Retrospective: The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971)

[Shane Burridge]

The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971) 90m 

If you're already thinking 'maelstrom' or 'hell storm' then you'll 
understand the marketing strategy writer-director Walon Green used 
to dress up this feature-length documentary about insects. 
Stitching together footage of various bugs, Green dispensed with 
offscreen narration and created a character named Hellstrom, (he 
is revealed as a fiction in the end credits) a doomsayer with a 
doctorate whose view is that the reign of humankind will be 
brought to bear by the massed insect population of our planet. 
While there's nothing too scary about butterflies and ladybirds, 
and no threat from mayflies whose life span encompasses a single 
day, THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE bases most of its scaremongering on 
those insects who create social systems (ants, bees, termites) 
and are therefore capable of organizing themselves to get even 
for every one of them we schpritzed with a spray can. However, 
in a morbid reflection of the insect-human comparisons that 
Hellstrom is fond of quoting, they're too busy fighting among 
themselves to pay much attention to the rest of us. Entomological 
societies may invite parallels, but as individuals the insects 
are presented as completely alien beings worthy of Sci-Fi pulp 
mags and movies, and one can see the inspiration for such 
big-budget monster movies as ALIENS and STARSHIP TROOPERS in 
their physiognomy. 

As Dr Hellstrom, actor Lawrence Pressman tries not to play his 
role over the top although he's almost smacking his lips over 
such adjectives as "heathenistic" to describe the insect hordes 
that he appears to admire as much as loathe. Compare the opening 
scenes of this film to the 'other' cult 70s nature documentary 
THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS, which begins in the same way with a 
montage of volcanoes erupting and land masses forming but without 
the livid prose about the Earth being raped (the images could be 
of an apocalypse just as effectively as a creation). The Doc 
might be a few ants short of a picnic, but it didn't stop many 
viewers being suckered into believing that we were in imminent 
danger of swarms and infestation (the spread of killer bees in 
South America was making news at the time). HELLSTROM also draws 
upon our exposure to SF movies of the 50s, which saw any number 
of creatures surviving atomic blasts, to drum home the likelihood 
of insects inheriting the Earth after human beings have poisoned 
or irradiated themselves out of existence. For those unversed in 
mutant bug movies, he also throws in a biblical plague of locusts. 
Our fear response to the insect footage is further manipulated by 
spooky musical effects, of which three always seem to be popular 
in such docos, namely (a) arrhythmical pizzicato that sounds like 
comb teeth being plucked, (b) metal being scraped along piano 
strings, and (c) lettuces being sadistically sliced and crushed. 
The film goes too far trying to impress us, however, when it sets 
up Candid Camera style footage of people discovering cockroaches 
and suchlike in their food.

For those of us who saw it on TV as impressionable kids, HELLSTROM 
is probably the one documentary from which we can remember the most 
images, even if they have been repeated in countless nature shows 
on TV. The insect photography is remarkably clear and colourful 
and holds up favorably in comparison to much later films like 
MICROCOSMOS, proving that no matter how much the technology of 
photography has developed over the decades, you still can't get 
any closer to a bug, and they're not going to behave any differently 
even if you could. 

sburridge at hotmail.com
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