Monster From Green Hell - Nightmares In Central Africa

By Steve D. Stones

With the success of Them in 1954, it was inevitable that a series of giant bug movies would soon follow on the big screen. Most were inferior efforts in comparison to Them. Monster From Green Hell (1957) is one of those lesser-known efforts that caters to an age of atomic fears.

Dr. Quentin Brady, played by Jim Davis of TV's Dallas, is a scientist who sends animal and insect test subjects into space to study the effects of cosmic radiation. One of Brady's rockets with a wasp specimen crashes in Central Africa in a region known by natives as Green Hell. The natives soon report seeing strange giant monsters in the area, but never specifically state they are giant wasps. These claims are dismissed as native superstitions.

Brady and his assistant Dan Morgan decide to track four hundred miles into Central Africa to investigate the claims. Along the way they encounter water shortage, dehydration, attacks from natives and a contaminated water hole. Soon they encounter a village wiped out by giant insects.

A lot of screen time is spent showing Brady, Morgan and their guides tracking through the African jungle. Although Brady and Morgan discover the source of the native's claims to be giant wasps, the creatures who appear on screen look nothing like wasps. They move very slowly and look more like a cross between a crab and a moth. The stop motion animation is a bit dated, but still makes the film fun to watch. One of the giant wasps even battles a giant snake towards the end of the film.

Brady and crew are eventually chased into a cave by one of the wasps. Dynamite is used to hold the wasps back from entering the cave, but instead traps the explorers in the cave. They find a way out just as a volcano in the area erupts and kills the nest of giant wasps.

Like the strange giant rat-bat-spider in Angry Red Planet (1960), the cult appeal of Monster From Green Hell may be in how the giant wasps are shown. They are not very convincing as wasps, but their strange appearance and slow stop motion animation adds to the appeal of the film.

The punk rock band The Misfits recorded a song entitled Green Hell in the early 1980s on their Earth A.D. album. The song was later covered as an homage by the Heavy Metal band Metallica in 1987. This song is likely inspired by Monster From Green Hell. Happy viewing.

Walking the beat with the late, hip Vampira

Remembering Vampira

by Steve Stones

Hey Black dress moves in a blue movie

Graverobbers from outer space
Your pulmonary trembles in your outstretched arm
Tremble so wicked
Two-inch nails
Micro waist
With a pale white feline face
Inclination eyebrows to there
Mistress to the horror kid
Cemetery of the white love ghoul, well
Take off your shabby dress
Come and lay beside me
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer to this
Vampira, Vampira, Vampira
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

From the album "Walk Among Us" -- The Misfits-Collection -- Ruby Records & Plan 9-Caroline Records

As a teenage skateboard punk in the late 1980s, I must have listened to this song hundreds of times, but I was never fully aware of who Vampira was and what movies she had appeared in. Was she a comic book heroine, or a nightmare version of the Barbie doll?

I didn't know for sure. It wasn't until 1989, my senior year in High School, that a friend and I decided to rent Plan 9 From Outer Space late one Friday night. When Vampira appeared on screen, my heart raced a million miles an hour. There was something very sexually attractive to me about a shapely woman in a torn black dress, long phallic nails, pale skin and jet-black hair.

Cult director John Waters best described this feeling when he said: "Vampira was the first exaggerated woman I ever yearned to meet . . . she never looked scary to me. I thought she was pretty."

Finnish born Maila Nurmi, later known as Vampira, began her career in 1954 as a horror movie hostess in Los Angeles on KABC-TV making $75.00 a week. Her television show played on channel 7 on Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m. At that time, television was a new medium, and anything was possible.

Nurmi developed the Vampira character from three sources: The Dragon Lady in the Terry & The Pirates comic strip, the evil Queen in Snow White, and The Charles Addams Lady in the New Yorker Magazine cartoon strip. At the time Nurmi was developing the Vampira character, she was married to Dean Reisner, who would later go on the create Dirty Harry in the early 1970s. She worked on the television show in hopes to earn enough money to become an evangelist.

On the television show, Vampira would emerge from a dark Gothic hallway filled with smoke, walk towards the camera and let out a loud blood-curdling, shrill scream saying: "Screaming relaxes me so!!!" Some of the films that were played on her late-night television show included: White Zombie, Revenge of The Zombies, Devil Bat's Daughter, Strangler From The Swamp, The Rogue's Tavern, Detour, The Flying Serpent, and King of The Zombies, just to name a few.

After only fifty episodes, the show was cancelled in 1955, and Vampira found herself immediately blacklisted. Soon after, she was approached by an Ed Wood actor, Paul Marco, with a script and $200.00 to appear in a film directed by Wood entitled: Graverobbers From Outer Space which was later retitled: Plan 9 From Outer Space. Reluctant to take the job at first, she finally decided to appear in the film after living off of only $13.00 a week in unemployment benefits.

