From Hell It Came

...in this turkey! This stinkaroo rates in my personal 10 Worst Movies of all time. Lame plot,wooden(Ha-ha!)acting by all concerned,fake natives(complete with "New Yawk" accents)running around in shower curtains they must have swiped from the local motel,dialogue that makes "Me Tarzan,you Jane" sound like Masterpiece Theatre,the lamest catfight in cinematic history,I could go on and on. A couple of scenes really stand out in my mind: The tree drops the girl into the quicksand,upon which she obligingly pushes herself out deeper into the bog(so she can sink quicker and get the hell off the set ASAP?)Next,how in hell does the witch doctor manage to throw his spear completely over the Tabanga at a range of only 3 feet? However,if they decide to do a remake of this clunker,I know who can play the Tabanga-Vin Diesel! He'd be perfect for the role-he has all the acting ability,charisma,and facial expression of a tree!

Hilariously stupid schlock favourite has a deliciously ludicrous premise and overall is good fun, although for a while it's overly talky. It isn't until the final third that we see some priceless killer tree action. The filmmaking Milner brothers, director Dan and co-story author / producer Jack (who'd also done "The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues" previously) bumble their way through this kitschy combination of South Seas atmosphere, lame acting, very silly lines, and not very special effects. All of these elements make "From Hell It Came" a cinematic stinker that one can treasure.

A group of scientists on a remote island are trying to provide medical care to the locals, but the witch doctor and new tribal chief will have none of it. They execute Kimo (Gregg Palmer), son of the previous chief, for having the audacity to accept the help of these meddling Americans. But Kimo vows to return, and so he does, as something called the Tabanga, a lumbering humanoid walking tree (played by wrestler turned stuntman & actor Chester Hayes), and he proceeds to get his revenge. The scientists, meanwhile, don't ever look too concerned.

Starring as supposedly heroic doctor Bill Arnold is Tod Andrews ("Beneath the Planet of the Apes"), looking stone faced throughout. Playing the requisite female lead is pretty Tina Carver, whose character Terry Mason is portrayed as brainy but not too sensible, and eventually it's obviously her destiny to be carted away by the monster. Robert Swan, as witch doctor Tano, and Baynes Barron, as new tribal chief Maranka, are reasonably fun villains. Linda Watkins, however, is fatally annoying as motor mouthed trading post operator Mae Kilgore, affecting an absurd accent for the part.

One supposes that Jack Milner and screenwriter Richard Bernstein deserve credit for coming up with a different sort of monster for the atomic age. In any event, "From Hell It Came" is a real gas certain to have its audience chuckling often. It comes complete with a moral that "American magic is better", which just makes it all the more amusing.

Five out of 10.

Fans looking for absurd, cheesy entertainment from the 1950s will be well served by this cheap and schlocky B-movie, forever remembered in the hearts of bad film buffs as the one about the "killer tree". Forget THE GIANT CLAW, this is the real stuff. Anybody who's seen one of those old-fashioned low-budget 'jungle' movies made on a set in Hollywood will find FROM HELL IT CAME packed full of the stock clichés present from the period, from 'witch doctors' throwing magic exploding powder into flames, to strangely American-looking natives padding out the cast of village extras, to a script which vainly tries to make scientifically-plausible sense of the chaos whilst keeping a healthy level of mumbo-jumbo native superstition bubbling merrily away.

At the end of the day, the film concerns the activities of a walking tree to kill people. The special effects used to animate said tree are appalling; basically it's just some unlucky guy in a silly rubber suit, completed with a goofy face and painted-on eyes. The flexibility of the suit is zero, with just a couple of rubber arms sticking out from each side, so at any point the monster is required to perform an action, it just ends up looking ridiculous. The cast isn't much better; aside from dependable (but ageing) male lead Tod Andrews, there don't appear to be many real actors in the cast list. Most annoying of all is Linda Watkins' character. The American Watkins speaks with a truly grating Cockney accent all of the time, then later on turns out to have supposedly come from Australia! It beggars belief, it really does. Just another whacked-out element to an already incredible movie. An immortal delight for bad-film buffs everywhere.

This movie is ultra low budget, has ultra low budget acting, and ultra low budget special effects, even for 1957. And the storyline is perhaps the most ridiculous in the history of the cinema. Why then would I grace this movie with an "average" five star rating? Quite simply, it is hilarious! Come on, you have to admire any filmmakers nerve when he makes a movie about a walking killer tree stump! The only thing that comes close in my mind is the killer bulldozer aka "Killdozer" from the mid seventies. Watching the murderous tree stump lumbering across a field in search of prey is about the funniest thing in my movie memory. I first saw this film sometime in the seventies on one of those late night horror film festivals, and I'll never forget it! How can something so bad feel so good?

Yes, by todays standards..Yada, Yada.. This one perhaps even by '50s standards was a bit low budget..

However, if you remember this one from when you were a kid, then you can still hold a place for it in your monster closet 8-) As a kid this thing scared me on the big screen, and I'm so glad I didn't know what I know today to spoil it for me. A very special time when we could go down town and watch a couple of these "monster" flicks on a Saturday.

Not to mention the fun time spent looking at all the stills out front and in the lobby !!

I still hold those original feelings inside and can enjoy watching these again, with the added enjoyment in the fact that I WANT to enjoy them and revisit my past.