BY HANK REINEKE
One man’s cinematic trash is another man’s cinematic
treasure, so I will tread lightly here. Simply
put, the low budget horror From Hell It
Came (1957) is not a very good movie. The fact that the folks at Warner Archive have made this available on
Blu-ray allows film fans a glimmer of hope that their own personal cinematic
Titanic might yet see release in this upscale format. This is tough review for
me. As a devotee of Silver Age Sci-Fi
movies, I wish I could be more charitable of this film’s few merits, but Richard
Bernstein’s screenplay offers little more than a cycle of endless chatter. This causes the film’s relatively brief 71-minute
running time to seem even more meandering and interminable. That producer Jack Milner and
director-brother Dan Milner (The Phantom
from 10,000 Leagues (1955) were able to bring this unremarkable film to
fruition is laudable, but while this movie has achieved some low-grade cult
status - and a memorable monster that has spawned a thousand snickering
mockeries – it’s nowhere in the league of such entertaining monstrosities Phil
Tucker’s Robot Monster (1953) or Ed
Wood’s seminal Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).
I suppose, if caught in the right combination of shadow
and light, the titular tree monster from Hades might be of somewhat cool design…
if still not particularly threatening. I
think I should mention, in the interest of full disclosure and despite my
critical brickbat here, I actually purchased
the original DVD release of this when first issued in 2010. So I’m not immune to the film’s (very) limited
pleasures. Set on an unnamed island in
the South Seas, From Hell It Came manages
to unashamedly mix the timeworn clichés of nearly every B-picture worthy of the
designation: jungles, quicksand pits, scientists, voodoo doctors, atomic energy
and, of course, a lumbering monster. Released in the summer of 1957, From
Hell It Came was paired with another Allied Artists voodoo-themed release The Disembodied (a somewhat better film also
available as a MOD DVD release through Warner Archive).
Having been born in the first decade of the 20th
century, the aging Milner Bros. were either already over or nearing their chronological
half-century mark when they unleashed From
Hell It Came on unsuspecting teenage moviegoers. I suppose it’s to their credit that they
chose not to pander to their teenage audience – as, for example, that decade’s immensely
popular beach-party and biker movies most certainly would. The Milner’s, conversely, seem to have little
interest in promulgating lowbrow teen culture. They display an almost refreshing disinterest in appearing hip; this is most
evident in their disparagement of the ascendant rock n’ roll phenomena. The natives’ tribal drums are referenced sarcastically
as providing “a nice anthropological beat.†The killjoy egghead scientists on
the island suggest the crazy, primitive, and percussive tribal rhythms are so
“out thereâ€, they’re worthy of topping the contemporary hit parade.
The film’s casting team – assuming there was one, of
course – were, at best, making what they could from the shallow pool of available
talent. While some of the island’s natives
share some physical characteristics of Pacific islanders, most of the indigenous-to-the-island
roles are handled by actors who… Well,
let’s say they could have been plucked from the sidewalk of the Gambino’s
Bergin Hunt and Fish Club of Ozone Park, Queens. Similarly, the best that can be said of the
film’s wardrobe and costume department is that they made good use of their 50%
off summer clearance coupon at Tommy Bahama.
Though badly mounted, this film is essentially one more formulaic
allegory pitting old world superstition against modern science. The tribe’s blood-thirsty medicine man –
perhaps sensing his position as exalted healer might soon become redundant - is
at the center of the mayhem. He’s
clearly unhappy that his healing herbs and folkloric healing incantations have
been neatly usurped by the “Devil Dust†of the American scientists, the healing
pharmaceuticals of modern medicine. He’s
so upset, in fact, that the film opens in a rather savage manner, with poor islander-collaborationist
Kimo (Gregg Palmer) being put to a grim death for his collusion with the infidel
American doctors. In his last spoken declaration
before meeting his maker, the bound and aggrieved Kimo threatens to come back
from Hell itself, if only to make the witch doctor and his minions pay dearly for
putting him to this terrible end.
Having been grotesquely and mortally staked through the
chest, the islanders bury poor Kimo, for no apparent reason, vertically. To no one’s surprise he reemerges later as Tabonga,
described – rather aptly - as an all powerful “creature of revenge.†Tabonga is
a lumbering monster tree stump that frightens the primitive and enlightened
alike… sort of a physical repository of the island’s accumulative evil spirits
and bad karma.