mark.waltz
The brilliant James Whale prepared to wrap up his screen career by directing this adventure yarn with a marvelous cast, giving Saturday matinée audiences loads of pleasure but sadly not utilizing the color that this film so desperately calls for. His story is preposterous but told in such an entertaining manner that the story hardly matters. All you need to do is grab a bag of popcorn, sit back and enjoy an early variation of what audiences in 1981 got a kick out of with "Raiders of the Lost Ark". O.K., so there aren't any Nazi's for Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to chase in the jungles of South America, but there are plenty of arrow-flinging head hunters as well as a tomb filled with golden artifacts, leading to an adventure-filled flick that may not have done its director any good (considering his horror masterpieces such as "Frankenstein" and "The Old Dark House", as well as the marvelous 1936 movie version of the musical "Show Boat"), but remains marvelous entertainment.Joan Bennett enters the scene about a third into the film after her husband (a non-villainous Vincent Price) becomes the first victim of a head-hunter's arrow. Much like Deborah Kerr in "King Solomon's Mines", she brings romance into the story, distracting Fairbanks from chasing the film's one villain (Francis McDonald) and leading to an obvious conclusion. George Sanders is profound as another member of the team who faces death with dignity as the natives approach their fortress, and Alan Hale (Sr.) is the wise doctor amongst the group. Hundreds of extras in native costume fill out the population of guides and head-hunting natives. Considering that he appeared in practically every other Universal film of this nature, it is surprising that Andy Devine wasn't cast here to provide comic relief. The one acting embarrassment is John Howard as a cowardly member of the team. While Bennett is gorgeous in her new Hedy Lamarr make-over, her character here is not as memorable, being rather lady too lady-like and not at all like those vixens she would begin playing a few years later in a series of memorable melodramas and film noir.
James Knoppow
'Green Hell' was Whale's penultimate feature length film. Frances Marion, the screen writer, was famous in the silent era, but when the talkies came in, her scripts had to be re-written by others for dialog. She simply had no talent at all for that; her mastery was in plot and action.Whale was coming off of 'The Man in the Iron Mask' which made lots of money for its producer, and Whale's agent told him that if he made 'Green Hell' it would put him back in the limelight.The budget was good enough, $685,000, and he had a reasonable thirty-six days to complete it. He had the help of Karl Freund and Ted Kent, his long time favorite editor, and one of his favorite assistant directors, Joe McDonough.The ambient temperature was screamingly high that summer; Freund's large bank of carbon arc lights didn't help. The problem with the film was the script. The dialog was worse than inane, audiences were falling out of their seats, laughing.I think Whale may have been bipolar. He had periods of manic activity, interspersed with complete disinterest in what he was doing. He was a director who was not afraid of demanding re-writes, and he did have a talent for judging scripts. He must have known that he was attempting to turn a color-by-the-numbers canvas into a work by Picasso, but when Ted Kent approached him about the script, Whale, according to James Curtis, Whales biographer, said merely that it was "very good. Great."Francis Marion wanted her name taken off the credits. But she wrote the script, and very little had been done to change. Her credit remained, and it was the last script she ever sold.The reviews were terrible. In his memoirs, Douglas Fairbanks doesn't so much as mention the film. Famous Productions had lasted for the length of this one movie, the company failed before the film was released. Harry Edington, according to Curtis, "took a job as production chief at RKO."
bkoganbing
Voted the worst picture of the year by the students of Harvard and presumably the winner of the Harvard Lampoon award for 1940 if such was given out back in the day, Green Hell is a great example of what some actors will do for a friend.Note the credits for producer of this film, the name of the gentleman was Harry Eddington. He and another man Frank Vincent were partners in a talent agency and according to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in his memoirs, Eddington had always wanted to be a producer. He was well liked by his clients and the cast members he assembled were from mostly his free lance clients who did a favor for him. He got Frances Marion to write the script and James Whale to direct and sold the whole business to Universal.Other than some establishing shots the entire thing was done on the sound stage of Universal. It all looks phony, even the King Kong jungle at RKO was better than this. Of course American movie companies were not shooting abroad in tropical climates at this time. Fairbanks remembers that while the sets were all phony, the humidity due to lack of air conditioning wasn't.The story is set in South America at the Amazon headwaters where one of those movie lost cities has been found. Rumors of Inca treasure has brought a motley concoction of adventurers on an expedition headed by archaeologists Alan Hale and ramrodded by Fairbanks. Vincent Price is part of the group, but he's killed off before a third of the film is done. But when the native porters bring back medicine to help him possibly survive poison arrows, they also bring back his wife, now his widow Joan Bennett.And Joan is dressing pretty chic for jungle travel, she's got all the guys panting after her. But when those headhunters who killed off Price come back, it's starting to look more like the Alamo.Green Hell is a curious concoction that's part Trader Horn, part Rain, a little of the Alamo and a little of John Ford's Lost Patrol. Vincent Price as well as Fairbanks used to cheerfully make fun of this film. What some people won't do for a friend.
Sleepy-17
Essentially "Lost Patrol with a Girl"; not enough action to be a true adventure. Nice photography and spotty acting are the main features of Whale's last film. Noble Englishmen exploit grateful natives, finding treasure in an Inca temple. They fight over "the girl" and then are surrounded by savages with poison darts. Good battle scenes at the end. A must for Whale fans, for everyone else it's a moderately amusing time-waster.
AD
