Monster from Green Hell (1957)

This is a movie which I have little to say about in the intro because, like a good number of the flicks we're going to talk about this month, I'd never heard of it until I got my hands on a physical copy. In this case, it was from that vendor at G-Fest that I mentioned in yesterday's review, in 2024, and the physical copy was the Blu-Ray release by Film Detective. As I, when I buy a lot of stuff from that guy, I sometimes end up getting some real stinkers, and other times, I find some hidden gems; Monster from Green Hell doesn't fall into either of those categories. Instead, it turned out to be one of those movies that's just kind of there. Granted, that's better than being a boring dud, like Phantom from 10,000 Leagues or many other 50's flicks I could name, but it's still a shame, as the cover artwork (the poster that you're seeing here) definitely looked interesting, as did the idea of the monsters being giant, mutated wasps. In reality, this is a very paint-by-numbers 50's monster flick, with characters that are paper-thin, a lot of padding, likely because they didn't have much to work with (and even then, it's only 71 minutes), a dull, plodding climax, and, even though it actually had a much bigger budget than most B-movies of the period, it's still obviously quite cheap. Granted, some of the monster effects are kind of impressive for the amount of money they had to work with, but overall, this flick just doesn't have that much of a buzz (when I start making lame jokes like that, you know I don't have much to say).

In preparation for firing the first manned rocket into space, Dr. Quent Brady and Dan Morgan send up rockets housing various animals to see what effect cosmic radiation will have on them. However, one of the rockets malfunctions and stays up in space longer than it should've, with the scientists calculating that, when it does come down, it should land off the coast of Africa. Some time later, as they're running a hospital and mission in the remote African village of Mongwe, Dr. Lorentz and his daughter, Lorna, are shocked when their assistant, Arobi, brings them the dead body of his brother. He explains that his brother was attacked while the two of them were in an area called "Green Hell," which the locals believe is inhabited by monsters that are chasing away even the animals. Upon performing an autopsy, Lorentz finds that the man died due to severe paralysis caused by a massive dose of venom. Six months after the rockets were launched, news of the reports of monsters in Africa reaches the United States, and Quent believes there may be a connection between them and the rocket that malfunctioned. Specifically, he believes that wasps that were onboard the rocket may have mutated into enormous giants after being overexposed to cosmic radiation. Realizing the implications, he and Dan are granted a leave of absence and sent to Africa to investigate. They arrive in Libreville, where the territorial agent helps to organize an expedition, advising the scientists to head to Mongwe and meet with Lorentz. But, during the time it takes to get the expedition up and running, Lorentz, Arobi, and a pair of villagers head into Green Hell themselves to investigate. The latter are killed by one of the mutant wasps, and Lorentz and Arobi then find a mark its foot left in the ground. Later, near the volcanic Mount Virunga, Lorentz separates from Arobi and disappears. Meanwhile, Quent and Dan's expedition finally gets underway, and they brave the dangers of the African landscape to reach Mongwe, unaware that Quent's fears have already proven to be dangerously real, and could spell disaster for the entire continent.

Al Zimbalist

Monster from Green Hell was produced by Gross-Krasne Inc., formed in 1952 by Jack J. Gross, who'd previously worked with Val Lewton on his horror films at RKO in the 40's, and Philip N. Krasne, who'd earlier been at Republic Pictures. Though they normally worked in television, the ongoing popularity of giant monster flicks at the time encouraged them to take a try at it. But, while they saw to the budget and whatnot, the movie was actually put together by Al Zimbalist, one of those 50's era, low budget producers who was always looking for something new to exploit and known for making schlock, having already produced stuff like Robot Monster, Cat-Women of the Moon, Miss Robinson Crusoe, and King Dinosaur. Not that he cared how bad any of his movies were, though. All that was important to him was hyping and selling them, and then making a profit. Also, according to well-known low budget monster maker Paul Blaisdell, he was a very shady guy, as Blaisdell gave him some sketches of giant insects in hopes of getting the job of making them for this film, but Zimbalist never returned his calls, nor his sketches.

