Macumba Love (1960)

So much average

best movie i've ever seen.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I remember watching this movie and couldn't help noticing June's cleavage throughout the picture and wondered why the FCC wasn't reported by viewers to the local station showing her over pronounced mounds. Anyway I loved all the sexual scenes in this picture. The swimming scene when June boldly pulls of the top part of her bathing suit and does a back splash under the murky water to cover the nipples.The climax of the movie where June does her breast, I mean BEST acting is when June and Hubby have a private dinner and June gets up and dances with her hips going one way and her boobs going the other.To enhance the enjoyment of this breast display watch this movie with the sound off and watch alone. As for the Voodoo in this movie, Who Cares! I watched this movie several times not knowing or caring what the plot is about but instead wondering where June Lives!!

An interesting memory was jogged at seeing the listing for this film.I saw this at the drive in when I was 8 and, of course, in my jammies.I tried to go to sleep in the back seat but was terrified by the voodoo. 44 years later I still remember that damn movie as the bane of my young drive in experience, lol.My 81 year-old mother still laughs whenever I mention it, although she insists that it was only a "Joe Palooka" doll that was used, and that I actually fell asleep and only woke up at the scary scenes. I seem to recall a different set of facts, but no one else is around to corroborate my story.I wonder...could she be one of the undead, too?

Voodoo movies rarely succeed on plot, (plot in this case being almost inherently silly), but rather on mood and atmosphere. This movie sadly lacks those hard-to-define qualities. It's neither scary nor campy and the garishly-colored print or tape you're likely to see will probably be of poor quality.If you stick around long enough, you will see young, good-looking William Wellman jr staked out bare-chested for a voodoo sacrifice, (similar to Paul Burke's scene in "The Disembodied") but he's rescued too quickly for the scene to be much fun.

This is a movie that offers everything. Minimal doses of gore, sexual suggestiveness, but overall a sense of subtlety that borders on Val Lewtonesque. I'm not sure if director Douglas Fowley was trying for a deliberate feeling of ambiguity or if he was restricted by a low budget but whatever his reasons, it worked! Notice the scene where Peter Weils(Walter Reed) and paramour Venus (Ziva Rodann) are on the beach. A hawk flies down behind a rock and suddenly out steps voodoo preistess Mama Rataloi (Ruth DeSouza). Is she able to change her shape or was she behind the rock all the time and the arrival of the hawk just a coincidence? After she has spied on them she vanishes from sight again and just seconds later we see a snake sliding quickly away. Another coincidence? Personally I think not.About the gore. There is a scene where Mama Rataloi shoves a hatpin dipped in snake venom through the eye of a man who dared to be a non believer. In the TV prints the whole screen just turns red at that moment but in the theatrical prints we actually see the pin go into the eye, a gore scene that pre-dates H.G. Lewis by 3 years! As for the voodoo depicted in this film being real, just watch what happens at the end of the film when the ceremony is quickly broken up by the police. I won't spoil it for you if you have yet to see the movie but if you have spent the whole running time deciding Mama Rataloi is just a fake, keep your eyes on her during the last minutes of this picture. MACUMBA LOVE was filmed in Brazil, not Haiti because the real voodoo people refused to co-operate with the filmmakers. Obviously the biggest selling point was not the plot itself but the inclusion of June Wilkinson, a British model whose lucky numbers were 44-26-36. Still the plot is handled along believable lines and there are some catchy authentic songs like "Dance Kalinda" and "To Market". This is a hard film to find on video but well worth the hunt.