She convinced Wood that her vampire character should remain mute throughout the entire film. The script identified her as the Vampire's wife or the Ghoul's wife. In recent years, Plan 9 From Outer Space has a well-deserved cult status in cinema history, making Vampira a familiar name and face, and a pop-culture icon of the movies. Vampira has appeared on anything from books, paintings, and t-shirts, to action figures, trading cards, posters, buttons and graphic novels. Her image is permanently seared into western culture.

Sadly, Vampira passed on into another dimension on January 10, 2008. She will always hold a special place in the minds and hearts of her die-hard fans around the world. May she rest in peace. We love you Vampira!!!

Vampira's Films:

If Winter Comes, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
Too Much, Too Soon The Beat Generation (1959)
Sleeping Beauty The Big Operator (1959)
I Passed For White Sex Kittens Go To College (1960)
The Magic Sword (a.k.a. St. George & The Dragon-1961)
The James Dean Story
The First American Teenager Bungalow Invader

She also appeared on Broadway with Mae West in Catherine The Great. It is also important to note that Ed Wood abandoned a project entitled: The Vampire's Tomb in 1954, which was modeled after Vampira. Footage shot of Bela Lugosi for The Vampire's Tomb was later used in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Check out this surviving clip from Vampira's ultra-cool '50s TV show.

The Crimson Ghost – Skull Masked Maniac Bent On Atomic Power!

By Steve D. Stones

The Crimson Ghost may very well be the greatest movie serial ever made, particularly from Republic Pictures. Both William Witney and Fred C. Brannon are credited for directing The Crimson Ghost. Witney is considered the best of the post-War serial directors. His direction credits include: The Mysterious Dr. Satan, Nyoka & The Tigermen (AKA The Perils of Nyoka), Spy Smasher, G-Men vs. The Black Dragon, Jungle Girl and Daredevils of The Red Circle, among many others.

If you’ve ever wondered where Steven Spielberg and George Lucas get some of their ideas for the action sequences in the Indiana Jones movies, just watch one of the above-mentioned serials by Witney and you’ll see where their ideas come from.

The Crimson Ghost was directed in 1946 and concerns a skull-masked maniac who is determined to steal a secret government device known as the Cyclotrode. The device is able to counteract the effects of atomic energy and atomic-operated machines. The Crimson Ghost plans to use the Cyclotrode to neutralize the power of flying planes in the sky and to break into top-secret government buildings to steal government plans.

Clayton Moore, star of the hit 1950s TV series The Lone Ranger, is one of the Crimson Ghost’s henchmen. Most of the action sequences involve his character and the hero of the serial, Professor Duncan Richards, played by serial regular Charles Quigley.

The Crimson Ghost also stars the beautiful Linda Stirling, star of Tiger Woman and Zorro’s Black Whip, as Professor Richards’ assistant.

A VHS video of The Crimson Ghost was released in the mid-1990s in a colorized and condensed version. Accomics in Florida also sells the colorized and condensed version, as well as the full-length black & white version. I do not recommend the colorized version because it is
condensed from a three hour serial to just ninety minutes. I highly recommend the full-length black & white version.

Fans of the 80s punk rock band The Misfits will immediately recognize the skull face of the Crimson Ghost. His face was appropriated as the band’s logo.

For more information about classic movie serials, I recommend the two-volume book Classic Cliffhangers by Hank Davis published in 2007. Happy viewing!

The Crawling Eye: Attack of The Giant One-Eyed Creatures

 By Steve D. Stones Released in 1958, The Crawling Eye was also entitled The Trollenberg Terror in many European markets. The film was a companion feature with another British film – The Cosmic Monsters. Both films cast American actor Forrest Tucker in the leading role. While traveling on a train in route to Mt. Tollenberg in the Swiss Alps, Tucker meets two young sisters who are part of a clairvoyant stage act. One of the sisters, played by Janet Munroe, has ESP and insists on getting off the train at the Trollenberg Station. She senses strange activities happening on the mountain. Tucker accompanies the two sisters to their hotel and later travels up to the mountaintop to meet a scientist friend who is conducting experiments in a bomb proof laboratory. Scientists in the laboratory conclude that a strange radioactive force is causing clouds to move in unnatural ways around the mountaintop. Meanwhile, climbers on the Trollenberg Mountain are turning up missing and some are found decapitated. Munro is able to see their fate before it happens. The climax of the film shows the radioactive clouds covering the hotel at the bottom of the mountain, and then the clouds quickly travel up the mountain to the laboratory. The hotel occupants and scientists hide out in the laboratory as giant one-eyed creatures with long tentacles attack them. Tucker radios in jet fighters with bombs to destroy the creatures. Although this film is a much more technically superior film than the Cosmic Monsters, I recommend viewing The Crawling Eye with its companion film - The Cosmic Monsters. Tucker also starred in another great monster movie that same year in 1958 – The Abominable Snowman of The Himalayas, which was produced by Hammer Studios of England. This time Tucker teams up with the great British actor Peter Cushing. The punk rock band The Misfits recorded a song in 1999 inspired by The Crawling Eye. Watch out for those Crawling Eye creatures!

