company: Allied Artists Pictures
year: 1957
runtime: 71′ / 73′ (T.V. version)
country: United States
director: Dan Milner
cast: Tod Andrews, Tina Carver,
Linda Watkins, John McNamar,
Gregg Palmer, Robert Swan,
Baynes Barron, Suzanne Ridgeway
writers: Richard Bernstein
and Jack Milner
cinematographer: Brydon Baker
music: Darrell Calker
Order this film, now officially
available on DVD from the
Warner Archive Collection
It’s interesting to look up the New York Times television listings from the late 60’s and early 70’s and see just what the snappy one-liner critics had to say about FROM HELL IT CAME. “Not quite” was the answer in 1965, but by 1973 that had evolved into the wittier “Back send it”. The Courier Tribune, my hometown paper, had nothing to say of it by the time I was scanning the entertainment section for hitherto unseen film delights – for me, the name was more than enough. That it was sandwiched between VALLEY OF THE DRAGONS and CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN did much to help its chances.
And so, following the end of THE GIANT CLAW [my favorite film even then], I set an 8 hour tape to rolling in the ever-reliable EP mode. The next day I spent spooling over the fruits of my labors – a host of films I’d never seen up to that point. IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE was on board, followed by THE INVISIBLE INVADERS and CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN. I was scared so witless by what had come before that FROM HELL IT CAME couldn’t help but provoke considerable feelings of unease within my little mind.
For weeks my head was filled with terrifying images of mean-faced creatures rising from smoldering pits, capturing helpless victims only to dump them into vast pools of quicksand. I was frightened, sure, but I loved every minute of it. Somewhere along the way my original tape was recorded over and I lost track of the film. It was the explosion of eBay’s bootleg video market [since imploded] that reunited me with FROM HELL IT CAME after having gone a decade without seeing it. I was anxious to relive every terrifying smoldering and quick-sandy moment. Boy do expectations suck.
I didn’t know the Milner brothers, Dan and Jack, from Stanley Kubrick when I was a boy, but their reputation precedes them now that I’m older. Dan had been working in B-pictures since the early 30’s as an editor, dabbling in mysteries, adventures, westerns, and everything in between. Jack got a slower start, snagging his first work editing a western in 1945. By 1955 the Milner’s had caught up with the expanding market for monster movies, unleashing on unsuspecting audiences THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES. Their magnum opus, so awful that it effectively ended their careers, came just two years later, with the August release of FROM HELL IT CAME. Legend has it that the release inspired the infamous review “And to hell it can go!” Is that true? Who knows, but I like to think so.
The script by Richard Bernstein [writer - TERRIFIED, WHY MUST I DIE?] is full of backwards ideas and idiotic concepts, and begins with a band of white Pacific islanders killing their local prince Kimo for scheming with the dastardly American scientists. Kimo is stabbed through the heart and buried upright in a coffin made of logs, but not before he eloquently screams “I will come back from the grave to revenge for myself!” Meanwhile, the American scientists dawdle about with the more trusting natives, curing them of various maladies caused by the atomic bomb they tested near the island sometime earlier and drinking whatever real troubles they have into a hazy oblivion.
Things start to go south when a female scientist [gasp!], former lover of one of the scientists, arrives, carrying with her a new experimental formula that regenerates dead tissue. The female scientist [for shame!] finds a strange tree stump [complete with perturbed face] growing out of Kimo’s grave, and convinces her colleagues to dig it up and bring it back to the lab. They discover that the stump has a heartbeat, and that it’s dying from their efforts to dig it up [d'oh!], so the female scientist [the horror!] injects it with her regeneration serum.
It doesn’t take long for the stump to come back to life, escape the lab, and begin terrorizing the natives for their transgressions against Kimo. After hugging the island chief to death and dropping his lover in quicksand, the American scientists and a few of their native buddies go on the hunt. The stump somehow kidnaps the female scientist [expression of uncomfortable surprise!] but is stopped dead before it can do her any harm. Though unharmed by the ordeal, it’s still traumatic enough that the female scientist [...!] decides to drop all of her career ambitions to start a family with her ex boyfriend. The end.
