Man-Eater of Kumaon

Man-Eater of Kumaon

Man-Eater of Kumaon

OK, I know how this movie was made. On Day #1 the Producer said "We spent the whole budget on some great tiger footage and rights to a book we're not actually using. Everything has to be on shoestring." To which the Director replied, "we'll use generic Indian Village sets that will leave no doubt we've never left the sound stage. We won't even hire any goats and geese that might make it seem real for an instant." The writer chimed in "I'll use nothing but old cliches about Indian culture and Hemingwayesque white hunters. I won't even give Wendell Cory or Sabu anyone to play against!". And the casting director said we'll hire white folks to read Indian proverbs!". And thus "Maneater of Kumoan". The tiger scenes are great, the rest is boring cliches you've seen and heard before. Believe me the book "Maneaters of Kumoan" is fantastic. Perhaps one scene from the book made it into this awful movie.

Doctor Wendell Corey is a killer of man-eating cats in India. He has had enough of that and is preparing to leave. However, he comes across a child who is the sole survivor of a group of people killed by a man-eating tiger. He takes the child to a village run by Morris Carnovsky and his son Sabu. He assures them he has come far enough the tiger will not follow. But he is wrong. It's based on the title of Jim Corbett's -- not that one -- best-selling book about being a character a bit like Corey. Actually, it's based on the title. It's not the first time that Hollywood took a book and threw away what was on the page, and Universal did have Sabu under contract. What shows up on screen is about fate and the need to accept it stoically but creatively. It's a nice exotic little tale, but Corbett, on seeing it, noted that the best actor in it was the tiger.

Before he made it again in the jungle with THE NAKED JUNGLE, where it was question of ants instead of tigers, the future specialist of science fiction in Hollywood amazed us with this rather unknown underrated adventure movie made for Universal Studios; Byron Haskin made nearly all his career at Paramount. Wendell Corey plays here a hunter chasing a tiger, as Michael Douglas later, in 1997, with THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, or Bob Stack in 1952 with BWANA DEVIL- genuine material for GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. There is something of Moby Dick in this plot, where a tiger, mythic tiger, replaces a whale. Good intelligent script. Good film.

I fail to understand why people like ceswart and moxie-7 who have almost no understanding of the intricacies of tiger conservation make stupid and wrong statements... There several major mistakes in what they both have said. 1. Two-third of the Sundarbans is in Bangladesh while the remaining one- third is in India. 2. Neither Bangladeshi nor Indian rangers are permitted to kill tigers unless in self-defense (at a time when the tiger attacks someone in front of the ranger). 3. The tiger population in the Sundarbans in 270 as of 2013 and was less (around 220) in 2005. 4. The total tiger (Royal Bengal Tiger) population is just 1400 approx. and human population is close to 7 billion so it is necessary to protect tigers and they should be given preference over human beings in case of a conflict situation. 5. Around 150 individuals are killed by tigers in the Sundarban area (most of them are not killed by man-eaters but by tigers that feel threatened because people venture too deep into the tiger habitat and end up going too close to a tiger or its cubs). Getting to the topic of this movie... it is very disappointing to say very the least.

Wendell Corey is a very disaffected doctor traveling through India. On a safari, he shoots at a tiger and blows off part of its paw--but the animal manages to escape. Now, injured, the tiger has a hard time capturing fast prey and resorts to catching a very slow one...people! Now you'd think Corey might feel a tad responsible for this, but he's so busy brooding and feeling sorry for himself (he's lost his wife and given up his practice). Later, however, after he gets to know the people, Corey cannot help but go back to the jungle in search of this man-hunter. And now, it's either him or the tiger... The one thing anyone will notice about the film is that apart from Sabu and one or two others, the rest of the Indian cast is made up of white and Hispanic actors in body paint. This is kind of offensive--perhaps they had trouble finding Indians (from India) in the States at that time, though I assume if they'd tried harder they could have. As the result of this and a script that seemed filled with the inevitable, it's only a minor time-passer. Not bad--just not particularly good. By the way, while you see a toucan in the film, they are only found in the Americas--not in Asia nor anywhere near it.

Wendell Corey stars in Man-Eater of Kumaon about an American doctor in India who is both disillusioned and bored with life. He gives up the medical profession for a Hemingway existential existence as a tiger hunter for hire. One of the tigers however that he only wounded has turned into man- killer as the fleeter prey of the jungle he's used to dieting on can no get away from him. And in the strange ways of the Indian jungle that tiger has a bead on Corey now. But for now the tiger is haunting a village where the head man is Morris Carnovsky with his son Sabu and his daughter-in-law Joy Page. The tiger attacks Page and her son with the boy killed and Page wounded enough so that she will not bear more children. And these people won't even accept a young orphan whose parents were killed by the tiger as a substitute. Their patriarchal culture dictates she just go and Sabu marry another who can give him boy children. All I can say is that's better than a Suttee where if Sabu died, Page has to die with him in the same funeral pyre. In the end Corey's more humane western ideas prevail, but only at a sacrifice. Man-Eater Of Kumaon might have benefited from some location shooting in India, but that country was going through a nasty separation war with Pakistan. The rather cheap substitute location doesn't help. On the other hand the vocal narration which is left off, but sounds like Edgar Barrier really makes the animals and especially our killer tiger like characters in the story. A few more dollars for production values could have raised this one a notch or two higher in the ratings.

Tense direction, good acting by Corey and Sabu. Corbett was an animal rights enthusiast but shot and killed a lot of big cats in his day. Many Indian villagers owed their lives to him. Many people look at sadistic murderers and tigers in the same way, i.e., it's not their fault. This to me is sickening. Lovers of tigers need to know that tigers hunt and kill 300 villagers a year in the Sundabans mangrove swamps on the Bay of Bengal. Shamefully, the Indian government protects these tigers at the expense of its human population. This is not laudable to me. I'm sure PETA animal lovers would not wish to hunt wood in the swamps of the Sundabands, infested as it is with over 500 man-eating tigers. So much for the romance of the big cats.