Director: Arthur Lubin
Writer: Eric Taylor
Stars: Gale Sondergaard, Brenda Joyce, Kirby Grant
Run Time: 57 Minutes
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpBMrlmwtPE
Synopsis
Jean comes in on the bus and runs into Hal on the street. She’s going to work here in the little town of Domingo, population 1492. She’s going to be Miss Zenobia’s caretaker. Jean’s doctor ordered her to take a rest, and Miss Zenobia keeps going through caretakers in rapid succession. Zenobia caught some strange affliction in South America, and now she’s blind.
She meets Zenobia, and she is already afraid of Mario the creepy butler. Things appear to go very well between the two women that evening.
The next morning, Jean comes down for breakfast, and she says she slept really well. The previous nurse left because she didn’t like Mario, but Zenobia won’t get rid of him because he’d never be able to find work elsewhere. Jean mentions that she’s unattached. “Nobody even knows I’m here!”
That night, Jean drinks her spiked milk like a good girl and then hears tapping coming from inside her bedroom wall. Tapping like a blind person with a cane. Zenobia comes into Jean’s bedroom after she goes to sleep and takes her blood. Afterwards, she can see. She likes feeding spiders to her meat-eating plants, and then she feeds the blood to her plants as well.
She mashes up the blossom from one of the plants and makes something with it. This goes on for several days. Mario the butler likes Jean and doesn’t want her killed like the others. Random cattle start dying, but there’s no disease that anyone can find. They suspect that the milk is poisoned.
Jean eventually refuses to drink the milk, and then she finds Zenobia’s cane… without Zenobia anywhere nearby. She goes out looking for Zenobia but doesn’t find her.
In town, numerous farmers are selling out because of the cow plague. Some farmers can’t even sell their land for a dollar an acre. Finally, Jean figures out that Zenobia is not blind at all. Zenobia shows Jean her plants, and explains that her rare plants are creating a special untraceable poison that she’s been using the poison the cows and drive away the farmers.
Zenobia tells Hal that Jean has left town, gone on the train. Actually, she’s locked in the basement. Hal figures out that Jean didn’t leave, and Zenobia knows that he knows. She orders Mario to “burn everything,” which he does. As the fires rage, the plants grab Zenobia and Mario, while Hal rescues Jean heroically.
Commentary
All this trouble for a real estate scheme? Lex Luthor would be proud. You’d think if the plants simply needed blood that there would be an easier way to do it.
Gale Sondergaard is really creepy as a smarmy and evil villainess. Rondo Hatton is there to watch, but he doesn’t say a word, and could have been played by nearly anyone. Jean and Hal are played by generic good-looking young people but are completely forgettable.