Remembering Vampira

Remembering Vampira

by Steve Stones

Hey Black dress moves in a blue movie
Graverobbers from outer space
Your pulmonary trembles in your outstretched arm
Tremble so wicked
Two-inch nails
Micro waist
With a pale white feline face
Inclination eyebrows to there
Mistress to the horror kid
Cemetery of the white love ghoul, well
Take off your shabby dress
Come and lay beside me
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer
Come a little bit closer to this
Vampira, Vampira, Vampira
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

From the album "Walk Among Us" -- The Misfits-Collection -- Ruby Records & Plan 9-Caroline Records

As a teenage skateboard punk in the late 1980s, I must have listened to this song hundreds of times, but I was never fully aware of who Vampira was and what movies she had appeared in. Was she a comic book heroine, or a nightmare version of the Barbie doll?

I didn't know for sure. It wasn't until 1989, my senior year in High School, that a friend and I decided to rent Plan 9 From Outer Space late one Friday night. When Vampira appeared on screen, my heart raced a million miles an hour. There was something very sexually attractive to me about a shapely woman in a torn black dress, long phallic nails, pale skin and jet-black hair.

Cult director John Waters best described this feeling when he said: "Vampira was the first exaggerated woman I ever yearned to meet . . . she never looked scary to me. I thought she was pretty."

Finnish born Maila Nurmi, later known as Vampira, began her career in 1954 as a horror movie hostess in Los Angeles on KABC-TV making $75.00 a week. Her television show played on channel 7 on Fridays and Saturdays at 11 p.m. At that time, television was a new medium, and anything was possible.

Nurmi developed the Vampira character from three sources: The Dragon Lady in the Terry & The Pirates comic strip, the evil Queen in Snow White, and The Charles Addams Lady in the New Yorker Magazine cartoon strip. At the time Nurmi was developing the Vampira character, she was married to Dean Reisner, who would later go on the create Dirty Harry in the early 1970s. She worked on the television show in hopes to earn enough money to become an evangelist.

On the television show, Vampira would emerge from a dark Gothic hallway filled with smoke, walk towards the camera and let out a loud blood-curdling, shrill scream saying: "Screaming relaxes me so!!!" Some of the films that were played on her late-night television show included: White Zombie, Revenge of The Zombies, Devil Bat's Daughter, Strangler From The Swamp, The Rogue's Tavern, Detour, The Flying Serpent, and King of The Zombies, just to name a few.

After only fifty episodes, the show was cancelled in 1955, and Vampira found herself immediately blacklisted. Soon after, she was approached by an Ed Wood actor, Paul Marco, with a script and $200.00 to appear in a film directed by Wood entitled: Graverobbers From Outer Space which was later retitled: Plan 9 From Outer Space. Reluctant to take the job at first, she finally decided to appear in the film after living off of only $13.00 a week in unemployment benefits.

She convinced Wood that her vampire character should remain mute throughout the entire film. The script identified her as the Vampire's wife or the Ghoul's wife. In recent years, Plan 9 From Outer Space has a well-deserved cult status in cinema history, making Vampira a familiar name and face, and a pop-culture icon of the movies. Vampira has appeared on anything from books, paintings, and t-shirts, to action figures, trading cards, posters, buttons and graphic novels. Her image is permanently seared into western culture.

Sadly, Vampira passed on into another dimension on January 10, 2008. She will always hold a special place in the minds and hearts of her die-hard fans around the world. May she rest in peace. We love you Vampira!!!

Vampira's Films:

If Winter Comes, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
Too Much, Too Soon The Beat Generation (1959)
Sleeping Beauty The Big Operator (1959)
I Passed For White Sex Kittens Go To College (1960)
The Magic Sword (a.k.a. St. George & The Dragon-1961)
The James Dean Story
The First American Teenager Bungalow Invader

She also appeared on Broadway with Mae West in Catherine The Great. It is also important to note that Ed Wood abandoned a project entitled: The Vampire's Tomb in 1954, which was modeled after Vampira. Footage shot of Bela Lugosi for The Vampire's Tomb was later used in Plan 9 From Outer Space.