Green Hell (1940)

This is How Movies Should Be Made

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I rated this a six but actually I enjoy this type of film. I expected much more from a top cast and director like James Whale. At any rate,it wasn't a total disappointment. The actors gave fairly good performances considering the screen play and hammy direction by Whale. It was fast moving and there were some good moments. The viewer just has to be patient.

The brilliant James Whale prepared to wrap up his screen career by directing this adventure yarn with a marvelous cast, giving Saturday matinée audiences loads of pleasure but sadly not utilizing the color that this film so desperately calls for. His story is preposterous but told in such an entertaining manner that the story hardly matters. All you need to do is grab a bag of popcorn, sit back and enjoy an early variation of what audiences in 1981 got a kick out of with "Raiders of the Lost Ark". O.K., so there aren't any Nazi's for Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to chase in the jungles of South America, but there are plenty of arrow-flinging head hunters as well as a tomb filled with golden artifacts, leading to an adventure-filled flick that may not have done its director any good (considering his horror masterpieces such as "Frankenstein" and "The Old Dark House", as well as the marvelous 1936 movie version of the musical "Show Boat"), but remains marvelous entertainment.Joan Bennett enters the scene about a third into the film after her husband (a non-villainous Vincent Price) becomes the first victim of a head-hunter's arrow. Much like Deborah Kerr in "King Solomon's Mines", she brings romance into the story, distracting Fairbanks from chasing the film's one villain (Francis McDonald) and leading to an obvious conclusion. George Sanders is profound as another member of the team who faces death with dignity as the natives approach their fortress, and Alan Hale (Sr.) is the wise doctor amongst the group. Hundreds of extras in native costume fill out the population of guides and head-hunting natives. Considering that he appeared in practically every other Universal film of this nature, it is surprising that Andy Devine wasn't cast here to provide comic relief. The one acting embarrassment is John Howard as a cowardly member of the team. While Bennett is gorgeous in her new Hedy Lamarr make-over, her character here is not as memorable, being rather lady too lady-like and not at all like those vixens she would begin playing a few years later in a series of memorable melodramas and film noir.

Started off promising but got bogged down in the middle with the introduction of Mrs. Richardson (Joan Bennett). Warning, spoilers will most likely be in the rest of the review. It seemed kind of pointless to kill off Vincent Price so early in the movie, a lot was made of how mysterious he was. Also, convenient of George Sanders to kill himself just before they get rescued, this prevents any kind of entanglements there might have been if they all had been rescued. The fun thing to do with this film, is that knowing that director James Whale was gay, is to look at the characters in another light. Isn't it strange that everything was going great with the exploring party made up of just men but once Bennett comes along everything goes to hell? Also what was the deal with John Howard and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.? It sure seemed to me that Howard was carrying a torch for Doug. Oh, the mind reels.

Director James Whale was nearing the end of his rope when he made the dismal Green Hell, in which he was perhaps trying to do for jungle movies what his earlier The Old dark House did for horror pictures: to spoof the genre with wit and style. But the script isn't there, and the excellent cast, which includes George Sanders, Vincent Price, George Bancroft and Alan Hale, flounder, and play altogether too sincerely for laughs. At his peak, in the early and middle thirties, Whale was one of the masters of film. His reputation was at least as high as Hitchcock's, and there seemed no end to what magic he could do on celluloid. His best work was in the horror field, but there was really no reason why he should have stayed there. One senses in Green Hell a director who wants to get out of the movie business altogether. The film would be sub-par even for a routine studio director. Whale was perhaps eager to get back to his first love, painting. He succeeded.