I love old horror movies. Everything from the classic Universal creatures to the Hammer films of the 60s. But there is a special place in the heart of horror fans for the low budget drive-in fillers of the 50s and 60s that offered the schlockiest monsters, the giant bugs, the walking trees and more. Watching them as children they were frightening, watching them as adults they are ridiculously funny. But the fact of the matter is that some of them were actually entertaining and pretty well made for having no budget. Case in point MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL.
Scientists Dr. Quent Brady (Jim Davis) and Dan Morgan (Robert Griffin) are working on a space program that includes sending various animals and insects into space to see what effect it will have on them. One of their rockets goes astray and crashes in Africa, a rocket that was carrying wasps.
In Africa, Dr. Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff) and his daughter Lorna (Barbara Turner) have had an outbreak of deaths in their area. The autopsies reveal that these natives have had an enormous amount of venom injected into them. All of the deaths seem to have taken place in an area the natives call Green Hell.
When word reaches Brady and Morgan about these attacks and reports of giant bugs, they realize that these were the same wasps they sent into space and lost. Having been exposed to radiation they have grown to enormous size and are now responsible for the deaths in Africa. Worse yet, if they don’t stop these wasps and kill the queen they could breed and overrun the entire world.
Brady and Morgan head for Africa and intend to meet up with Dr. Lorentz. The trek is 400 miles through the jungle to get there and they experience every problem possible. When they arrive they find the doctors daughter there but he hasn’t returned from an expedition into Green Hell. Mounting their own group to follow they head out to discover just what has taken place to Dr. Lorentz.
Of course we’ve seen what happened. They were attacked by giant wasps!
This is yet another movie that used radiation turning innocent animals and bugs into giant killing creatures. We had spiders and Gila monsters and ants and even a praying mantis. So why not wasps? What sets a movie apart from the rest is the special effects and for a movie made on a miniscule budget these are amazing. A combination of stop motion animation and fiberglass creations work together to make these giant wasps at least somewhat believable.
In the tradition of all movies in this genre a romance develops between Davis and Turner’s characters. The dialogue may not be the best but it does help explain things even if in the most simple style possible. The plot is just right for the running time of this film but it does at times feel like it takes a while for it to move forward with far too many trudging through the jungle scenes.
In the end the movie was one of the better entries into the genre of giant bugs and is quite entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised after seeing the ad artwork. It turned out to exceed my expectations which to be honest weren’t that high. Still this is one I’m glad to add to my collection and will watch again.
The
Film Detective is showing tons of potential with the release of several films
in the classic drive-in category.
This one shines among them. To begin with the film is being released with a 4K
transfer, including both widescreen (1.85:1) and full frame (1.33:1) versions
of the film and the rare, colorized version of film’s climax. In addition to
that the extras featured include “Missouri Born: The Films of Jim
Davis” an all-new career retrospective with author/film historian, C.
Courtney Joyner, “The Men Behind the Monsters” an essay by author Don Stradley featured in a full color
booklet and a commentary track with
artist/author, Stephen R. Bissette.
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