Monster from Green Hell

US scientists trek through Africa, tracking down giant wasps in this 1957 Al Zimbalist schlocker. Over a third of the picture consists of stock footage from a 1939 safari film, and what is left has few redeeming qualities. 2/10

Monster from Green Hell. 1957, USA. Directed by Kenneth G. Crane. Written by Louis Vittes & Endre Bohem. Starring: Jim Davis, Robert Griffin, Joel Fluellen. Barbara Turner, Vladimir Sokoloff, Eduardo Ciannelli. Produced by Al Zimbalist. IMDb: 3.6/10. Letterboxd: 2.6/5. Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Metacritic: N/A.

As US scientists Dr. Brady (Jim Davis) and Dr. Morgan (Robert Griffin) send up rockets in the upper atmosphere in order to test how animals react to being in outer space, something goes wrong. One rocket containing wasps goes too high and too far and crashes somewhere in currect-day Cameroon (although the film refers to it as “somewhere off the coast of Africa”).

Meanwhile, strange things are afoot in “Africa”, where animals are fleeing an area dubbed “Green Hell”, and when people start dying of alleged monster poisoning, resident jungle physician Dr. Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff) and local native helper Arobi (Joel Fluellen) go investigating, with Lorentz meeting his death off screen. When Brady and Morgan hear of the alleged monster attacks, they suspect that their wasps have been bombarded with radioactivity in space and mutated to enormous size. They decide to travel to “Africa” and soon join Dr. Lorentz’s daughter Lorna (Barbara Turner), Arobi and Mahri (Eduardo Ciannelli) in the monster hunt.

Yes, this is another giant insect movie from the tail-end of the SF movie trend. 1957 was the year when Hollywood’s giant bug craze went out of control, after having primarily been confined to a handful of pretty decent major studio films. Monster from Green Hell comes from notorious schlock producer Al Zimbalist by way of the independent production company Gross-Krasne Productions, and is directed by Kenneth G. Crane, primarily known as an editor. Special effects are by low-budget wizards Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt, which at least is a promise of some competence.

After much walking and nearly dying of thirst, the search party finally tracks down the giant wasp hive, and try to take it out with hand grenades. This doesn’t work, and instead they take cover in a cave and accidentally trap themselves inside by blowing up the entrance. When they finally find a way out they realise that a nearby volcano has decided to do their job for them, spewing lava all over the wasps. The end.

Background & Analysis

It all really started with King Kong (1933, review), the giant ape that wreaked havoc on New York. 20 years later Columbia released another giant monster film, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (review), about a prehistoric dinosaur thawed out of the Arctic, and making its way down North America, spreading death and destruction in its wake. The film inspired not only Gojira (1954, review), but also a Warner Bros. movie called Them! (1954, review). In essence, Them! follows the same plot structure as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, with the difference that instead of a dinosaur, we are dealing with giant, radioactive ants. The success of the film whetted the interest of both audiences and studios. However, the budget needed for the special effects for this kind of a film probably kept the numbers of imitations low: Universal’s Tarantula (1955, review) being one of the few major films featuring giant creepy crawlies of the mid-50’s. However, another Universal film, The Deadly Mantis (review) opened the floodgates in 1957, proving that giant bug films could be made on a very modest budget.

Just a few months later, Monster from Green Hell appeared in cinemas. According to Bill Warren’s book Keep Watching the Skies!, the idea for the film was presented to producer Al Zimbalist by his occasional collaborators, writers/producers/effects creators Irving Block, Jack Rabin and Louis DeWitt. Block’s name is not credited, and although Rabin and DeWitt are credited for effects, they seem to have mostly done the visual effects, while Gene Warren did all the creature and practical effects.

