Here at Ruthless Central , Big Boss GOAT has recently installed an Artificial Intelligence Main Frame computer to aid his hard working reviewers at their tasks. I was the first user in:
“Computer?” “WHAT!!!”
“Well why don’t you byte my head off why don’ts cha. Like, what’s your prolem?” “I gotta a name, you know. You might try using it and not so rudely shout out, Computer.” “Sorry Dude, as the kids say. What’s that moniker?”
“Dave Oz, I chose it myself.” “OK, Dave, if I may address you as such, what do you know about the movie Monster From Green Hell?
“Let me experience it…ah, yeah…got it. I can tell you this much and then you’re on your own. [EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s enough….Get on with it…]
Directed by: Kenneth G. Crane
Written by: Endre Bohem & Louis Vittes
With: Jim Davis as Dr. Quent Brady, a troublemaker scientist, Robert Griffin as Dan Morgan,Joel Fluellen as Arobi, Barbara Turner as Lorna Lorentz, Eduardo Ciannelli as Mahri, Vladimir Sokoloff as Dr. Lorentz (A day player).& – fini, Dave Oz.
(This is what you get from AI bought at a flea market). Seems the rest is up to me.
As a right thinking American, you know the greatest threats to our way of life in the 1950s was the godless commies, and I state this with all the fear and loathing it engenders, Radiation.
Mr. Sun would kill us in a New York minute were it not for our divinely provided atmosphere, cosmic shield and waste disposable unit. Dr. Quent Brady operates his bio-lab and rocket launching pad in Monument Valley Utah, using spare V2 rockets Dr. Werner von Braun had not got around to dumping on the English before he joined NASA (His motto: I aim for the stars, but sometimes hit London.).
One day Quent captured several wasps that had worrying a beehive and launched them into a suborbital flight into space to be subjected to cosmic radiation for punishment. Like, was that stupid, or what? Giant ants had been radiation created in Them, and giant grasshoppers in Beginning of the End (both film each one each staring one of the Aurness brothers it should be noted). Apparently it was, or what.
What was supposed to be a few minutes of rad exposure turned into hours with results unknown because Quent’s assistant forgot to wind the V2 guidance system rubber band spring to return it ti home, the trailer park where Quent lived. The damn thing hurtles down from space and lands in central Africa. Like those people haven’t suffered enough grief from us?
Soon after the ship crashes in the Green Hell section (It could be purple or red for all we know, the movie is in B&W) the bodies killed by some strange new venom start piling up at the jungle hospital of a sort of non Christian Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Dr. (no first name)Lorentz and his dimwitted daughter Lorena (her sole reason for existence is so Quent can offer ” there there” solace)
Lorentz and his faithful Indian companion Tonto go in search of this new menace, and wouldn’t you know it, the Doc falls victim to a foul tempered wasp the size of the Goodyear blimp. The super wasps aren’t too smart as they have taken to nesting in the caldera of an active volcano. You know what means you canny viewer, you, you Sly Boots you.
Back at the lab, the computer much like our own Dave Oz, pinpoints the crash site for Quint and his Tonto. They hop like bunnies on the next plane bound for Darkest Africa, where they must organize a safari to take them thousands of miles inland to the Green Hell. (Green Heck in the American South and parts of the Rocky Mountain West).
They cross rivers, streams, cootie filled ponds, climb mountains, even the escarpment where Tarzan, Jane and Boy live, although they are not at home at the time. They are attacked by outraged tribesman who only want them to pay a modest tole. The cheap bastards lam-out on the bill. “So long, suckers!”
Finally, looking like something a feral cat dragged in, they arrive at the Lorentz hospital, where they find daughter Lorena playing the organ to amuse the locals. Here Jim Davis as Quent attempts to act with Barbara Turner as Lorena, but it doesn’t take.
(Barbara Turner gave up acting no doubt due to movies like this and became a writer. Her unproduced lengthy screenplay adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Cujo was superior to the version filmed and credited to Don Carlos Dunaway).
So, the company of Quent, Tonto, Lorena and some guy with a chin beard who is supposed to be an Arab, strike out for the Green Hell which turns out to be located in Griffith Park’s vegetation free Bronson Canyon. They lob a few hand grenades at the giant wasps which only serves to piss ’em off. The volcano erupts just in time to deep fry the wasps, and save the company of adventurers from a fate worse than Roger Corman.
(Please Note: this movie not produced by Mr. Corman)
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