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Green Hell | |
---|---|
Directed by | James Whale |
Written by | Frances Marion |
Produced by | Harry E. Edington |
Starring | Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Vincent Price Joan Bennett |
Cinematography | Karl W. Freund |
Edited by | Ted Kent |
Music by | Frank Skinner |
Production company | Famous Films |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $692,000 [1] |
Green Hell is a 1940 American jungle adventure film directed by James Whale, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Bennett. [2]
Green Hell was given a lavish production by Universal Pictures, which built a massive indoor jungle set on a sound stage. An Inca temple 125 feet high, 225 feet wide, and 45,000 square feet in area was constructed. Having spent a great deal of money on a film that turned out to be a critical and financial disaster, Universal used the set again, recycling it into an Egyptian temple for The Mummy's Hand (1940). [3]
Whale made only one more completed film after this, the 1941 World War II romantic melodrama They Dare Not Love , starring George Brent as an exiled Austrian prince fighting the Nazis.
A group of adventurers journey deep into the South American jungle in search of ancient Incan treasure. A beautiful woman, brought to their camp by hired bearers, has come to join her husband, a newer member of the group, who was recently killed by hostile natives. As the months pass, jealousies and tempers flare as fights break out over the woman. The Incan treasure is eventually found but the treasure-seekers, now united by a common enemy, are about to be attacked by hordes of fierce natives armed with bows and poisoned arrows.
The film was based on an original story and script by Frances Marion. Producer Harry Edington had a deal at Universal and announced it for production in April 1939. [4] James Whale agreed to direct and Douglas Fairbanks and Joan Bennett were cast in the leads. At one stage the film was going to be called South of the Amazon. [5]
Price called Whale "a wonderful man" but "in spite of the film's great seriousness of intent it was probably one of the funniest films ever shot anywhere in the world. About five of the worst pictures ever made were all in that one picture. We all adored making it because we realized there wasn't a single word in it that was real. The sets were terribly opulent, very expensive, but it had the most preposterous story." [6]
The New York Times wrote, "every one keeps a stiff upper lip except Miss Bennett, who purses hers, and the youngest member of the expedition, who becomes hysterical and screams, 'Oh, the monotony of it!' Monotony, egad! What a word for the best worst picture of the year!"; [7] while The Radio Times wrote, "famously ludicrous jungle melodrama...Although capably staged in studio sets by James Whale and well enough cast...it is made unendurable by the dialogue and situations devised by former Oscar winner Frances Marion. As Vincent Price once said, 'About five of the worst pictures ever made are all in this one picture.'" [8]
Leonard Maltin called it "hokey but entertaining." [9]
Douglas Fairbanks Jr said the film was "hell. Every jungle cliche was trotted out. Joanie Bennett says it remains her worst movie. I remember George Sanders saying he held his nose every time he had to say a line... [director James Whale had] just lost it. He didn't care about it at all." [10]
A print and its trailer are preserved in the Library of Congress collection, Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation. [11]
The following is an overview of 1933 in film, including significant events, a list of films released, and notable births and deaths.
The following is an overview of 1932 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
The following is an overview of 1930 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Jr. was an American actor, producer, and decorated naval officer of World War II. He is best-known for starring in such films as The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), Gunga Din (1939), and The Corsican Brothers (1941). He was the son of Douglas Fairbanks and the stepson of Mary Pickford, and his first marriage was to actress Joan Crawford.
Fred Niblo was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer.
Producers Releasing Corporation was the smallest and least prestigious of the 11 Hollywood film companies of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1947. This address is now an apartment complex.
Nora Prentiss is a 1947 American film noir directed by Vincent Sherman and starring Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett, and Robert Alda. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The cinematography is by James Wong Howe and the music was composed by Franz Waxman. The film's sets were designed by the art director Anton Grot.
