User reviews

This is a really weird Japanese movie about a scientist forced to take time off because he's so stressed out. Then it gets really weird. It's about what you expect based on the poster and title and is hard to find a DVD of but easy to get online because it has fallen into the public domain.

How can a film so awful be so awful, if you know what I mean? We've got a terrible rubbery monster, a hypertensive mad scientist and his lovely ethnic assistant, and some boobs, but for some reason this film feels as if it's as long as Barry Lyndon and much less eventful.

Overworked, cranky scientist guy gets sent from NASA to Japan for some R and R and ends up instead trying to prove that mankind is descended from plants by getting a Venus flytrap and some underwater plant and sewing them together to make a man-plant that feeds mainly on dogs, it seems.

Now look at that last paragraph - that's gold to a bad movie guy like me! But in reality this film will send you into a coma. An awfully long time is spent by the scientist talking botany with his assistant (and as a guy who has an allotment, keeping a plant in a box away from sunlight don't seem like such a good idea, plus I only use lightening on my carrots and only feed dogs to my onions. Hollywood eh?) If you can stay awake long enough for them to reveal the beeping man-plant (the inclusion of boobs might help), then the last third of the film isn't so bad, but there's no gore whatsoever and you might miss the ending if you blink. Yes, the monster looks ridiculous but I felt cheated by the lack of blood and sauce. I watched this years ago and thought it was crap then. Wish I'd written an IMDb review back then and saved myself the time of watching it again.

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.

I watched this movie last night in a state of total confusion. The opening credits read "Directed by Eddie Romero" and some other guy and "Starring John Ashley and Angelique Pettyjohn" so like any devoted B movie fan I was expecting lots of fun Blood Island Hijinks. The movie starts and it feels like a Larry Buchanan epic on a (slightly) bigger budget, but minutes drag by with excruciating slowness and there's no sign of the putative stars. Next thing you know we're in Japan and some mad scientist is trying to create humanoid life from a Venus flytrap in a scene that looks like a cross between FRANKENSTEIN and THE MUTATIONS. And all to background music that sounds like it was swiped from a local kiddie show from the 1950s! And weirdest of all, with all these surreal goings on I'M STILL NOT HAVING ANY FUN!!!!! Thank god for the IMDb! All has been explained and my world makes sense (sort of) again. Exit Eddie Romero, enter Ed Wood, and leave all hope of quality behind. I'm hesitant to use a phrase like "worst movie of all time" but I believe I have finally found that elusive worst movie. No entertainment value, not even of the camp or inadvertent variety, just 90+ minutes of stultifying ineptitude. Okay, there's one scene where the scientist is apparently seeking the help of a group of female divers and all the girls standing around listening to his half assed theories are topless, so for a few brief moments there are some pretty cute boobies on display. That's the sole redeeming feature of this film, and believe me it's not enough.

James Craig plays a scientist in need of a vacation in this Ed Wood scripted b-movie masterpiece. He takes one in Japan and decides to make a monster plant while there. For fans of Wood this movie is a must see as it's full of that familiar over the top Wood dialogue. "I refuse the word impossible." "Unless I miss my guess.My creation is so powerful now it could devour anything." Good luck tracking it down and don't be fooled by the Regal Video version box art which identifies a whole different movie (MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND). This lost Wood classic deserves to be seen by his fans and anyone who enjoys so-bad their good films.

Watching an actual plant grow from a seed into a colorful flower would be far more exciting than struggling through this horribly inane and ultimately boring movie about an overworked rocket scientist transforming into a deranged and mad-raving horticulturist during his vacation in Tokyo. Okay, say what now? I kid you not, "The Revenge of Dr. X" – most inaccurate title ever, by the way – revolves on a NASA professor who's forced to take some time off whilst his latest missile project floats around in outer space. Dr. Bragain reluctantly accepts a holiday in Japan, but not before picking up a near-dead Venus Flytrap he intends curing. Along with his personal assistant (a woman who never should have even considered starting an acting career) he looks after the sickly plant, but it quickly becomes a new obsession. Dr. Bragain turns into a loony amateur Frankenstein when he wants to offer his plant a human mind and uses thunder and lightening to achieve this. The only remotely fun and oddly curious moments in this movie are the opening credits … since they belong to another film! See the trivia-section for more details but, unfortunately, Eddie Romero wasn't involved in this production. It was no one less than Ed Wood who penned down this crazed Fauna & Flora adventure, and that actually makes sense because who else could have come up with such nonsense? The "monster" resembles an exploded banana-tree, the dialogs and particularly James Craig's one-liners are horrendous and 99% of the sequences are just plain boring. One to avoid at all costs.

