From Hell it Came (1957)
Directed by Dan Milner
You know what you never see in horror? Killer Trees, well here you go. Sometimes there’s nothing better than ridiculous B Movies from the 50s, unless it’s ridiculous B Movies from the 80s. I became aware of this years ago through Cinemassacre’s Monster Madness, this is on tubi and it is only an hour and 11 minutes so check it if you want.
From Hell it Came is about a wrongfully accused Prince that is executed and returns as a walking tree. It might be one of the oddest premises I’ve ever heard, even for B Movie standards. Basically they execute this guy with a dagger in his heart, when he returns as the tree, he has the dagger still there, of course it is his Achilles’ heel.
The acting is about what you expect from a 1950s scifi thriller. Bad. There is one woman named Mrs. Kilgore, that just screams all the time and has an odd accent I can’t quite place. She’s by far one of the most annoying characters that I’ve seen in a while. Tod Andrews plays Dr. Arnold the main character, he’s ok, I guess. Andrews is likely a case of being a mediocre actor in a movie full of trash. Nevertheless he does an ok job.
Really the reason anyone would watch this is to see the monster, and man oh man. The walking tree is rather funny. It does have a cool look but looks fake as hell which just adds to the charm. For a movie from the 50s there are some violent scenes, especially the execution, that was surprising. The run time is only 71 minutes, but it seems much slower than you would expect. There are some scenes of bad dialogue that are just boring and bring nothing to the story. Cmon we are here to see a dude in a tree costume kill people!
All in all it is schlocky as hell and if you enjoy that type of stuff you might enjoy this. Again it’s only 71minutes long so you aren’t wasting too much time on this movie. Yes it is bad, very bad but not the worst movie I’ve ever seen and the campiness adds some charm to it. I give this a D, it was a slightly amusing one time watch for me.