My overwhelming experience of the movie is one of endless scenes of trekking through the African veldt. According to Warren, it was Irving Block’s idea to build Monster of Green Hell around footage from the 1939 safari film Stanley and Livingstone, starring a young Spencer Tracy and Cedric Hardwicke. This is probably the reason Zimbalist chose as his director Kenneth Crane, who was primarily an editor. I may be off, but by my account, at least one third of the movie, if not more, consists of footage from Stanley and Livingstone. I watched the earlier film and can conclude that every scene containing a caravan walking through the African wilderness in Stanley and Livingstone was re-used by Crane. One of the film’s climacting scenes, of the caravan being attacked by “hostile natives”, is also lifted almost unedited from the 1939 movie, with only a couple of shots of the lead actors spliced in. Monster from Green Hell even lifts whole subplots, such as the protagonist coming down with jungle fever, from the movie, and even inserts a character based on Cedric Hardwicke’s portrayal of Dr. Livingstone, Dr. Lorentz, treating natives in a remote African village.

The use of Stanley and Livingstone also lends Monster from Green Hell a weird anachronistic feeling. The earlier film was, of course, set in the 19th century, so in order to match the footage from that film, Crane and screenwriters Louis Vittes and Endre Bohem have to give the leads 19th century costumes and cut out all modern equipment. Instead of doing what people did in the 50’s, use planes, helicopters and cars to get to where they were going, our US government-funded top scientists set off on a 19th century safari, complete with a menagerie of half-naked bearers in tow.

Now, you can make perfectly good films by building them around stock footage, as illustrated by Edward Dmytryk’s Captive Wild Woman (1943, review). However, people setting out to make good movies seldom use this method, so films that are built around stock footage tend to be fairly lousy, and Monster from Green Hell is no exception in this regard. Producer Al Zimbalist was a former studio PR man who graduated to producing films in 1952. He was strictly an exploitation specialist, specialising in making cheap knock-offs in order to fill theatre seats, with little regard for quality or originality. During his career he, for example, made three films on the back of footage from MGM’s King Solomon’s Mines (1950, review).

From a strictly technical point of view, Monster from Green Hell at least feels like it’s a rung above some of the exploitation cheapos Zimbalist produced in the early 50’s. Partly, of course, this is the case because 30-40 percent of the movie is made up of stock footage from a movie actually filmed in Africa. But since director Crane was an editor first and foremost, the new footage is fairly well integrated into the movie. It also helps that much of the new footage is filmed in Griffith Park and Bronson Canyon, and not just among potted plants in a studio. Crane’s direction of the new footage is also halway decent, or at least halfway competent.

Three wasp models were made for the movie, which actually uses stop-motion animation in several scenes. Gene Warren, animated the models, says they budget and shooting schedule was such that the models were very crude, and had wire “skeletons”, rather ball-and-socket joints, which was the system traditionally used in stop-motion animation. They were designed by Wah Chang, who later went in to design much of the iconic Star Trek tech, and became one of the top special effects operators in Hollywood. The models were simple casts with animated appendages, that is legs and mandibles. One large-scale head with animated disco ball eyes and mandibles was made for scenes in which the wasp would interact with the cast or when the head was shown in close-ups or other “hero shots”. For example, there is one shot which replicates the scene in Gojira, where the giant lizard peeps over a hill at people running away. Such scenes were accomplished with rather crude superimpositions. In scenes of the wasp attacking, the head was paired with a pair zoolologically very incorrect pincers, like that of a crab’s, that look like they’re attached to the wasp’s fore legs. There have been rumours over the years that AIP’s monster creator extraordinaire, Paul Blaisdell, would have been involved in creating the monster wasps, but in Randy Palmer’s biography Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker, Blaisdell denies having had anything to do with the film. He says that Zimbalist did contact him regarding the monsters, and that he did make some sketches that he sent Zimbalist, but then neither heard anything from the producer, nor did he get paid for his work. The wasps that show up on screen, however, look nothing like what he drew, Blaisdell says.

In fact, if we weren’t told frequently that the monsters are wasps, they would never be recognisable as such. First of all, they look like beetles. Second, they don’t fly, but rather seem to crawl extremely slowly through the vegetation. So slowly, that it is a mystery how they manage to catch their prey. Unless, of course, all their prey is like the characters of the film, who walk straight into a wasp the size of a small elephant, which makes a constant, loud buzzing sound. The size of the wasps, incidentally, is also something of a conundrum. According to Warren, the screenwriters had envisioned wasps the size of terriers. Apparently Zimbalist and Crane thought they shoulc be bigger. However, in several wide shots, the wasp seems to be the size of a seven-story buildning, while in others they are the size of, as stated, an elephant.