This obscure little sci-fi horror is in all honestly atrocious. Good old Ed Wood wrote the screenplay for it and it's certainly down to his usual standards. Although I think if Wood had directed the film then it would have been a lot more fun, as his films generally have a delirious energy that makes them for the most part entertaining and memorable. The Revenge of Dr. X sadly is neither entertaining nor especially memorable. It's pacing is way off, as the film drags on uneventfully. And, even though the central plant monster is severely stupid in an agreeable way, whenever it attacks anyone in the film the screen just goes red in an effort to avoid any further special effects (i.e. blood and gore). Clearly this is a mistake as this dreary little movie could have done with something to enliven the proceedings. Instead, for the most part, we have a plot that basically consists of a scientist who looks like Russ Meyer developing a Venus flytrap monster. Sexploitation king Meyer himself would have approved of the scene where our scientist hero meets some topless Japanese girls on the beach; but wacky scenes like this just don't make up for the endless tedium that constitutes the majority of this movie's running time. Maybe the only truly memorable aspect of this film is the fact that the title is misleading and meaningless beyond comprehension.

Written by Ed Wood, Revenge of Dr. X is an abysmal story about a verbally abusive NASA a-hole, James Craig as Dr. Bragan NOT Dr. X, who grunts and screams his way into an emotional breakdown. With a much needed vacation coming up, hopefully permanent, Dr. Nakamura suggests to the loudmouth Bragan that he should visit his home country of Japan. After the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the arrival of Dr. Bragan becomes the third greatest foreign tragedy on Japanese soil. Dr. Bragan uses this time to pursue his true passion of botany with Dr. Nakamura's niece Noriko. His piece de resistance is a Venus's flytrap he procured from a backwater snake salesman's lot in North Carolina. Using the "rain as your mother" and "lightning as your father" the bad doctor descends into insanity as he creates, quite possibly, the dumbest creature in movie history. This Frankenstein ripoff even comes with a Japanese hunchbacked assistant.

James Craig not only allows the viewer to watch him chew the scenery but also to defecate it out as well. I've never seen a character so abrasive to everyone around him. He constantly screams at his assistant Noriko who in turn offers him coffee to placate him in every instance. I know some Asian women are subservient to their male counterparts but I was begging her to liberate his fat head from his body via a samurai sword. The creature is definitely of the Horror at Party Beach caliber. The only reason this did not receive a rank of one star is the out of nowhere scene of topless female divers that is thrown into the movie almost to say we know this movie sucks so here's some boobs, please don't turn this movie off! For Ed Wood fans that are gluttons for punishment only.

and i thought the mighty gorga was bad,this is worse.i heard ed wood wrote this dreck.James Craig stars as a mad scientist who goes to japan and creates a monster plant man.even though his Japanese female co-star is very attractive it doesn't save this extremely poorly made sci fi horror.James Craig as you recall was in the 1957 Bert i Gordon film;the cyclops.this is one of the movies on the 50 chilling classics DVD movie pack.which had many stinkers on it,this being one of them.its a rip off of frankenstein and day of the triffids.it features the most inane dialog ever.and the most ridiculous plant monster that looks like it wandered off the set of hr pufnstuff.one of ed woods last movies.makes plan 9 from outer space look like gone with the wind. the original title is weird; the double garden.sounds,even revenge of Dr.x doesn't sound right,people will think its a sequel to the Lionel atwill/fay wray film;Dr.x from 1932.this is'nt even a so bad its good movie.its so bad its really bad,its 90 minutes too long.awful!!!

"Venus Flytrap" AKA "Revenge of Doctor X" AKA "Body of the Prey".

What an awful film but it is strangely entertaining! I couldn't help but to get a few giggles out of this one. The first hour or so of the film you will find "Dr. X" going to Japan & meeting his new beautiful female Japanese assistant who's father has several resorts but one that is abandoned with a greenhouse way up in the mountains. He and his assistant move into the resort and start building the greenhouse back up again. He has a Venus Flytrap that he carried with him from the U.S. and he decides to cross it or hybridize with another Flytrap that lives in the ocean in order to prove that all life, including mankind, has come from the ocean from evolution! In the meantime he and his assistant are falling in-love. It's the last half hour in Frankenstein style that "Dr. X" brings energy to the plant via lightening and that is when we get to see the Plant Creature! The creature can walk and ends up terrorizing a local village. This is where the film will remind you more of Frankenstein: the villagers go after the creature with torches!

The film is simply fun and sometimes funny. When the film first started, I thought I was either going to turn it off or fast-forward to watch it but I got caught up in the movie - I found it oddly entertaining yet awful at the same time.

6/10

"INSECTAVORUS!! YOUR FATHER IS THE LIGHTNING!", exclaims over-the-hill matinée idol James Craig, as his floppy Venus Flytrap man is brought to life in this American/Japanese co- production. Edward D. Wood Jr.'s insane screenplay emerges, for all who may chance to view this opus, as one of his grandest achievements. Nobody else on Earth could have hatched this masterpiece of delirious illogic and absurd cinematic devices.

