Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Benas Mcloughlin Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

MartinHafer 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!!

Paul Andrews Monster from Green Hell starts as a rocket is sent into space, scientists Dr. Quent Brady (Jim Davis) & Dan Morgan (Robert Griffin) are being paid good money to conduct research into the exposure of space to living animals, a rocket ship containing some Wasp's has gone missing & stayed in space for six months before crashing back to Earth somewhere in Africa. Quent is worried & newspaper headlines claiming of unrest in central Africa because of sightings of huge monsters does nothing to improve his mood, Quent suspects that the Wasp's aboard the rocket have mutated to an enormous size & are buzzing around Africa scaring the locals. Something must be done. Quent & Dan decide to go to Africa & discover the truth, unfortunately they need to hike through 400 miles of jungle to get to the location of the sightings but once they do their worst fears become a terrifying reality...Edited & directed by Kenneth G. Crane this cheap black and white late 50's sci-fi monster flick has a bad reputation & after watching it I can understand why, apart from the ridiculous monster Wasp's this thing drags badly which is odd considering it only lasts for 70 minutes. The main problem is that it starts off like a rocket with the mutant Wasp's making an early appearance but then the script slows right down & is padded to the extreme, once Quent lands in Africa the hike across 400 miles of jungle lasts for about forty minutes where next to nothing happens. The expedition run short of water, then it rains. A lot. They are attacked by native tribes & generally just walk around a lot as Quent narrates the story so copious amounts of stock footage can be used. Then during the final ten minutes the Wasp's show up again & are destroyed in a Volcanic eruption, why don't they just fly away? I mean don't Wasp's have wings? Can they not fly? Maybe I'm just thinking about this too much, yeah that's probably it. The character's are poor, there's no chemistry between any of them & not even the obligatory romance between the hero & leading lady. The scientist guy keeps referring to radiation but correct me if I am wrong I don't think there is any radiation in space? The film as a whole feels very dated, the scientific concepts used to explain plot points wouldn't convince a seven year old these days & it really does drag at times with a rather rushed climax.Lots & lots of stock footage is used in Monster from Green Hell, some of it quite nice & nicely edited into the final film but it does stand out all the same. Apparently some footage from Stanley and Livingstone (1939) starring Spencer Tracy was used. The special effects are predictably laughable, the toy Wasp's slowing move along with little wings which barely flap & plastic heads that just look so inanimate & stiff. The attacks aren't that good but there is a cool scene in which a mutant Wasp has a fight with a huge animated Python in easily the films best & most (only?) memorable sequence.Probably shot on no money in California with Bronson Canyon doubling up for the Green Hell of Africa, the whole film plods along with no great suspense or resolution. The acting is wooden as expected, I can't say that I personally recognized anyone in the cast.Monster from Green Hell is a pretty bad sci-fi horror giant insect film that as usual for this period blames radiation, the large amounts of stock footage & the tedious expedition through Africa slow things down to a crawl from which the film never really recovers. The giant Wasp's are also silly looking but kind of cool in a quaint way. I can't really recommend it but that giant Wasp versus Python fight was cool & I had a bit of fun with it, if not much.

bkoganbing Before Jim Davis got his last and career part as Jock Ewing in Dallas, he had one tortured path to Hollywood success. He had a much publicized debut as Bette Davis's leading man in Winter Meeting which was one of her worst films. His portrayal of a war hero about to enter the priesthood met with a ton of critical guffaws. Still Davis persisted and took any kind of work. The Monster from Green Hell qualifies as any kind of work.A wasp is sent up in space to see the effects. Unfortunately on re-entry the space capsule crashes in the region of West Africa and the wasp has grown to the size of a Panzer tank. To top it all off the geniuses sending up the rocket sent up a pregnant queen so we've got all kinds of those Panzer wasps running around Africa.Jim Davis is sent to clean up the mess and runs into a medical missionary played by Vladimir Sokoloff. Albert Schweitzer was very much alive at the time and running his mission in West Africa. No one in 1958 mistook who Sokoloff was portraying. The wasps set up a colony in the shadow of a volcano. You can figure out the rest.This is typical Fifties science fiction when all kinds of radiation was the explanation for these creatures. In this case it was the radiation from cosmic rays, presumably from the newly discovered Van Allen belt around the earth. Tepid acting and chintzy special effects make The Monster from Green Hell great cult stuff. One thing though that is timely. An Arab character played by Eduardo Ciannelli joins forces with Davis and one of the natives Joel Fluellen to combat the danger the giant wasps present. Amazing how religious differences can suddenly melt away in time of crisis.

Space_Mafune After a nuclear rocket, containing wasps from a scientific experiment researching the effects of sending the insects into space, crashes in an uncharted part of Africa nicknamed "Green Hell" by the natives, the frightening result is gigantic mutated monstrosities the result of prolonged exposure to radiation. Now with word that these monsters are terrorizing that portion of the African continent, the scientists responsible for the experiment travel into the heart of Africa hoping to put a stop to this newfound threat.Dull. Dull. Dull. A better word could not be more apt to describe this turgidly paced movie filled with scenes of folks walking, and walking, and walking some more. Although this film is only 71 minutes in length, it feels more like three hours. Sure there's some half-decent stop-motion animated monsters but they are particularly disappointing in comparison to other stop-motion efforts of the era and the stock footage used from STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE (1939) perks things up slightly as well towards the end but aside from those short moments of excitement, well there's lots and lots of walking. Did I mention that already? Did I also mention this movie is almost a surefire cure for insomnia?