All things considered, though, the monsters or the shoddy effects are not the problem with this film, but rather the script. The film opens at a rocket launch site with the two scientists talking about sending test animals out in space with the same nonchalance as if they were mailing a package. When one rocket goes astray and lands in “Africa”, they sort of just ignore it, and it isn’t until people start dying that at least one of them feels that maybe they should clean up their mess.

The plot is then put on hold for about 30 minutes (of an 80-minute film), following the wholly pointless trek through Africa, in which we learn nothing mora about the monster or the characters involved, and which has serves absolutely no other point than filling out time. In inserts, we follow Dr. Lorentz and Arobi who are on their own mission to explore the local deaths in “Green Hell”. However, this subplot also doesn’t serve any plot purpose, ending in the death of Lorentz (off screen and revealed after the fact). After the death of Lorentz, we are for the first time properly introduced to his daughter, another character which is wholly redundant to the film. There isn’t even tacked-on romance between her and Dr. Brady. She seems to exist in the film simply because the producers felt that they had to have a female character in the film. The writers have squeezed in a sort of justification for her presence, as she is the one who convinces the superstitious and cowardly natives of the village to accompany the scientists as bearers — through telling them that she is going along, and “they could not admit that their fear was greater than that of a woman’s”. Of course, this also convinces the male scientists to grudgingly allow a “girl” to tag along. In an almost impressively swift sweep, the film thus manages to play out sexism against racism.

As if the long trek wasn’t enough to pad out the film, thus script is so thin, that with 10 minutes remaining of the movie, the screenwriters have to pad out another seven minutes by having the protagonists trapped in a cave after having failed to kill the wasps with hand grenades. The scene leading up to the cave-in, by-the-by, is an almost exact copy of a scene of a giant lizard groping after the protagonists in a cave in Bert I. Gordon’s low-budget monstrosity King Dinosaur (1955, review), incidentally also produced by Al Zimbalist (with stock footage from One Million B.C. [1940]) — probably using the exaxt same shooting location at Bronson Canyon. And after finally making it out of the cave, our heroes find that an extremely convenient volcanic eruption is in the process of wiping out the wasps. Dr. Brady even says something along the lines of “mother nature succeeded where we failed”, whereas the other scientist replies that “nature has a way of correcting its own mistakes”. The only problem here is that this wasn’t nature’s mistake, but the mistake of two block-headed scientists who shot their rocket to Africa instead of Nevada, and then didn’t care enough to go get ot before people started dying.

This deus-ex-machina ending also renders the entire film completely pointless. We have reviewed films with pointless protagonists before, as useless heroes are one of the weird staples in these kind of movies. But I don’t think we have reviewed the film in which the entire plot is rendered completely moot before. The closest we have been, I think, is actually the afore-mentioned King Dinosaur, in which a team of scientist walk around most of the film extremely bored with doing “science stuff” on a newly discovered planet, only to run into the local inhabitants, which are dinosaurs, and nuking them all into oblivion before going home.

If the characters themselves would have been even remotely interesting, this might have counterbalanced the pointless plot. But Dr. Brady is completely devoid of any personality, and Dr. Morgan just tags along — he isn’t even written as a comic relief. Lorna goes through her brief appearance in the film sulking and does nothing. The most interesting character is the kind-hearted Dr. Lorentz, and his relationship with Arobi holds at least a hint of an interesting inter-personal relationship, but this ends abruptly with Lorentz being killed off halfway through. Arobi is written in typical racist style as the “civilised savage”, but kudos must at least be given to the screenwriters for letting him survive until the end of the story.

The acting is nothing to write home about here, but the fault is the script’s rather than the actors’. Character actors Jim Davis and Robert Griffin in the leads phone in their performances. Barbara Turner might have been a decent actress, but she gives no indication of it here — she later had far better success as a producer and in particular as a screenwriter. Joel Fluellen was a good actor, and has some nice scenes with Vladmimir Sokoloff’s Dr. Lorentz, but can’t overcome the material. Veteran character actors Sokoloff and Eduardo Ciannelli are charismatic and memorable enough to always remain interesting on screen, no matter how small or badly written their characters. Sokoloff in particular is the boon of this film — it’s just a shame he didn’t get more screen time.