This film exists only in bootlegged form as far as I know, and may be found under the title "Revenge of Dr. X" - with credits which have nothing to do with the feature of record. The direction will not disappoint Ed Wood aficionados - he might easily have directed this himself, though the Japanese section reveals a bit more in the way of technical resources than Wood was ever allowed. There is an extended underwater photography sequence featuring traditionally topless female pearl-divers.

Ed Wood originally listed this screenplay on his resume as "Venus Flytrap" (Japan), the title "Double Garden" can only be interpreted as a translation from the Japanese release (if any) - it has a sort of zen sensibility. If you can help it - DON'T MISS IT!!

Poor James Craig, I hope that his salary check cleared and he thought that the trip to Japan was worth appearing in this god awful science fiction clunker.

After nearly having a nervous breakdown NASA scientist James Craig is recommended a leave of absence and a nice trip to Japan. Craig thinks that he'd like to do some experiments in botany which was his first love as a scientist.

After this he goes to Japan where the daughter of one of his colleagues sets him up in a nice abandoned resort near an active volcano, the better to do his experiments.

So what does Craig do, something useful like developing kernels of corn the size of basketballs to feed people? Nah, what he does is develop a giant size Venus Fly Trap that eventually has the mobility of a Triffid and the appetite of one.

Poor Craig, for a guy who needs peace and quiet the better to cope with a nervous breakdown he spends a lot of time shouting at Atsuko Rome the girl who is assisting him. Possibly because of her bad acting or dubbing, you can't really tell.

Venus Fly Trap has a Frankenstein quality to it down to the deformed Igor-San like hunchback who helps out. Would it were as good as those Universal Frankenstein films.

I've seen a lot of monster movies before but this is the first one where the 'monster' is an 8 foot tall houseplant! "Venus Flytrap" (aka "The Revenge of Dr. X" although there's no revenge and no Dr. X) is another hokey monster movie with a Frankenstein theme. Overworked Dr. Bragan takes a vacation in Japan, where he goes to stay in a a remote, run-down hotel inhabited by a young Japanese woman named Noriko and a hunchback grounds keeper. Dr. Bragan brings with him a venus flytrap plant, and he becomes obsessed with the idea of grafting carnivorous plant parts together and powering them up with lightening and vitamin injections. His creation comes to life and begins terrorizing the local villagers.

The acting is wooden by all of the Japanese actors, and James Craig's acting is thoroughly over the top, with him doing a lot of shouting and occasionally laughing hysterically. Noriko, his assistant, plays the stereotypical subservient Japanese female. There's a hunchback that appears from time-to-time, and a scene with some topless women who Dr. Bragan consults to ask the location of an underwater carnivorous plant. In reality it was an excuse by the screenwriter (none other than Ed Wood!) to throw in a lingering view of some (seriously nice!) titties to spice up the movie a bit.

The best part is the creature of course. I am a devoted fan of low budget creature-feature movies and I have to say this is one of the best! This creature has got to be seen to be believed. Be prepared for venus flytrap hands and feet, a humanoid type body, and a head that somewhat resembles an upside-down onion with thick roots for hair. This movie is public domain and can be downloaded for free from http://www.archive.org/details/TheRevengeOfDr.X

The only fault I can find with any of the other reviews here is that they understate the truly appalling quality of this movie, and don't even mention the puppy-swallowing!

But the most outrageous part is the score, which mixes everything from ragtime to mazerkas while remaining totally irrelevant to on screen events.

Lead (pronounced "led") actor(?) James Craig not only chews the scenery, he re-chews it more often than a cow with cud.

The monster looks like a carrot on steroids, but still manages to out-act the rest of the cast. And what's with the entirely pointless opening sequence involving a space launch?

There's no Dr. X, no revenge, no logic, and no reason to see this unless your head is in the vicinity of a gun.

James T Craig plays the hotheaded rocket scientest/madman who mixes a venus flytrap with a carnivorous undersea plant only to create a man in a rubber suit with green dreadlocks in this goofy throw-back to the fifties! With nudity so gratuitous it borders on dadaism!

Wood himself was directing Rick Lutz and Rene Bond in pornos at the time, making this a special treat. More than any other movie not directed by him, this production seems guided by his hand. One wonders if the use jarring library music and lots of stock footage was written into the script. A must!

(AKA: Venus Flytrap)

For it's good badness that is pure signature Ed Wood I will give this film seven stars. The only reason that this does not get a full ten like any other Ed Wood movie is because he did not direct it and it is sad because this is a film that would have been great for him and might have even got him out of his slump in the 70's that eventual led to his untimely demise. When the reveal the plant creature I just pictured Wood in a writers chair (if he was even allowed on set I don't know) staring with his wondrous gaze that made him look so child like and thinking that this film would be the one. It is a sad statement to the integrity of his career at this point that they felt the need to put four naked Asian women in this film. I mean what purpose it does it serve for these ladies to be naked. I'm all for nudity in film if it serves a purpose but in this film it is not even done to be sexy it is just there and the film would have been better without it. Ed Wood fans seek this out. Casual movie people avoid.