasts #slowflowers #americangrown #BuyLocal #americangrownflowers #cutflowerfarmer (at Washington D.C.) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCoYLw3A9ex/?igshid=1liv681u1ud8j

[mst3kproject]

Voodoo Woman

This movie was directed by Edward L. Cahn, who brought us The She Creature.  Its stars include Marla English, who was Andrea in The She Creature; Tom Conway, who was Mr. Chapple in The She Creature; and Lance Fuller, who was Dr. Ted Ericson in... you guessed it, The She Creature.  The monster suit is the She Creature with a different mask, although this time they have the good sense not to ever linger on a shot of it.  And the plot, about a weirdo turning women into monsters for no reason that is ever explained, is also from The She Creature.  It's like everybody involved in the earlier movie said, “well, that sucked – can we have a do-over?” and then they made Voodoo Woman.

Is it any better?  Uh... I honestly don't know how to answer that. It is definitely five thousand percent more racist.

The mad Dr. Gerhart has teamed up with voodoo priest Chaka to turn a young woman named Zuranda into a telepathically-controlled murderous monster.  The transformation works, but as soon as Gerhart orders the monster to kill, the spell breaks and she changes back.  Chaka declares that the problem is Zuranda herself just doesn't have a murderous disposition – Gerhart will have to find a subject with a little more innate bloodlust.  His wife Susan is much too meek for his purposes, but it just so happens that there's a party of thieves in this neck of the jungle, and their leader Marilyn is particularly merciless.  Perfect!

One thing that does make Voodoo Woman suck less than its sister movie is that this time, the cast actually looks interested. Lance Fuller and Marla English mumbled their way through The She Creature without emotion, looking and sounding as if they neither knew nor cared what was going on.  They're not entirely to blame for this, since the script gave them nothing much to work with: their characters were dull and passive and the story made no sense.  In Voodoo Woman they're playing villains, and seem to be having fun with these more proactive characters.

The non-She-Creature actors aren't bad, either.  I'm absolutely astonished how well Otis Greene does with his cringeworthy lines as Bobo (yes, Bobo) the manservant.  Martin Wilkins is unenthusiastic but serviceable as Chaka the voodoo priest... the 'unenthusiastic' part is probably because he spent most of his career playing voodoo priests and characters with names like 'Zimba' (in Panther Girl of the Congo) and 'Gamboso' (in Bomba and the Jungle Girl - is there a pattern here?).  I can't really say anything about Jean Davis as Zuranda because she has basically nothing to do, but Mary Ellen Kaye as Susan Gerhardt is pretty decent.  In fact, she has a certain amount of chemistry with both Conway and Greene, although none at all with her Designated Love Interest, Ted.  Ted himself is played rather blandly by an actor we’ve seen before in Swamp Diamonds.  He calls himself 'Touch Connors', which is the gay-porn-iest screen name I have ever seen outside of actual gay porn.

All the actors get a little help from the fact that the plot is not quite so baffling as it was in the She Creature.  Dr. Gerhardt's desire to create a murderous female monster doesn't make any more sense than Dr. Carlo Lombardi's, but for some reason the how part works better.  Lombardi's weird hypnosis thing is highly contrived in order to shove the 'reincarnation' thing in with it, and mostly just makes everybody's eyes cross as we try to figure it out. Voodoo Woman basically tells us, “a wizard and a mad scientist did it!”, and the audience just accepts that.

Of course, my willingness to accept it probably has a lot to do with my ignorance of actual voodoo and the fact that media like this has taught me to think of it as sorcery.  I have grave doubts whether this movie has any more to do with voodoo than The She Creature did with hypnosis.  Even much more recent film-makers (hello, Disney) seem to consider the word 'voodoo' a license to make shit up – as long as you have a few skulls lying around and stick some pins in a doll, it counts as voodoo.  Movies frequently take a similar 'it's all in the accessories' approach to Native American spirituality or Asian medicine, with the assumption that the (white) audience will believe those funny foreign people are capable of anything.

So let's talk about race in this movie.  Oh, boy.

The She Creature's ethnic stereotypes were limited to making fun of Swedish people.  In Voodoo Woman we get an entire African Village Set full of caricatures too broad even for The Leech Woman (although they have the sense not to emphasize the fakeness with stock footage of Actual Africa).  It's not that the movie is unsympathetic towards these characters.  Even when they're doing pretty sketchy stuff, they're still presented as victims of the violence Dr. Gerhardt has introduced into their world.  It's that even when kindly disposed towards them, the film can only see the as types, not as human beings.