You can try to find some kind of message here about new technology, such as nuclear power, going wrong in horrible ways, but it is doubtful that the screenwriters had any loftier ideas in mind other than to make a buck.

This is a film strictly for completists like me, or for those who love a proper so-bad-it’s-good film. In all other cases, this is a one of those movies that I watch so you don’t have to. It’s not the worst of the lot, it is just superbly boring and wholly pointless.

Reception & Legacy

According to some sources, Monster from Green Hell didn’t get a general release before 1958. This, however, is not the case, as press clippings show movie house advertisments for the film as early as May 1957. The film was distributed by DCA in the US alongside Half Human, the Americanised version of Ishiro Honda’s snowman movie Ju jin yuki otoko (1955, review). Unsurprisingly, the film received little attention from critics. The only newspaper review I’ve been able to find is by Fred Russell in The Bridgeport Post, in which he says of the two films: “Entertainment seekers who enjoy this type of alleged horror will probably find both features satisfactory, but not above avegare in their category”. The Motion Picture Exhibitor echoes these sentiments about Monster from Green Hell: “As part of a horror show this should be adequate for those who come seeking this sort of thing. It’s moderately interesting and could scare the sensitive or the kiddies. The performances, direction and production are fair. […] It’s okay for the lower half.”

Today, the film has its followers because of its feature on MST3K. It has a 3.6/10 audience rating on IMDb, and a 2.6/5 rating on Letterboxd, and not enough entries for a Rotten Tomatoes consensus. Modern critics are not kind. DVD Savant Glenn Erickson remembers trying to watch Monster From Green Hell repeatedly as a kid, but always falling asleep. Richard Scheib at Moria gives the film 0/5 stars, noting the over-use of African stock footage, and that “the new material that Kenneth G. Crane has filmed to fit around the stock footage is exceedingly crude”. Kevin Lyons at EOFFTV states: “At 71 minutes, Monster from Hell should have flown by. It doesn’t. It drags. 71 minutes in the company of unbelievable characters, poorly acted and unconvincingly fitted in around pre-existing footage doesn’t make for the most entertaining evening’s viewing you’ll ever have.” And Mark H. Harris at Black Horror Movies notes: “As was characteristic of cinema of the era, the Africans have negligible value beyond being food for the monsters and beasts of burden for the white heroes. In this film in particular, they’re portrayed as cowardly, ignorant, superstitious and almost infantile.” He continues: “Although there’s way too much hiking through the wilderness in Monster From Green Hell, it’s still relatively watchable in a train wreck sort of way”.

Cast & Crew

Producer Al Zimbalist was a Ukrainian immigrant who moved to the States as a young boy and started out with different jobs in the movie industry, first as an editor for Warner’s in-house magazine in 1929, as well as a producer and director of the studio’s club events. In 1931 he moved to the advertising and publicity branch of RKO-Pathé. He eventually became a production assistant for independent producer Edward L. Alperson, and in 1953 finally broke out as an independent producer and writer in his own right. His entire production catalogue, around a dozen films, are super-cheap exploitation films. Among his productions are such legendary clunkers as Cat-Women of the Moon (1953, review), Robot Monster (1953, review) and King Dinosaur (1955) and Monster from Green Hell (1957). His one hit movie was Baby Face Nelson (1957), with Mickey Rooney, which secured him a contract with MGM. However, at MGM, he spent most of his time mining King Solomon’s Mines (1950) for African stock footage, resulting in three films: Watusi (1959), Tarzan the Ape Man (1959) and Drums of Africa (1963). He also made Valley of the Dragons (1961), loosely inspired by the Jules Verne novel Hector Servadac/Off on a Comet, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. For this film he, again, re-used footage from One Million B.C. (1950).

