Monster From Green Hell (1957)

In those wild and carefree days of the late 1950s, long before America had put a man on the Moon, a scientific project is examining the effects of cosmic radiation on living beings... by sending up rockets loaded with test animals!

Unfortunately, one vessel goes off course, exposing its subjects to an extended dose of radiation, and causing the rocket to crash somewhere in Africa.

Six months later, square-jawed scientist Dr Quent Brady (Jim Davis, who would go on to star in Dallas) and his associate Dan Morgan (Robert Griffin) read newspaper reports of  supposed monsters wreaking havoc near where they believe their lost rocket might have ended up.

Naturally, they head off to investigate, speculating that there might be some connection with the consignment of wasps sent into space on the doomed ship.

Their journey from the coast to Central Africa is long and arduous, and they find themselves and their bearers plagued by hostile natives, insufferable heat, dehydration, contaminated water, et al before they even get to the missionary station on the edge of the region known as Green Hell, where these "monsters" are said to be.

Unfortunately, their arrival at the missionary station coincides with the death of the 'saintly' Dr Lorentz (Vladimir Sokoloff), who had been investigating the monsters himself.

Our heroes' bearers have had enough and scarper, but Dr Lorentz's daughter, Lorna (Barbara Turner), persuades local villagers to take their place - on the condition that she can accompany Dr Brady's expedition into the Green Hell.

Turner seems a bit lost here but she would later write the screenplay for the killer-dog movie Cujo, so I can forgive her anything.

Monster From Green Hell is a must-watch for aficionados of kitsch, 1950's B-movies that are so awful they're hilarious.

Spliced together with stock wild animal footage and scenes from 1939's Stanley and Livingstone, California stands in for Central Africa... and it's quite obvious.

The narrative structure of Monster From Green Hell is an object lesson in bad storytelling, from giving away the appearance of the kaiju-sized killer wasps within the first 10 minutes (thus destroying any sense of mystery as to what our heroes are tracking) to committing the cardinal sin of cinema: a deus ex machina resolution that the protagonists had absolutely no hand in.

Spoilers for a six decade old movie, but the wasp queen and her drones are all wiped by a volcanic eruption (which, of course, our heroes had nothing to do with) before they can multiple and take over the world.

The way the story unfolds the destruction of the giant wasps would have occurred whether or not Dr Brady had been hunting them. 

Even though Monster From Green Hell only runs for 71 minutes, and starts off very breezily, director Kenneth G Crane's pacing is all over the place, with the extended journey through Africa taking up an inordinate amount of time, for instance. Then, with only 10 minutes or so to go at the climax of the piece, the movie suddenly switches to an almost pointless "explorers lost in maze of underground tunnels" story.

You don't come to a B-movie expecting character development and there's certainly none on display here, with pretty much everyone simply being walking mouthpieces for the lines of Louis Vittes and Endre Bohem's screenplay.

The giant wasp model, though, is a classic of the era, which is probably why Crane decided the audience should get to meet it long before the main characters do. 

However, I'm not sure that wasps have pincers, but I guess that's part of the mutation that caused them to balloon up to Godzilla size.

The size of the giant wasps seems quite flexible, and we rarely see more than one at a time, leading me to think - right up until the final act - that there might only be one giant wasp, despite Dr Brady's insistence that there was a swarm of them.

It also feels rather odd that Brady and his team are able to track the wasps by giant footprints they leave in the dirt. It's never stated outright, but I decided in my headcanon that due to the creatures' enormous size their fragile wings aren't powerful enough now to lift them off the ground.

The restored print of 1957's Monster From Green Hell, for the most part, is striking in its crisp black-and-white, although there are still scenes with the odd scratch down the centre, but then the film is 65 years old and I doubt it's been treated with any particular reverence until it was cleaned up for its physical media release a few years ago.

It has now been officially released online (see above) by Film Masters.

This version of the movie also comes with a slightly random, but nevertheless oddly delightful, colourised final sequence... when the heroes watch as nature does what they couldn't.

Zoltan, Hound of Dracula (1977)

Pretty certain Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula was the first vampire film I ever saw as a kid, as it was a running joke in our cat-centric house when I was growing up that all "vicious" dogs were called "Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula".

A cheesy B-movie, with a novel central concept, a modicum of gore, and almost zero scares, no one will ever mistake Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula (aka Dracula's Dog) for high art, as ultimately the "idea" is better than the execution.

