JLRVancouver
It is a good thing this movie has such a charming monster because otherwise, it has tropes for everyone to hate, from the patronising 'white man's burden' subtext to the 'female scientist who is too caught up in her career to be a women' to Linda Watkins' annoying 'widow on the manhunt' comic-relief. The Tabonga, the lumbering (sorry, couldn't resist) tree stump that made the titular journey, is one of the great all-time B-movie monsters: a perpetually frowning Ent-with-attitude that grows out of the grave of a murdered native to avenge his death (and to menace blond American doctors). Typical of the era, 'atomic radiation' gets written into the story, which makes no sense, as the natives relate a story of an earlier Tabonga crisis, presumably predating the nuclear-age. The pseudoscience in the film is ridiculous even by genre standards: e.g. the doctor treats the apparently dying Tabonga with hormones and is then surprised that hormonal response time differs between humans and log-monsters. The blonde love-interest is played by Tina Carver, who demonstrates why she never made it to 'scream-queen' status, as she sounds more like an annoyed crow than a terrified maiden when she is (inevitably) carried off by the monster. For fans of goofy monsters (and sensitive-types who enjoy getting indignant about Hollywood's portrayal of indigenous cultures, women, etc). Addendum: I have attempted to introduce the word "tabonga" into the camping lexicon to describe the tree root digging into your back that was not there when you set up the tent the night before.
ferbs54
Back in the 1960s, when I was just a young lad and when there were only three major television stations to contend with, "The New York Times" used to make pithy commentaries, in their TV section, regarding films that were to be aired that day. I have never forgotten the terse words that the paper issued for the 1957 cult item "From Hell It Came." In one of the most succinct pans ever written, the editors simply wrote: "Back send it." Well, I have waited years to find out if this hilarious put-down was justified or not, and now that I have finally succeeded in catching up with this one-of-a-kind cult item, have to say that I feel the "Times" people may have been a bit too harsh in their assessment. Sure, the film is campy, and of course, its central conceit is patently ridiculous, but does the film give the viewer that one necessary ingredient--namely, fun--that all good movies should provide? Oh, yes!As the film opens, the viewer sees Kimo (handsome Gregg Palmer, the first in a long list of "no-name" actors here), the son of the former chief of this nameless South Pacific island, staked out, face up, on the ground. Wrongly accused of the murder of his old man by the real perpetrators, the new chief Maranka (Baynes Barron) and the evil witch doctor Tano (Robert Swan), and betrayed by his faithless wife Korey (Suzanne Ridgeway), Kimo is summarily put to death by having a dagger hammered into his heart, but not before he utters the words "I will come back from the grave to revenge myself...I shall come back from hell and make you pay for your crimes...." Kimo is then buried in a hollow tree trunk and forgotten. Soon after, the viewer makes the acquaintance of a group of American scientists who are also on the island, studying the radioactive effects from a distant nuclear blast. One of the scientists, Dr. Bill Arnold (Tod Andrews, the closest thing this film has to a well-known actor), is soon distracted by the arrival of the lady scientist whom he has long been pining for, Dr. Terry Mason (Tina Carver), and the team is later startled to find that a fully grown tree--with a grimacing expression on its trunk, and what look like eyes, to boot--has begun to grow out of Kimo's grave! The scientists extirpate the bizarre arboreal growth and bring it back to the lab, where they are stunned to find that the growth is exhibiting a heartbeat! Terry injects it with one of her serums, causing the tree to come alive, escape from the lab, and perambulate (!) over to the native village, to begin its promise of vengeance. Korey is the first to go, after the tree--which the natives call Tabanga--scoops her up and chucks her into the local quicksand pool. Can the new native chief and the scheming witch doctor be far behind?OK, I'm not going to lie to you: "From Hell It Came" IS a patently ridiculous little picture (the whole thing runs to a bare 71 minutes) but, as I said, it sure is fun, AND has a number of other selling points that help to put it over today, more than 60 years since its release as part of a double bill, along with "The Disembodied." For one thing, the acting by the film's leads is surprisingly decent (the thesping by those playing the natives...not so much), and the locales actually look convincing; one can almost imagine that the film WAS shot on a Pacific island. The film is fast moving and compact, thanks to director Dan Milner (whose 1955 