Kenneth G. Crane was a workhorse editor who apparently harboured directorial ambitions, and got his chance when approached by the producers of Monster from Green Hell (1957) to direct two films built around other movies. Crane also directed the new scenes for Half Human (1957), based on the Japanese snowman film Ju jin yuki otoko (1955). That was an even less ambitious project, and Crane’s job was simply one day of shooting with John Carradine creating a frame and narration for Ishiro Honda’s film. Crane also directed the war film When Hell Broke Loose (1958) and the monster movie The Manster (1959). Naturally, Crane also worked as editor on his films.

Screenwriters Louis Vittes and Endre Bohem were normally capable pens for hire, and Monster from Green Hell must rank among their worst efforts. Hungarian-born Bohem started working various jobs in Hollywood in the late 20’s, and held contracts at both MGM and Paramount, although he wrote scripts for several other companies as well, beginning in the 30’s. In the late 40’s he also started producing, and is perhaps best remembered for producing and writer scripts for the TV series Rawhide. Vittes worked as a Hollywood screenwriter between 1954 and 1969, and is primarily known for penning Paramount’s I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), a film that has a reputation for being better than its title would suggest. He also wrote over 30 episodes for Rawhide.

Lead actor Jim Davis was a staple in low-budget westerns and crime films from the late 40’s to the late 70’s, and even played lead in a handful of TV shows like Stories of the Century (1958) and Rescue 8 (1958-1960). However, he shot to international stardom when he landed a place in the principal cast of the soap opera Dallas as patriarch Jock Ewing in 1978, a role he held to his death in 1981. Out of respect, the show decided not to recast the role, but instead killed off the popular character. The role earned him a posthumous Emmy nomination in 1951. Davis also appeared in the low-budget SF films Monster from Green Hell (1957), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966), Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) and The Day Time Ended (1979).

Being a black, gay actor in Hollywood in the 40’s and 50’s wasn’t easy. This, however, was the struggle of Joel Fluellen, playing Arobi. Fluellen started his acting career on stage in New York, and relocated to Hollywood in the early 40’s, quickly realising that for black actors, there were few roles in mainstream films for black people, other than maids, porters, butlers, bellboys or “native savages”. However, during his career he got good supporting roles in “black films” like The Jack Robinson Story (1950), Porgy and Bess (1959), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), The Learning Tree (1969), The Great White Hope (1970) and The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1976).

Fluellen is better known for his tireless and outspoken activism to end discrimination of black actors in Hollywood. He joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1950, and repeatedly petitioned the guild to implement measures in order to prevent discrimination, but the SAG leadership, helmed by Ronald Reagan, ignored his pleas. He then co-founded the Negro Actors Guild to help provide better opportunities on the West Coast. He also organized the Negro Arts Theater in Los Angeles. It wasn’t until the 70’s, that SAG founded the Ethnic Equal Opportunity Committee. He quit acting in 1978, but continued his activism. In 1984, his efforts toward awarding black actress Dorothy Dandridge a posthumous star on the Hollywood walk of fame came to fruition, and in 1985 he received the first Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society. During the last years of his life, Fluellen suffered from prolonged illness and blindness. In order to put himself out of his misery, he committed suidice by shooting himself in the head in 1990.

Barbara Turner was a struggling actress from the mid-50’s to the mid-50’s, and if her work in Monster from Green Hell is anything to go by, it is no wonder she was struggling. Turner has said that she started writing as a way to fund her acting career, and apparently she quickly noticed that she was better behind than in front of the camera. Her first credit is from then-husband Vic Morrow’s movie Deathwatch (1965), starring Leonard Nimoy before his Star Trek fame in this interesting gay love triangle set in a prison. Turner adapted the script from Jean Genet’s novel. She wrote around a dozen more theatrically released movies, sometimes collaboratong with ex-husband Morrow, sometimes with her second husband Reza Badiyi, sometimes with daughter, actress/writer/producer Jennifer Jason Leigh, and sometimes with her close friend Robert Altman. She also wrote around a dozen TV movies, some of which she also produced. Among her best remembered films as a screenwriter are Cujo (1983), Pollock (2000), The Company (2003) and Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012). Turner passed away in 2016.

