MAN-EATER OF KUMAON (1949)

The jungles of Northern India are inhabited by tigers (so we are told) and typically their prey does not include humans. Collins (Wendell Corey) is an American doctor who is tiger hunting to escape painful memories of his recent divorce. He wounds a tiger which loses a claw but gets away. The natives know that the tiger in its weakened state will have a hard time hunting and will be a threat to people and must be hunted down, but Collins, showing signs of malaria, refuses. When the tiger begins killing villagers, they know that it will never return to its natural prey, and soon in a nearby village, a young pregnant woman named Lali (Joy Page) is attacked and severely injured by the tiger. Her husband Narain (Sabu) fetches Collins to help her; she survives but her unborn child does not. When a tiger print with a missing claw is found in the dirt, Collins eventually decides to stay in the village to hunt the tiger down. Meanwhile, there is some melodrama involving native customs which say that Narain must leave Lali because she can no longer bear children, though he does not want to, and Lali ends up going off to offer herself as bait to catch the tiger. The ending, while satisfying, is remarkably anti-climactic. I watched this because Sabu (The Jungle Book, Cobra Woman) was top billed, but unfortunately Wendell Corey has more screen time. Though he's not exactly a bad actor, Corey must be the most unappealing and uncharismatic actor to become a leading man, and his drab performance sinks the movie. Sabu and Joy Page (the young refugee who Bogart helps in Casablanca) and the tiger all try to get some juice into the proceedings, to no effect. Morris Carnovsky, a respected stage actor whose screen career was eventually hurt by the blacklist, is fine (though made up in what I call 'duskyface') as Ganga Ram, Nairan's father. The print I saw on YouTube was missing roughly ten minutes of footage but it didn't seem to hurt the narrative flow too much, and honestly, anything to make this film shorter is fine by me. Based loosely on the real-life experience of author and hunter Jim Corbett. For Sabu completists only. Pictured are Sabu and Page. [YouTube]