FROM HELL IT CAME (1957)
Article #190 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-22-2001
Posting date: 2-5-2002

When a South Seas island prince is executed, he comes back to life as a killer tree to exact revenge.

This movie has one of those unfortunate titles that makes it easy to come up with a bad review; just tell the reader where the movie should go back to. To further the problem, the movie itself doesn’t exactly inspire a good review; the story is slow, talky, confusing, and badly acted, and the monster is one of the least spry this side of Kharis. Still, i can’t help but love the monster; the Tabanga suit was designed (though not built nor performed) by Paul Blaisdell, and it has his trademark, “Grr! I’m scary!” expression. I always felt the best way to avoid being killed by this monster was to lie down and force him to pick you up; that should keep him busy for a couple of hours. the strangest aspect of this movie is the attempt by the doctors to find some scientific basis for the existence of the monster, trotting in that magic monster word of the fifties, “radiation”; IMHO, this is one monster that really defies any scientific explanation.

Oh, and as for Tina Carver’s legendary screams in this movie, the last time I heard that sound, I had to clean up after the cat.

Is it my imagination, or have I had more than my share of turkeys lately?