Monster from Green Hell

******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.

Jim Davis plays a scientist who sends some animals, a few wasps in particular, into space to see how they fare under radiation. Alas, some wasps don't return and turn to gigantic proportions somewhere in Western Africa. Don't expect too much from this cheapie, but the film might be better than you expect prior to viewing. Despite the wasps and their infrequent screen time, the movie has the look and feel of a very cheaply-made film yet is able to tell a decent...okay, almost decent story. Made entirely in California with oodles of stock footage set in Africa, I found the film quasi-authentic. The acting was also somewhat acceptable. Davis was decent as were his co-stars. The film dives at the end with some quick resolution to an enormous problem. As far as bad movies go..you could find many much less entertaining and boring. Vladimir Sokoloff has a nice small role as a missionary in Africa.

When this crappy film begins, you see a lot of stock footage of V-2 rocket tests. Supposedly these rockets are taking animals into the stratosphere to see what radiation there does to them. However, they loose track of one ship and where it lands, no one knows. Soon there are reports of monsters in a region of Central Africa known as 'Green Hell'--and instead of sending in troops, just two scientists are sent in to investigate. After a long series of adventures, they meet up with the evil killer wasps and, inexplicably, the long arm of God kills these creatures!!

Much of this film consists of stock footage clumsily inserted into the picture. Much of it grainy and the overall effect is lousy. But what's worse is that the film is incredibly dull...which you'd never expect from a monster film. Cheap and silly---and get a load of those stop-motion wasps!!

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.

Kenneth Crane followed his classic 'Half Human' with this little masterpiece whose 1956 copyright date indicates they weren't in a great hurry to release it.

In order to reassure the viewer that this is a twentieth-century sci-fi movie we get the usual footage under the opening credits of a wartime V-2 taking off masquerading as Dr. Quant Bradley's "experimental rocket". This time the film being cannibalised is 'Stanley and Livingstone', so they all don 19th Century pith helmets and WALK 400 miles across Africa to the Hollywood Hills to confront the giant mutant wasps following the "typical wasp markings" they leave behind them (although they look more like giant termites than wasps and in distress sound more like elephants than insects) that cosmic rays have created and are now wreaking havoc with the usual stock footage of antelopes and giraffes.

At the time of his death in 1981 Jim Davis was a household name on TV as Jock Ewing in 'Dallas' and he is here supported by veterans Eduardo Ciannelli and Vladimir Sokoloff; the latter's daughter played by the soulful-eyed Barbara Turner (herself later the mother of Jennifer Jason Leigh).