There’s a serious misogynistic vibe running through FROM HELL IT CAME. At worst, women are portrayed as backstabbing and malicious [it's Kimo's wife who schemes to have him killed] – at best, as useless and unworthy of the college degrees they’ve earned. It’s important to note that the troubles in FROM HELL IT CAME all seem to revolve around female lead Tina Carver. It is she who first discovers the monster, convinces her co-workers to uproot it, saves it with a super serum, and unwittingly lets it loose upon the unsuspecting natives. Kimo’s dying words be damned, it’s Carver who’s responsible for all the death and destruction here. The conclusion is nothing short of a wish fulfilled for her culturally backwards ex boyfriend [Tod Andrews], who makes sure she knows that a career is nothing for a woman like her to have. That the movie obviously sides with his point of view is downright insulting.
Depictions of the Pacific islanders are also pretty infuriating, with the natives here proving to be little more than a bunch of uncultured morons. Politically, HELL walks the government line in support of the nuclear testing in the Pacific and relocation of the native peoples of the islands there. The point is made that the fallout isn’t what’s making the islanders sick, but diseases they’re just too stupid to avoid. We kindly Americans are just helping them when they’re too oblivious to help themselves. Even the writers of KING KONG knew the effects of unchecked Western intrusion into the lives of indigenous peoples, and similar death, mayhem, and destruction results here. But writer Bernstein ensures that the blame is placed squarely at the feet of the natives and their primitive superstitions as opposed to with the Americans, where it really belongs.
As aggravating as HELL’s gigantic substantive missteps are, it’s the laziness of the production and lack of inspiration on all fronts that ultimately dooms it to failure. The story moves at a languid pace, with fifty minutes of nothing separating the opening sacrifice of Kimo and the concluding attack of the stump monster. We get drinking, arguing, scheming, and a few bits of romance, but action of any kind is in much too short a supply. Paul Blaisdell’s wandering stump, which goes by the name of Tobunga in the film, is a marvellous pulp creation, with bulging angry eyes and huge old-man scowl. It is also almost entirely inflexible, rendering its few horrific moments hysterically ineffectual [the image of it rising from the depths of a fire pit is a welcome exception, and as iconic as anything in cult cinema history].
HELL was relegated to a double bill with the dreary Allison Hayes vehicle THE DISEMBODIED on initial release, finally reaching an appreciative audience when it was sold to television – it was a staple of afternoon programming for decades thereafter. A long-time lack of an official home video release coupled with the fond memories of people who grew up watching it have conspired to make HELL a staple of the bootleg DVD market, where it’s undoubtedly garnered more profits than it ever did in theaters.
Warner Brothers has obviously not been completely blindsided by the popularity of the film, now part of their extensive library. An early announcement about the Warner Archive Collection DVD-on-demand service mentioned that the company was looking into titles popular in the gray market. It should come as no surprise that FROM HELL IT CAME, a title perhaps too marginal to warrant a full-scale release, should find it’s first ever officially licensed home video iteration as part of that collection.
How does Warner’s official DVD-R release of FROM HELL IT CAME stack up to the bootlegged editions that have been circulating of everything from ancient 16mm TV prints to the recent HD remaster culled from the defunct MonstersHD channel? In short – if you own a bootleg, throw it out. The Warner Archive Collection presents the film in a fine progressive and 16:9 enhanced black and white transfer that looks far better than I’d have imagined a turnip like FROM HELL IT CAME ever could. Detail is at the high end for the format, contrast is consistent and natural, and damage is minimal. Audio is presented in a crisp and clear monophonic track – there are no subtitles. Someone has obviously taken very good care of the source materials on this one, though that may beg the question of “why?”
Supplements are, as is to be expected from all Warner Archive Collection releases, extremely limited. You get a generic menu and a promo for the Collection itself – that’s it. There’s a high price point for all of these releases [$19.95 from Warner itself, not including shipping and taxes, and more from other retailers] and whether or not it’s worth it will depend entirely on how much you value the title. That said, Warner’s presentation of the feature is peak and fans of the film should definitely take the plunge.
Aside from the fifteen minutes or so that Blaisdell’s tree monster is puttering around, there’s very little to recommend about FROM HELL IT CAME and even less to enjoy. Take it from someone who knows – this one is definitely better left as a fond memory of days long since passed, whether you grew up on UHF or VHS.