Russian-born and Moscow-trained actor Vladimir Sokoloff spent much the 20’s and 30’s in Germany and Austria, where he became famous character actor, and, among much else, appeared in G.W. Pabst’s classics The 3 Penny Opera (1931) and The Queen of Atlantis (1932). With the rise of the Nazis to power, he first fled to France, where he continued to appear in movies, such as Jean Renoir’s The Lowerd Depths (1936), and then to Hollywood, where one of his first appearances was in Wiliam Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola, in which he played artist Paul Cezanne.

In the US, Sokoloff was quickly typecast in “ethnic” roles. It didn’t matter whether they were Russian, German, French, Italian, Spanish or Greek, Chinese, Indian, Arab, Latino or Native American, Sokoloff played them all. He specialised in benevolent, kind-hearted and often wise characters, but also played the occasional sinister role. He is particularly well known for his appearances as Anselmo in For Whom he Bell Tolls (1943) and the Old Man in The Magnificent Seven. His science fiction films include Monster from Green Hell (1957), I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957, review) and Beyond the Time Barrier (1960), in which he playes the leader of a sterile world in 2024. He acted until his death in 1962.

Italian character actor Eduardo Ciannelli made the unlikely journey from opera singer at the La Scala to playing bit-parts in no-budget Hollywood schlock. Born on an island outside of Naples in 1889, Ciannelli educated himself as a physician, but his true calling was the stage and, as mentioned, he began his career as an opera singer. However, he transitioned into dramatic theatre, and in 1919 made the move to New York, where he performed on Broadway. He made his Hollywood debut in 1933, and thanks to his stereotypical Italian manners, his lined face and pierceing eyes, was quickly typecast as a gangster. Notable performances include those in Winterset (1936) and Marked Woman (1937). However, he is perhaps better today for more fantastic roles, such as the Kali sect leader in Gunga Din (1939), the high priest in The Mummy’s Hand (1940) and the titular villain in the serial Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940).

In the 40’s, Ciannelli started to decline gangster roles and escape his typecasting, which led to a decline in his career, and in the early 50’s he returned briefly to Italy, where he appeared in several movies. Warner’s costume epic Helen of Troy (1956), filmed in Italy, brought Ciannelli back to the US. His career as far as movies were concerned didn’t necessarily improve, as illustrated by his involvement in Monster from Green Hell, but he found himself in some demand as a TV guest star in the late 50’s and 60’s.

The music of Monster from Green Hell was composed by Albert Glasser, a composer who worked himself up the Holloywood ladder from copyist, stock music arranger and orchestrator to credited composer. His first on-screen credit as composer was for the Curt Siodmak adaptation The Monster Maker (1944, review), about which he said “What the hell? If I didn’t want it, they had ten guys waiting. I wanted credit.” With his ability to work fast (and therefore cheap), he became a sought-after composer for B-movies. His IMDb bio states: “He scored a staggering 135 movies between 1944 and 1962, not counting at least 35 features for which he received no credit. In addition to scoring 300 television shows and 450 radio programs, he arranged and conducted for noted American operetta composer Rudolf Friml and orchestrated for Ferde Grofé Sr.” Glasser composed 15 science fiction movies, including The Neanderthal Man (1953, review), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957, review), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), Teenage Caveman (1958), Earth vs. the Spider (1958) and The Cremators (1972). He was also musical director for Rocketship X-M (1950, review).

Janne Wass

Monster from Green Hell. 1957, USA. Directed by Kenneth G. Crane. Written by Louis Vittes & Endre Bohem. Starring: Jim Davis, Robert Griffin, Joel Fluellen. Barbara Turner, Vladimir Sokoloff, Eduardo Ciannelli. Music: Albert Glasser. Cinematography: Ray Flin. Editing Kenneth G. Crane. Production design: Ernst Fegté. Makeup: Louis Haszillo. Sound: Stanley Cooley. Special effects: Jess Davison. Visual effects: Gene Warren, Jack Rabin, Louis Dewitt, Wah Chang, Jack Cosgrove. Wardrome: Joseph Dimmitt. Produced by Al Zimbalist for Gross-Krasne Productions & DCA.