Monster from Green Hell

I recently acquired a copy of Monster From Green Hell and was after it for ages. This was released on video in Britain as part of the Killer B's series, all now out of print.

A nuclear test rocket containing wasps crashlands in an uncharted area of Africa known as 'Green Hell'. An expedition is sent over there to search for it. But before they arrive, locals are being killed by these wasps which, as a result of radiation, have grown into giants. While searching for the rocket and its contents, the party encounters dangers such as unfriendly natives, several days' of rain, a volcano, jungle wildlife and of course the giant wasps. They eventually find what they are looking for and the volcano erupting kills all the wasps at the end. They could have done with Tarzan's help. He would not have any trouble killing the wasps.

I found this movie rather enjoyable and the colour sequence at the end featuring the volcanic eruption was impressive.

The special effects were good considering the low budget. Some of the wasps and a snake were done in stop-motion. The cast includes Dallas star Jim Davies. This movie features stock animal footage and clips from the movie Stanley and Livingstone.

Great stuff.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

******SPOILERS****** Coming back from outer space a rocket launched from the southern part of the United States crashes into the African continent with a Queen Wasp. The wasp was on the rocket to see how it would react to the weightlessness and cosmic rays from space. The Queen Wasp grew thousands of times it's size forming a hornet's nest at the base of a volcano in an area of the jungle known by the local natives as "Green Hell".

The movie "Monster from Green Hell" follows the usual pattern of monster movies made in the 1950's with one major exception. The giant wasps are done in not by mankind technology but by the forces of nature via an volcanic eruption that buries them in a river of lava.

Meager special effects but better then average acting for a low-budget monster film made "Monster from Green Hell" watchable for the 70 odd minutes that it's on the screen. All the efforts to find and destroy that wasps in the movie turned out to be for nothing since all that had to be done was to let nature run it's course.

Cheap and unconvincing effects made the giant wasps look and act ridicules in their attacks on the natives and safari members with the real action highlight in the movie was an attack by thousands of native warriors on the safari. Those scenes was far more effective and scary then any of the giant wasp attacks.

Good acting by Jim Davis and Robert E. Griffin as the two American doctors on the safari with Joel Feuellen and Eduardo Ciannelli as their native and Arab guides with Vladimir Skoloff, who ended up killed by the wasps off screen. There's also in the movie Barbara Turner as Skoloff's young daughter who looked and sounded like a young Igrid Bergman. The special effects of the giant wasps was only so/so but there was a very good scene with a giant wasp battling it out with a large python that was a lot like the scene in "King Kong" between the giant ape fighting with a pre-historic snake-like creature.

The last five minutes or so of the movie was shot with an beige or orange tint to give the volcanic eruption at the end of the film a fiery look to it.

My biggest question about this movie is simply: How did the folks at MST-3000 ever miss this one? It simply cries out for the insights of Crow and Tom Servo.

Jim Davis ( "Dallas", "Guns Don't Argue" ) stars as the head of a group of scientists who attempt to launch some creatures into space. The rocket misfires and lands somewhere in darkest Africa where a bunch of wasps escape and grow into Sikorskys, thanks - natch - to atomic radiation. Davis then leads his own team of WASPS on an Orkin expedition to take care of the problem. Along the way, they are joined by Eduardo Ciannelli, looking a bit like Sabu's grandfather.

Nothing much goes right until the final scene, supposedly filmed in "Lava Vision", during which a giant volcanic eruption takes care of everything. This consists of the surviving crew standing around bathed in a red glow as the volcano - obviously taken from stock footage, as is much of the movie - does it's thing. All harmless fun really, it's only a shame that the MSTYs never got a hold of this one.

I was surprised at the amount of giant wasp animated action in the film at the start. There is even a giant full sized head prop too. But there seems to be quite a bit of Jim Davis voice over and as the movie goes on there starts to be more walking to get to the giant wasps than there is actual giant wasps. One major character dies off screen in a way that seems like they never got to shoot it. (Another character shows up and explains what happened) Then the ending is all stock footage and dissolves to footage we've already seen. And Jim Davis, as he did later in THE DAY TIME ENDED, explaining it all to us. Thank god otherwise you'd have only a vague idea of what you just saw, or didn't really get to see.

Too bad they ran out of what little money they had. A lively start progressively gets duller. Still that big wasp head was cool, another problem is the generally crappy quality of many copies of the film available which make the footage either dark or blown out. If you're going to watch it make sure you get a decent copy first.

The sending test animals into space aspect of the premise is a bit novel as is the idea of having the space ship crash way out in the middle of Africa and having to go find it. Certainly since the film was made, like with the remains of Space Lab, that type of thing has happened.

Growing up in Los Angeles in the late '50s & early '60s, we had "The Million Dollar Movie" on KHJ-channel 9. The MMM ran every night as well as twice on Saturdays and Sundays, giving the viewer nine opportunities over the course of the week to see whatever film was being shown.

When the MMM showed "The Monster From Green Hell," my cronies and I were seven or eight years old. We saw "The Monster From Green Hell" all nine times!!! Up to that point in our lives, it was perhaps the greatest thing ever put on celluloid.

Heck, giant wasps had over-run Africa and only Jim Davis, who starred as the hero ambulance driver in "Rescue 8" at the time could save mankind. Although I've read that the special effects were really cheap, I thought they might as well have come directly from George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic. Those huge, giant wasps sure looked real to us! I recall Viewing #8, Sunday afternoon, for you. A buddy and I were at my house, getting ready to watch it in our Living Room when my dad came in, plopped down into his favorite comfy chair and told us he was going to watch something else, something other than ... "The Monster From Green Hell." How could this be? Sacriledge was being committed right before our young eyes! Fortunately, I knew my dad's Sunday afternoon habits, and Habit #1 was sawing logs within five minutes of landing in his afore-mentioned comfy chair. As luck would have it, sure enough, he was off in Dreamland within only a couple minutes.

Discovering this, my buddy and I scooted up as close to the TV as humanly possible and turned the sound down so we could barely hear it.

It was in this manner that we caught virtually all of "The Monster From Green Hell" for the eighth straight showing on "Million Dollar Movie." Well, almost all of it.

Within a minute or two of its conclusion, the mighty beast stirred. Uh oh, my dad had awakened. With a surge of sudden awesome, lightning-quick fury, he arose, hovering over us like Shaq over Billy Barty, and erupted, "THAT'S IT, DAMMIT, NO MORE GODDAMNED 'GREEN HELL!" With that we scooted out from under his grasp, out of the Living Room, out of the house and down the street, congratulating ourselves as if we'd just won the World Series. For we had done it! We pulled off the impossible, a mighty feat indeed! Risking life itself, we were able to see what we truly believed was one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, "The Monster From Green Hell," eight straight times.

That night, at my buddy's house, we capped our perfect week by seeing it for the ninth and final time.

I have never seen it listed on TV again - and yes, I would kill to see it after all these years.