The man hired to direct the film was Kenneth G. Crane, who mainly worked as an editor, and would do the same here as well, as the film required a lot of splicing of pre-existing material. Like Terry O. Morse, the director of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Crane had previously taken another Toho monster film, Half-Human, and shot and spliced in new scenes with American actors, so he was more than up to this kind of task. As for his directing "prowess," it probably won't surprise you to learn that this section of his career didn't survive the 50's. After Monster from Green Hell, Crane directed an episode of The O. Henry Playhouse and two other films: 1958's When Hell Broke Loose, which featured an early starring role for Charles Bronson, and The Manster, an American-Japanese co-production that he co-directed with producer George P. Breakston. Crane then went back to editing, mostly on B-movies and television, and worked steadily up into the early 70's. He retired afterward, and died in 1994, at the age of 87.

The one featurette on the film's Blu-Ray release is a short look at the career of its star, Jim Davis, who also happened to appear in a film I reviewed back in the first Schlocktober: Dracula vs. Frankenstein. While Davis had a long career, working right up until his death in 1981, and achieved his greatest fame through his role on Dallas in his final years, he was never a big, mainstream star, and, as much as C. Courtney Joyner tries to vouch for him in that featurette, I think the reason is that he just wasn't a very engaging actor. Granted, the two movies that I've seen him in hardly gave him great material to work with, and his role here as Dr. Quent Brady is an example of the worst kind of bland, monster movie lead, but I just don't find him to be that charismatic or entertaining to watch. Moreover, as bad as this is to say, his pronounced Missouri drawl makes it nigh impossible for me to take him seriously as a scientist, even when he's speaking scientific jargon. As for the actual character, while he's earnest enough, concerned that the malfunctioning rocket they fired into space may have a connection with the reports of monsters in Central Africa, and is desperate to get down there to find out, all while continually narrating to us (voiceover recitation of his journal entries), he's just not that interesting. That said, he's definitely determined to reach the village of Mongwe as soon as possible, despite how punishing the 400-mile trek across the savanna proves to be, and even collapses from a fever near the end of it, later awakening in the village. And when he recovers, he learns of Dr. Lorentz's death and analyzes a large stinger found in his body, confirming his theory, and fears, about the giant, mutated wasps. With that, he decides to journey into Green Hell to find the colony and destroy them, including the queen, feeling responsibility for the whole situation. Ultimately, though, neither he nor any other member of his party are responsible for the monsters' downfall.

I have even less to say about the other characters. Dan Morgan (Robert Griffin), Quent's fellow scientist in the experiment, is initially skeptical of his theory about the mutant wasps that resulted from the malfunctioning rocket, and later underestimates how large the creatures are, with Quent reminding him that they were exposed to much higher levels of cosmic radiation than any of their other test animals. Regardless, he accompanies Quent to Africa, though he suffers from severe dehydration during the trek to

Mongwe village, and is only saved when it starts raining while they're camped. And once they reach the village, learn of Dr. Lorentz's death, and examine the stinger that was found in his shoulder, as well as its venom, he realizes that Quent is right and goes with him on the journey to destroy the monsters. Also joining them on this perilous last part of the journey is Mahri (Eduardo Ciannelli), an Arab (played by an Italian) who acted as their guide through the exhausting trek to the village. He proves invaluable at one point when they come upon a waterhole, as he stops everyone from drinking, feeling that something is wrong, and turns out to be right, as the water is poisoned. And while just about all of the men who come along with them flee in fear by the time of the climax, and he himself feels they should go back, Mahri sticks with them all the way.

Though we don't get to know much about Dr. Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff) before he dies offscreen, he's said to be a saint of a man, having spent forty years at Mongwe village, seeing to the villagers' medical needs. He's also been trying to purge their minds of superstition, and is initially dismissive of their claims that there are monsters in Green Hell. After his native assistant, Arobi (Joel Fluellen), brings the body of his recently killed brother back from Green Hell, Lorentz examines him and finds he was killed by a type of

venom that he's completely unfamiliar with. And when Arobi, on top of that, tells him that he's seen animals fleeing from Green Hell, Lorentz has to admit that there has to be something there. Determined to learn what it is, the two of them, along with a pair of men from the village, later journey into Green Hell. Along the way, they hear the sounds of the wasps buzzing, and after the two men are killed, Lorentz and Arobi find a mark one of the monsters left in the ground. When the two of them get within sight of Mount Virunga, Lorentz, hearing the buzzing again, goes off to investigate, ordering Arobi to stay behind. Shortly after Quent, Dan, and their party reach Mongwe, Arobi returns alone and breaks it to Lorentz's daughter that her father is dead. He also returns with a stinger that was sticking in Lorentz's shoulder, which Quent and Dan use to prove the existence of the giant wasps. Despite his fear, Arobi is part of the group that heads into Green Hell to destroy them, understanding the danger that the creatures pose if they multiply and spread beyond the area's borders.

