Friday, November 1, 2019

Ohio Theater Double Creature Feature – Nov. 1, 1957

Halloween may be over, but the scary stuff lingers here on the blog for one more day.

Above you see the double feature that was running at the Ohio Theater back on November 1, 1957: From Hell It Came and The Disembodied.


Here’s the story of From Hell It Came according to its Wiki entry. "A South Seas island prince is wrongly convicted of murder and executed by having a knife driven into his heart, the result of a plot by a witch doctor (the true murderer) who resented the prince's friendly relations with American scientists stationed on a field laboratory on the island. 

"The prince is buried in a hollow tree trunk and forgotten about until nuclear radiation reanimates him in the form of the “Tabonga,” a scowling tree stump.”

"The monster escapes from the laboratory and kills several people, including the witch doctor, whom the Tabonga pushes down a hill to be impaled on his own crown of shark teeth. The creature cannot be stopped, burned, or trapped. 

"Only when a crack rifle shot from one of the scientists drives the knife (which still protrudes from the creature's chest) all the way through its heart does it finally die and sink into the swamp.”

The Tabonga kind of reminds me of those apple trees that menaced Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.


The Disembodied is a thriller that takes place in a similar type of jungle territory as From Hell It Came. 
But instead of a walking tree as the villain, however, we have the beautiful Allison Hayes as the bored wife of a doctor stationed at a remote jungle outpost. It turns out that she also moonlights as an voodoo priestess who embarks on a killing spree!
The double feature wasn’t the creative inspiration of an Ohio Theater’s booking agent; the films were released as a double bill.
Campy as they are, I’d rather see either of these two jolly jungle epics instead of the current popular zombie fare on TV.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you Dan....All the garbage that is made now is nothing but CGI computer junk.Anybody that can work a computer now can be a director...Back when real movies like these were made you actually had to have talented people around to make the sets,do the wardrobe,put on the makeup,etc.And you had to have actual actors do the acting,not some computer generated creation.....It's too bad about Allison Hayes dieing the way she did.She could outact most of the current crop of so-called "stars" that are making a "career" in Hollyweird now.

-Alan D Hopewell said...

Both films showed regularly on Ghoulardi.