Jungle Book or Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book is a 1942 independent Technicolor action-adventure film by the Korda brothers, loosely adapted from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (1894). The story centers on Mowgli, a feral young man who is kidnapped by villagers who are cruel to the jungle animals as they attempt to steal a dead king's cursed treasure. The film was directed by Zoltán Korda and produced by his brother Alexander, with the art direction by their younger brother Vincent. The screenplay was written by Laurence Stallings. The film stars Indian-born actor Sabu as Mowgli. Although the film is in the public domain, the master 35mm elements are with ITV Studios Global Entertainment. An official video release is currently available via The Criterion Collection.
The Son of Monte Cristo is a 1940 American black-and-white swashbuckling adventure film from United Artists, produced by Edward Small, directed by Rowland V. Lee, that stars Louis Hayward, Joan Bennett, and George Sanders. The Small production uses the same sets and many of the same cast and production crew as his previous year's production of The Man in the Iron Mask. Hayward returned to star in Small's The Return of Monte Cristo (1946).
Ray Mala was a prominent Alaska Native actor. He was one of Hollywood's Native American movie actors along with Lillian St. Cyr, Jesse Cornplanter, Chief Yowlachie, William Eagle Shirt, and Will Rogers who also had successful careers during that time. Mala's career peaked in the 1930s and he was best known for his lead role in Republic Pictures' 14-part serial Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island (1936) following his feature role in MGM's Eskimo, directed by Woody Van Dyke. He was named a "Top Ten Alaskan" by TIME Magazine in 2009.
She Couldn't Take It is a 1935 American screwball comedy film made at Columbia Pictures, directed by Tay Garnett, written by C. Graham Baker, Gene Towne and Oliver H.P. Garrett, and starring George Raft and Joan Bennett. It was one of the few comedies Raft made in his career.
Albert Zugsmith was an American film producer, film director and screenwriter who specialized in low-budget exploitation films through the 1950s and 1960s.
The Man in the Iron Mask is a 1939 American historical adventure film very loosely adapted from the last section of the 1847–1850 novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, père, which is itself based on the French legend of the Man in the Iron Mask.
The Sea Beast is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Millard Webb, starring John Barrymore, Dolores Costello and George O'Hara. The film was a major commercial success and one of the biggest pictures of 1926 becoming Warner Brothers' highest grossing film. The Sea Beast is the first adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, a story about a monomaniacal hunt for a great white whale. However, the film alters the novel's plotline by establishing prequel and sequel elements that are not in the original story—such as the romancing of Esther and Ahab's safe return, respectively—and substitutes a happy ending for Melville's original tragic one. Some of the characters in the film do not appear in Melville's original novel. The film was so successful that in 1930 Warner Bros redid it in English and German, under the title Moby Dick, with Joan Bennett taking the role of Ahab's love because Dolores Costello was pregnant at the time.
Union Depot is a 1932 American pre-Code melodrama film directed by Alfred E. Green for Warner Bros., starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Blondell, and based on an unpublished play by Joe Laurie Jr., Gene Fowler, and Douglas Durkin. The film, an ensemble piece for the studio's contract players, also features performances by Guy Kibbee, Alan Hale, Frank McHugh, David Landau, and George Rosener. In the United Kingdom it was released under the title Gentleman for a Day.
The House of the Seven Gables is a 1940 Gothic drama film based on the 1851 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It stars George Sanders, Margaret Lindsay, and Vincent Price, and tells the story of a family consumed by greed in which one brother frames another for murder. It is a remake of the 1910 film of the same name, which starred Mary Fuller. The film's musical score was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Score. The plot of the film differs dramatically from the plot of the novel on which it is based.
Harold Huth was a British actor, film director and producer.
The 25th Young Artist Awards ceremony, presented by the Young Artist Association, honored excellence of young performers under the age of 21 in the fields of film and television for the year 2003, and took place on May 8, 2004 at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, Los Angeles, California.
Arizona is a 1918 American silent melodrama film produced by and starring Douglas Fairbanks and released by Famous Players–Lasky under its Artcraft Pictures banner. Based on the successful 1899 play of the same name by Augustus Thomas, the film was directed by Albert Parker.
The Amateur Gentleman is a 1926 American silent drama film produced by Inspiration Pictures and distributed through First National Pictures. It was directed by Sidney Olcott as a vehicle for star Richard Barthelmess.