Zuranda (played by a white actress in a lot of body paint) is nothing but the Helpless Native Maiden.  She never speaks, although she screams a lot, and she meets an ignominious end when one of Marilyn's followers rapes and strangles her.  Bobo the servant (Bobo. For fuck's sake) is a Man Friday, obedient and sexless and probably supposed to be much younger than Greene, who was thirty-three when he played the role.  Chaka the Witch Doctor comes closest to having a character arc – he seems occasionally conflicted about what he and Gerhardt are doing and what the gods (not to mention the villagers) are going to think about it, but persists because of his own greed.

I want to doubt that this movie actually set out to say anything about racial friction in colonial Africa, but the conflicts it shows us do follow a clear pattern.  The white characters live in constant fear of black violence.  Dr. Gerhardt is aware that his relationship with Chaka is the only thing keeping the villagers from killing him or driving him away.  Susan is terrified of her husband but does not try to run away because she is even more frightened of Gando, the tribesman he has hired to guard the house.  Marilyn's hired guide, Ted, repeatedly warns against going into certain areas or interrupting ceremonies, because the punishment is death.

Despite all this, though, it is always, always the white characters who strike first.  Ted has to stop the others from attacking the man who's been following them through the jungle, because to do so would be to provoke retaliation.  Left alone, all the man does is watch, but their fear of him leads to them thinking they must strike first.  When the treasure hunters are eventually attacked and captured, it is because the villagers want justice for the murder of Zuranda, which was even less 'provoked' than an attack on the following man would have been.

Dr. Gerhardt seems to have far more reason to be afraid of the villagers, but again, it's his own fault.  He knows very well that he has profaned their sacred spaces and destroyed homes and families with his monsters.  He accuses the natives of human sacrifice, but the way he talks about the ritual makes it clear that the sacrifice is itself a form of justice as well as a religious rite – the usual victim is 'some tribesman who has fallen out of favour'.  It is no surprise, and does indeed feel like justice, when the community chooses Dr. Gerhardt himself as this year's sacrifice.

Even when there is black-on-black violence in this film, it is always prompted by the white characters.  The monsterized Zuranda attacks a home, but does so under Dr. Gerhardt's control.  Bobo (his fucking name is Bobo.  I cannot get over that) offers to deliver a letter for Susan and is murdered by Gando, but is this again at Dr. Gerhardt's orders.  The presence of this domineering white man drives people to violent acts they would not have committed on their own.  He is defeated only when he encounters somebody more violent than himself, in the form of Marilyn.

Again, I don't think this was intentional.  I really doubt the film-makers sat down and thought about using this story to present the idea that the fear of inter-racial violence is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The weirdest part is that the commentary on race relations isn't even the only subtext you can tease out of Voodoo Woman. There's points at which the movie also seems to be talking about abusive relationships!  Dr. Gerhart treats his wife the same way he treats his monsters.  He tells Marilyn, as she is about to become the creature, “as long as you live, I will be your master.  You have no life other than that I give you.”  This is very much analagous to how he treats Susan, keeping her locked up and threatening to have her killed if she disobeys him.  Viewed in this light, it seems very significant indeed that the monsters are female, and that Gerhardt uses them to indulge his own desire to kill – it's an even more thoroughly twisted version of look what you made me do.

Come to think of it... although both Zuranda and Marilyn have dark hair, the monsters are blonde.  In light of the undercurrent of racial tension, this, too, is interesting.

Another set of ideas about sexual violence seem to be manifest in Marilyn.  As in The She-Creature, we have a sexually aggressive woman as a villain (Edmund L. Cahn had either an issue or a kink – I can't decide which), but the interesting part is that Marilyn's way of expressing this is stereotypically male.  She gets obvious sexual pleasure from watching men fight, like a man might from seeing women wrestle.  She persists in trying to seduce Ted after he's made it clear he's not interested, and seems to consider her multiple lovers a source of power rather than a source of shame.  These things make her threatening to the male viewer in a similar way to how a strange man in a dark parking garage might seem threatening to a woman.  I could write a damn thesis on that alone.

In the end, I don't know what to do with Voodoo Woman.  It's either a tacky racist movie, or a tacky racist movie that tackles some very weighty social issues.  Fortunately for us fans of MST3K fodder, it's also an amusing tacky racist movie.  The embarrassed extras, unconvincing 'jungle' sets, stupid monsters, and a gratuitous musical number (oh yes) make it fun to riff with friends.

And then there's Bobo.  They named a character Bobo and we're supposed to take that seriously.  Good god.