oscar-35
*Spoiler/plot- The Monster from Green Hell, 1957, giant Wasps in Africa.*Special Stars- Jim Davis, Robert Friffin, Barbara Turner, Eduardo Ciannelli, *Theme- Things from the atomic age can attack mankind, beware! *Trivia/location/goofs- Bronson Caves in Gower Park, Hollywood Calif. Stock footage from Spencer Tracy film, Stanley and Livingston'.*Emotion- The very basic and pathetic stop-motion animation of the attacking insects make this film somewhat ordinary and not very memorable. The cast of falling-stars is interesting to try and act their way out of this stinker.
Woodyanders
A test rocket crashes in the jungles of Africa. Radiation from the rocket causes wasps to mutate into gigantic murderous monsters who ravage the countryside. A team of scientists lead by Dr. Quent Brady (an extremely drippy performance by Jim Davis) are sent to the area to get to the bottom of things. Boy, does this stunningly stinky schlock possess all the expected endearingly awful bad movie vices: we've got clumsy direction by Kenneth Crane, hopelessly fake, plasticky creatures, shoddy back screen projection, gross mismatching with the film stocks (the grainy footage of African wildlife was probably taken from some cheapo documentary), a generic booming'n'bombastic score by Albert Glasser, a tedious surplus of blandly droning narration by Davis, colorless characters, rough, plain cinematography by Ray Flin, lots of talk, an uneventful narrative, and stiff-as-cardboard (non)acting from a noticeably disinterested cast (Barbara Turners cops the top thespic dishonors for her incredibly underwhelming turn as token female Lorna Lorentz). The scenes of the pathetically unconvincing titanic mutant bugs attacking folks are absolutely sidesplitting in their jaw-dropping ineptitude. A real gut-busting unintentional laugh riot.
bkoganbing
Before Jim Davis got his last and career part as Jock Ewing in Dallas, he had one tortured path to Hollywood success. He had a much publicized debut as Bette Davis's leading man in Winter Meeting which was one of her worst films. His portrayal of a war hero about to enter the priesthood met with a ton of critical guffaws. Still Davis persisted and took any kind of work. The Monster from Green Hell qualifies as any kind of work.A wasp is sent up in space to see the effects. Unfortunately on re-entry the space capsule crashes in the region of West Africa and the wasp has grown to the size of a Panzer tank. To top it all off the geniuses sending up the rocket sent up a pregnant queen so we've got all kinds of those Panzer wasps running around Africa.Jim Davis is sent to clean up the mess and runs into a medical missionary played by Vladimir Sokoloff. Albert Schweitzer was very much alive at the time and running his mission in West Africa. No one in 1958 mistook who Sokoloff was portraying. The wasps set up a colony in the shadow of a volcano. You can figure out the rest.This is typical Fifties science fiction when all kinds of radiation was the explanation for these creatures. In this case it was the radiation from cosmic rays, presumably from the newly discovered Van Allen belt around the earth. Tepid acting and chintzy special effects make The Monster from Green Hell great cult stuff. One thing though that is timely. An Arab character played by Eduardo Ciannelli joins forces with Davis and one of the natives Joel Fluellen to combat the danger the giant wasps present. Amazing how religious differences can suddenly melt away in time of crisis.
tilleycs
I agree with comments from a previous user, this movie is for completest only! Only watch this if you're crossing it off a list or you REALLY love monster movies; otherwise, it will be 1:15 of sheer agony and mind-numbing boredom. Typical "giant insect" movie from the 50's, complete with the required "giant monster/insect head rising slowly over the top of the hill while the natives run down the hill and away from the monster" scene. Nice twist using wasps as the insect, but they were slightly hindered by the fact that they couldn't, oh, fly! The stock footage is soooo obvious.I found it profoundly ironic that the monsters are supposed to be from "Green Hell", but there's nothing green IN this movie! It's all black-and-white! :) Not a good movie if your date/spouse doesn't share your love of old monster movies.
AD