A unit of Cold War era Soviet soldiers unearth a "Dracula tomb" in Romania, accidentally releasing Zoltan, The Hound Of Dracula, and his handler, Veidt Smit (Reggie Nalder).

Police inspector - and vampire expert - Inspector Branco (José Ferrer) correctly deduces that Smit is heading to America to pledge his allegiance to Dracula's last living relative, psychiatrist Michael Drake (Michael Pataki).

Smit (or 'Smith') and Zoltan arrive in California ahead of Branco, but Drake, his family, and their dogs (two full-grown German Shepherds and three puppies) have already left for a two-week camping vacation at Clear (not Crystal!) Lake.

To be honest, I was horrified that this family took their new-born puppies on a wilderness camping trip. Horror compounded by the fact that one gets lost almost immediately, and eventually falls prey to Zoltan's fangs.

The Hound Of Dracula, and his handler, have followed the Drake family to the wilderness, and begin a campaign of harassment, with the eventual idea (I think) of letting Zoltan bite Michael and turn him into a vampire.

It's all a bit vague really, and I don't truly understand why they don't just storm in there on the first night and turn Michael lickety-split.

By drawing things out, they only allow time for Branco to roll up, from "The Old Country", fill Michael in on what's going on and formulate a defence strategy.

Drake is clearly au fait with his historical heritage as he takes everything that Branco tells him at face value and has no problems accepting the existence of vampires.

Of course, if everyone had listened to Drake's young daughter, Linda (Libby Chase), earlier - after she bumped into Smit and his rather on-the-nose hearse - matters might have been resolved quicker and more easily.

I did like the fact that neither Michael nor Branco actually actually knew about Zoltan until the climax of the final act.

Conversely, I didn't quite grasp Smit's obsession with Michael as the last blood relative of Dracula, when Drake had two kids: Linda and Steve (John Levin). Surely, THEY were Dracula's last descendants? And probably better targets for vampiric transformation?

There's an exciting siege in a wooden hut, when Michael and Branco are attacked by Zoltan and a couple of dogs he's converted to his cause, but otherwise this movie pretty much fails to live up to its potential.

Although everyone gets bloodied and bruised in the final fight, ultimately the good guys win way too easily.

However, the denouement is worthy of a wry chuckle.

Inescapable comparisons with Cujo exist, as this is another "people attacked by blood-hungry canines" yarn, but Zoltan - unsurprisingly - pales in comparison.

An ill thought-out story, riddled with plot holes, pretty much sinks Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula, leaving us, simply, with the brilliant idea of the immortal count's pet having a cinematic un-life of its own.

Cocaine Bear (2023)

It's 1985 and a drug smuggler's plane is heading for a crash landing, so he dumps his satchels of cocaine over the Chattahoochee National Forest, Georgia, with the idea that his colleagues can retrieve them later.

The only hiccup in this cunning plan is a 500lb black bear that devours way too much of the drug and goes on a murderous rampage, in pursuit of more of the valuable white powder.

An ensemble of oddball characters are drawn to the mountain where the bear is active, some by design and some by accident, including a mum (Rise of Skywalker's Keri Russell) looking for her runaway kid; a couple of drug dealers (Solo's Alden Ehrenreich and Obi-Wan Kenobi's O'Shea Jackson Jr.) sent to retrieve the stash; an aged police officer (The Wire's Isiah Whitlock Jr.) on their trail; a park ranger and a wildlife inspector (Person of Interest's Margo Martindale and Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson); a trio of delinquents who try and mug the wrong guy; and an unfortunate ambulance crew.

Inspired by a true story (and unlike all those ghost stories that claim the same, this actually happened), it soon becomes clear that this hilariously over-the-top affair, masterfully directed by Elizabeth Banks from a script by The Babysitter: Killer Queen's Jimmy Warden, is as much a caper fiasco as it is a gory horror flick.

Banks and Warden have taken the nugget of truth that is the real "cocaine bear" story and pumped it up to eleven, turning the bear into a furry Jason Voorhees, Cujo with a drug habit, stalking - and slaughtering - at random.

As the various parties cross paths with the coked-up bear, plans go to pieces (as do people) as the madcap carnage - and the belly laughs - escalate.

However, unlike that mother of all "when animals attack" movies Jaws, when the true monster of the piece, Ray Liotta's heartless drug boss Syd White, enters the picture, the "cocaine bear" becomes a force for justice and we can't help but find ourselves rooting for her.