Even as the typical "love interest" for the hero in one of these movies, Lorentz's daughter, Lorna (Barbara Turner), is especially bland. I put love interest in quotation marks because any relationship between her and Quent is actually almost nonexistent, save for him occasionally comforting her and explaining why he has to go into Green Hell to destroy the monsters. Her most distinguishing characteristic is the momentary disdain she grows for science and experiments in general following the death of her father, with Quent explaining to her the purpose that they serve. And even though she realizes the danger of the wasps leaving Green Hell and overrunning all of Africa, she still doesn't like the idea of Quent and the others going in there and dying. In the end, though, she opts to not only persuade men from Mongwe village to accompany the group but goes herself, though she proves to be little more than another potential victim for the wasps.

One little factoid on Monster from Green Hell's IMDB trivia page reads, "Use of a stopwatch might suggest that about 40% of this movie is stock footage." It wouldn't surprise me if that were the case because, while the $1 million budget is surprisingly big for this kind of flick made during this period, much of that money was likely spent on the effects for the monsters, with everything else getting the shorter end of the stick, and even some of the effects not turning out all that well, besides. Granted, the actual sets, consisting of the interiors of Quent and

Dan's laboratory, control room, and office in the first act, the territorial agent's office in Libreville, and the large hut in Mongwe, where Dr. Lorentz and Lorna both live and work, were designed by a former Oscar-winner, Ernst Fegte, and don't come off as half bad, especially the labs. He also likely had to create the campsites that the characters put up during their various expeditions, a destroyed village that they come across while heading into Green Hell, and the interiors of the cave where the group take cover from the monsters during the climax, the latter of which is

quite threadbare, with little to it aside from some walls that the characters often skirt along as they make their way through, and most of it is hidden in darkness, anyway. As for the location work, despite Al Zimbalist claiming at the time that they spent months actually filming in Africa, a good chunk of those scenes is made up of obvious wildlife stock footage, as well as scenes from a 1939 Spencer Tracy movie called Stanley and Livingstone, which actually was shot in Africa. The latter comes up mostly

whenever you see big, wide shots of Quent and Dan's expedition making their way through the savanna, and when they're attacked and chased by a hostile tribe that they eventually fend off with a brush-fire. They even made sure to dress Jim Davis up in a costume similar to the one that Tracy was wearing so it would match. And when you see close-ups or medium shots of the real actors in the exterior scenes, it's stuff that was shot near Los Angeles, with the climax having been done mostly in Bronson Canyon.

As I was saying, that kind of splicing together of new and old footage is why they hired an editor to both direct the film and cut it together. It's clear that he did what he could with what he had to work with, and I'll admit that when I first watched the movie, those scenes taken from Stanley and Livingstone did make me think the film was bigger than it actually is, as I could tell it wasn't as scratchy and of as poor quality as the wildlife footage used earlier. I did have my suspicions, given how choppy the cutting back and forth between the new old and footage sometimes is,

but it wasn't until I watched the featurette and read the little booklet that came with the Blu-Ray that I knew for sure that it actually was taken from another movie. The editing is choppy in other spots too, such as in the scene where one of the wasps kills the two men who ventured into Green Hell with Dr. Lorentz and Arobi. The monster peeks its head from around a tree and the film quickly cuts from the one guy backing towards the stinger to a sudden shot of the wasp's mandibles, a close-up of the guy's face as he screams, and Lorentz and Arobi hearing this and running to see

what happened. It then cuts back to show that the guy is now being gripped by the neck with one of the wasp's claws and his friend runs in to help, only for the film to cut to a close-up of the monster's head, then the other guy being gripped by its other claw, another shot of the head, a very quick shot of both of the men, another close-up of one of them, followed by his kicking legs being lifted off the ground, yet another close-up of the monster's head, and an awkward wide shot of the man struggling down in the

right side of the frame while the monster hovers back behind the tree. Again, they were clearly cutting around the limitations they had with the monster props, but it makes that scene come off as kind of confusing and hard to make out what exactly did happen. And like other B-movies of the time, such as How to Make a Monster and War of the Colossal Beast, the final few minutes suddenly switch from black-and-white to color... or, in this case, very drab

color, with a red tint for the shots of the lava killing the monsters. (Up until the Film Detective Blu-Ray, this ending hadn't been seen since the film's original theatrical release, being replaced on video in 1997 with a Technicolor sequence that tried to emulate this effect.) Personally, I think Mighty Joe Young and those other movies I mentioned did this kind of thing better.

