Man-eater of Kumaon, 1948, I found this movie description, but nothing on where to obtain the film.



Back in the 30's and 40's of the last century, Jim Corbett held the place in the popular imagination later taken up by Jacques Cousteau: an adventurer and passionate crusader for conservation. His books were enormous best sellers so it was inevitable that one would be bought for the movies. "The Man Eaters [note the plural] of Kumaon" described every tiger he had seen or heard of who attacked a human being. In every case he found that the beast was sick or wounded and only killed humans because he was unable to hunt wild game. You may think it a lame effort to exonerate dangerous animals but keep an open mind and then try to figure out how to make such a book into a movie. There might be other ways but this one works marvelously.

A man (an American doctor) shoots at a tiger just as night is falling. He knows he has hit but when he reaches the spot where the tiger lurked he finds one severed toe and a trail of blood. Out of cowardice (the sun is setting)or carelessness (what the hell, it's only a tiger) he abandons the wounded creature to its fate. That's the first two minutes of the movie, in case you miss it.

From here on, while sticking rigorously to Corbett's thesis, the movie utterly abandons his narrative and follows almost exactly the storyline of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." If the movie is not more believable than her book, it is at least easier to understand. The monster has to kill to stay alive and isn't it right,just, even necessary, that it seek out the man who made it a monster? Especially in light of modern ideas about hunting in general and tigers in particular, this version is a lot easier to swallow than Shelley's Man vs. God allegory. I'll go so far as to say that the final scene is so right, so perfectly right, that Shelley would have used it in her book if she had thought of it.

Here is a copy for sale on Ebay, Kathi:
Ebay search result

Whoops. I didn't read the whole thing. It is a lobby card. Sorry about that.

quote:

. "The Man Eaters [note the plural] of Kumaon" described every tiger he had seen or heard of who attacked a human being. In every case he found that the beast was sick or wounded and only killed humans because he was unable to hunt wild game.

Being a huge fan of the great gentleman, I've always been a bit reluctant to call BS on his thinking on this topic. It is however BS as his own books show. I'll try to slip by without adding the supporting quotations from Corbett's books for now but will dig them up if called to task.

The table of the kills attributed to the Chowgarh man-eater was what caught my eye. Over the course of 5 years, this tiger ate 64 villagers. In other words something like one every 4 weeks. That's clearly not enough calories to keep a tiger going. A wild animal simply couldn't survive for 5 years with any significant sickness or injury let alone on that diet. The Col. goes on to describe his attempts to kill this (and other man-eating tigers) over various cattle and antelopes they had killed. In other words, the tiger kept on hunting like the non man-eaters much of the time. Any animal capable of hauling a 300 lb. bullock over a fence surely can't be called incapacitated even if the Col. does later find porcupine quills in its paw.

Elsewhere, Corbett talks of man-eaters participating in the breeding cycle. Raising cubs and taking part in territorial battles is not behavior one normally associates with incapacited animals. Corbett describes a fight between the Rudraprayag leopard and another male leopeard that he overheard one night as a fight for breeding territory. Given that we know almost all serious fights between wild animals are between physical near equals and that this fight was long and viscious, we can gather a few things. First off the leopards both thought they had a reasonable chance of beating the other and that the rewards were worth the risks. With that in mind and assuming that the Rudraprayag leopard was indeed disabled to some extent, two obvious senarios emrge. First, Corbett could have been wrong as to the motive behind the fight and two incapacitaed cats had bumped into each other and thought it was worth risking life and limb to dispute a bit of ground instead of slipping safely away. Second, Corbett was right as to motive (and he did know a bit about Indian wildlife habits) and the Rudraprayag leopard, who was too sick or injured to hunt antelope and pea fowl, felt it was strong enough to fight and defeat a presumably fit and healthy adult male leopard. Neither scenario seems very convincing to me and I'm left with the idea that the Rudraprayag was a strong healthy animal that had picked up some habits that the humans of the area found disturbing.

I'll submit that by making a blanket statement like "all man-eaters were either sick or injured", Corbett was rationalizing things to fit his world veiw. This shows that he was human. Given his hunting skills I was starting to wonder about that.

Having said all that I'll look for a copy of that movie. Maybe it will get me out of the testy mood I seem to have woken up with.

Dean

quote:

Originally posted by maki:

That's clearly not enough calories to keep a tiger going. A wild animal simply couldn't survive for 5 years with any significant sickness or injury let alone on that diet. The Col. goes on to describe his attempts to kill this (and other man-eating tigers) over various cattle and antelopes they had killed. In other words, the tiger kept on hunting like the non man-eaters much of the time.

I don't think anyone claimed these beasts ONLY ate humans.

Killing domestic beasts is usually easier for any wild animal than wild fodder.