Maneater of Hydra is a Spanish-German coproduction released in 1967 directed by American expatriate Mel Welles

Mel Welles

Mel Welles was an American film actor. His best-remembered role may be that of hapless flower shop owner Gravis Mushnik in the 1960 low-budget Roger Corman dark comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors....

. The alternate titles include La isla de la muerte and Island of the Doomed. The horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 is set on a remote island off the shore of an unidentified European country, in which the central character is a mad scientist (Cameron Mitchell

Cameron Mitchell (actor)

Cameron Mitchell was an American film, television and Broadway actor with close ties to one of Canada's most successful families, and considered, by Lee Strasberg, to be one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio in New York City.-Early life and career:Born Cameron MacDowell Mitzel in...

) who creates hybrid trees that feed on human blood.

Plot

Synopsis from Doomed Marathon: "A group of tourists travel to an island to see its exotic botanicals. There they meet Baron von Weser (played by Cameron Mitchell), a reclusive scientist studying rare horticulture and experimenting with crossbreeding dangerous varieties of plants. One of the Baron’s creations is draining the blood of human beings (through a small hole in their cheek) and the tourists are dying one by one."

Critical reception

According to one reviewer, "This Spanish/German co-production .. is pretty bloody for its time (especially the finale) but, unfortunately, the print used for the DVD from Shout! Factory (as part of their "Elvira Movie Macabre" series) is a terribly soft fullframe speckled mess that's full of drop-outs, emulsion scratches and jitter. It's also obvious that it's a TV print (although it appears to be uncut), as every ten minutes the film fades to black. If you've never seen this film before, it's a pretty decent mystery/horror film with some fluid camerawork, atmosphere and a few good scares.

DVD Verdict reported Maneater of Hydra is "...a badly acted and dubbed Eurohorror that gives us carnivorous trees feasting on unsuspecting tourists. Unfortunately, these tourists are so whiny and clueless that they come off as idiots, so you end up rooting for the trees."