Going back to the use of stock footage, it's also used in padding out the very bare bones script. During the middle section, a fifteen-minute stretch is devoted solely to Quent and Dan's expedition to Mongwe village, as they're first attacked by a random hostile tribe that chases them across the savanna and kills some of the natives that make up their party, then, after losing them by setting a brush fire, have to deal with the blistering heat and dehydration as they continue on. There's one part where we see a lion

drink from a waterhole, only to then notice a bunch of birds suddenly take to the air nearby, which prompts him to leave. After that, the expedition reaches the waterhole and the men are just about to drink from it, when Mahri stops them, as he notices a bunch of vultures waiting in some nearby trees and feels something is wrong. He goes to check the area, but one of the men, naturally, is so desperately thirsty that he drinks some of the water, regardless. Mahri looks over a nearby ridge and sees a bunch of vultures gathered around, eating something. Somehow able to

tell that it's the lion we saw moments before, he goes back and tells Quent and Dan about it, verifying that the water is poisoned. And right on cue, the guy who drank it doubles over in pain and dies. (Whether or not that poisoned water has anything to do with the mutant wasps is never made clear.) After that, they press on, Dan eventually collapses from the heat and dehydration, and shortly after they set up camp for the night, it starts raining, much to their relief. However, the rain continues for several days and Quent, unable

to wait any longer, decides to press on, regardless. The rain does eventually pass, but then, Quent himself collapses from a fever and has to be carried the rest of the way. He awakens in Mongwe village, being seen to by Lorna Lorentz, and we finally get back to the issue of the monsters in Green Hell, which you might've forgotten about by this point.

The movie's last third first consists of another expedition heading into Green Hell, with more stock footage cutaways to make it seem like they're really in Africa. They pass through a destroyed village, with people lying about, dead, which freaks out the men from Mongwe that were helping them and they run off, leaving our main group of characters of Quent, Dan, Lorna, Arobi, and Mahri to continue on alone. After some more walking, they set up camp for the night, Quent lets them know what they're up against and the tools they have to combat it, he and Lorna

Lorna then have a very brief and random private moment just outside of the camp (nothing remotely romantic happens), and later on, they awaken to the sound of the wasps buzzing nearby. While we get plenty of cutaways to the wasps in the jungle, including a rather graphic sequence of one killing a snake, they don't come near the campsite, as they're afraid of the fire, which Quent makes bigger with some kerosene. The next day, they trek further, heading to the base of Mount Virunga, where they find the entire colony, including the queen wasp, just

beyond a ridge. They try to kill the wasps with some handheld bombs in their arsenal, but it has no effect, and they're chased into a cave in the side of the volcano. Though the wasp that chases them is too big to get through the opening, it reaches its claws in, trying to get at them, and Quent throws a bomb at it when they run, which blows up all the other bombs and causes a cave-in that traps them inside. Much of the movie's remaining seven minutes consists of them

wandering around this cave, trying to find a way out, with lots of dissolves to get across the feeling that they've been looking for hours, and it's completely tedious. In the end, Dan and Mahri are the ones who find the way out, and once they do, the volcano suddenly erupts and kills the monsters, after which the movie promptly ends.

While they are another example of the giant, radioactive mutants that permeated 50's monster flicks, the giant wasps are unique in that they weren't created by nuclear tests or waste but, rather, through the effects of cosmic radiation when they and other animal specimens were sent up in a rocket. They're still the end result of scientific research gone horribly wrong, mind you, and their mutation is, as per usual, a very fantastical account of the actual effects of radiation, but it still helps this movie and its monsters stand out amongst the pack. You also do see the

effects of cosmic radiation on other test animals that were sent up, with some guinea pigs that were initially brown now turned white, two large lizards (or possibly baby alligators; it's kind of hard to tell from the angle you get of them) in a catatonic state, and, most notably, a baby spider crab that, after its mother was exposed to cosmic rays while carrying it, quickly grew to be twice its mother's size.