film, "The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues," I had also recently enjoyed), with little flab, and, once you buy into its central outlandish conceit, quite a hoot. The film also looks very fine, thanks in part to cinematographer Brydon Baker--especially in the HD print that I just watched--and also contains any number of amusing lines, courtesy of screenwriter Richard Bernstein. For example, I love what Terry says when Bill asks her if she wouldn't prefer a normal, married life: "Being cooped up in a stuffy apartment, having my ears blasted by rock and roll music, isn't my idea of normal!" The picture also showcases one of the lamest, most unintentionally hilarious catfights ever put on film--that between Korey and Maranka's current galpal, Naomi. And as for Tabanga itself, it is a rather pleasing, if ludicrous, creation; another memorable product from Paul Blaisell, who would also be responsible for the monsters in "Day the World Ended," "It Conquered the World," "The She-Creature" and "Invasion of the Saucer Men." The tree monster here is actually a more intimidating proposition than the apple-throwing ones to be found in "The Wizard of Oz," which looked menacing but were still stuck in one place, as well as the one to be found in the 1958 British horror offering "The Woman Eater," which devoured its victims whole but was also immobile. Tabanga, I might add, was understandably nominated, in Harry and Michael Medved's "Golden Turkey Awards" book, for "The Most Ridiculous Monster In Screen History," losing to Ro-Man in "Robot Monster" (granted, it IS hard to beat an alien gorilla in a diving helmet!). But interestingly, "From Hell It Came" itself was NOT chosen for inclusion in Harry Medved's book "The 50 Worst Films of All Time." And it certainly does not deserve to be in that volume. There are far worse films out there--such as "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," The Horror of the Blood Monsters," "The Worm Eaters," "Blood Freak" and on and on--to be sure. The bottom line is that "From Hell It Came" might be silly, but it sure is entertaining. I'm glad that I finally caught up with it....
soulexpress
On a South Seas island, a tribal prince named Kimo (therapy?) is wrongfully executed for his father's death. Before he dies, Prince Kimo vows that he will return from Hell to make his executioners pay for their crimes. He does, indeed, return from Hell—as a murderous tree called Tabanga, or the Spirit of Revenge. There's also a sub-plot involving political intrigue in the native tribe, but it's not worth getting into.In many ways, this is your classic low-budget '50s sci-fi loser: wafer-thin plot, wooden acting (pun intended), dull dialogue, the requisite dumb-looking monster, the usual made-up science (radiation, of course, is the culprit); the non-existent directing and production values…. What makes this one stand out, though, is that I found myself rooting for the tree monster. After all, Prince Kimo died over a crime for which he was framed by his cheating wife and her scheming boyfriend (who wants to the tribe's next king). As such, I applauded when Tabanga threw his widow into the quicksand and watched her die. That's not the reaction this type of film is supposed to elicit!Additional items of note: a native hurls a spear at Tabanga from about three feet away but still misses; the Australian character Mrs. Kilgore, a middle-aged widow who is perpetually horny and outright annoying (not to mention extraneous to the plot); the Polynesian natives are all played by white people with New York accents; and conveniently for Tabanga, his victims all faint the moment they set eyes on him. Makes 'em easy to kill, doesn't it?As one reviewer wrote: "From Hell It Came, and to Hell it can go!"
Bruce Wilner
I remember this inane movie from the "Creature Features" that used to air from 8:30 to 10:00, Saturday night, in NYC in the 1970s (whether on channel 9 or channel 11 I can't recall, though "Chiller" had better movies than "Creature Features").Even though my bedtime was nine--I was about eight--my folks would let me stay up till ten on Saturday to watch this foolishness.The creature, who looked like a walking tree with a wizened, exaggerated face, was called a TOBBONGA or a TOBOGGAN or something. There was a knife sticking out of its heart. He had been sacrificed--or executed--for some reason (I think he was framed by "the bad guy") and was then buried standing upright in a hollow tree trunk. The witch doctor is the bad guy's descendant. He wears a crown made of, like, long, sharp bones--maybe the tusks of warthogs (which, as I recall, do NOT live on South Pacific islands, but, rather, on the southern African veldt). The toboggan throws him down the mountainside after knocking off his hat, and he gets impaled on the spiky bones.At the end, our heroes kill the rampaging toboggan by shooting at the protruding knife and driving it further into the creature's "heart." And they didn't even get to ride the toboggan . . .