Although they look more like giant beetles than wasps, with their bulky bodies, big heads, and large mandibles, as well as buzzing wings on their sides (they never actually fly), the monsters are kind of cool-looking, and the way they're executed is a sign of the movie's above average budget. They're brought to life through a combination of props that consist of a giant head, big claws that grab at and hold the actors, and a stinger (the scale of all these props is quite impressive), and stop-motion animation, the latter of which is actually used more often. While said

stop-motion shots are very brief and depict little more than the wasps moving along the ground, the fact that they were able to use it as much as they did, and the leg movements are as intricate as they are, is nothing to sneeze at. Like I said, during the third act, there's an impressive sequence where a snake (which is also stop motion) attacks one of the wasps when it gets close, lunging at it and coiling around the base of its head, only for the wasp to grab and pull it off with its mandibles, then sting it to death, with a shot of venom

gushing out from its wound. And when the characters find the entire colony at the volcano near the end, there are some shots of several stop-motion wasps moving right next to each other. However, there is some obvious recycling to be found here and there, with the shot of the "queen" seeming like an outtake from the nighttime sequence from earlier. And when they throw bombs at the wasps, there's a shot of one that's a static puppet with very little movement. While the monsters are, as you would expect, depicted as

just mindless killing machines that do nothing but buzz around and attack anything they see, and even though, again, you can't tell the queen apart from the others at all, I'd be lying if I said that the sound of their buzzing doesn't make my skin crawl, given how much I fear real wasps and bees. Finally, when the wasps are killed by the volcanic eruption at the end, the filmmakers seem to try to elicit some sympathy by having them let out frightened, pained shrieks as they're burned alive, but it doesn't work all that much, mostly because of the very lackluster effects there.

When it comes to combining the stop-motion wasps with the live-action actors and other elements, there's one really good instance of compositing in the third act, where the one wasp traps the characters in the cave and reaches in with its claws to get at them. Other such shots, though, like some that composited that same wasp into the real location footage of Bronson Canyon, aren't that great. The same goes for some parts of the wasps' introductory scene, where we see them driving animals and other natives from Green Hell, which is obviously just the wasp puppets

being animated in front of a screen onto which stock footage is being projected. That sequence also ends with a shot of one of them rising up from behind a ridge in the background as the natives flee, which isn't that bad-looking. However, the lava destroying the wasps at the end is done through an awkward montage of it being superimposed over red-tinted, previously-used shots of the wasps or shots of them simply dissolving into the very footage of the lava.

The music score is by Albert Glasser, a very prolific composer of B-movies of the time, with well over a hundred films to his credit, as well as, according to Tom Weaver, more than 400 television and radio shows. While his music for Monster from Green Hell is nothing amazing, it is often energetic and exciting, as well as fairly grand, making some sequences come off as more action-packed and bigger in scope than they really are. Glasser had started his career by working under Max Steiner, the composer of, among many other movies, King Kong, and you can hear some of that influence in the rousing, tribal-like main title theme, which plays at other points in the movie, like when the expedition gets attacked by the hostile tribe. He also does well with the horror side of things, too, like whenever the wasps attack, and when the volcanic eruption at the end is scored to some pretty exciting, and slightly horrific, music in and of itself.

A really short review, I know, but that's all there really is to say about Monster from Green Hell. While it does certainly have a bigger budget than most B-level monster movies of the time, which allow for some fairly good sets and above average special effects work for the monsters, as well as a music score that's not too bad and a final scene that's notable in how it switches from black and white to color and red tinting, this is still a really standard, very close to the bottom of the barrel, kind of flick. It has actors

and characters that you can't get into or really care about, a story that they had to pad out with a good amount of stock footage and even then, the movie only turned out to be just a little longer than an hour, some rather choppy editing at points, a chunk of the second act that digresses from the main plot concerning the monsters, and a very dull third act and climax that's full of some pretty bad visual effects. If you're someone who grew up and saw it a lot on TV, you probably have a lot of affection and nostalgia for this flick, but that's not the case with me, and I can't see myself watching it ever again.