One thing that might surprise younger people is that despite its popularity, Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman ain’t a precursor on the trend of giant/miniaturized people, quite the opposite.
It’s also funny how is such a movie obviously conceived for the drive-in circuits, since it’s so short than of course it had to be shown as a double feature, that being Corman’s War Of The Satellites.
So short than to expand the runtime from 66 minutes to 75 for the TV version they had to basically reuse sequences, add a long crawl at the beginning and even fuck around with frames manipulation to artificially lenghten the thing. Jesus Christ, the desperation indeed.
In hindsight, one does learn to appreciate the efficiency of these cheap movies from the era, for better or worse they ended up not wasting your time as much as some crap movies now do, even if they clearly wanted to reach the standard 90 minutes, but in the “age of content”, these films being to the point are quite welcome in their brevity.
Even though often they are so more due to budget than anything else.
And in that sense Attack of The 50 Foot Woman isn’t any different, but before that i’ll say it is also a more “sophisticated” film than one would expect, especially since it a very late entry in the genre and coming after The Amazing Colossal Man (or its sequel, War Of The Colossal Beast) of which this isn’t (quite) the clone you’d think too.
Directed by Nathan Juran (going by as Nathan Hertz), the plot of the film mostly concerns this wealthy heiress, Nancy, that had mental health and alcoholic issues, troubled as she took back the man he previously divorced from, Harry, despite him having an affair with a floozy that cojoles him even further into trying to have Nancy internated or killed so they can inherit her 50 millions family fortune.
One night Nancy, while driving, finds a giant egg/sphere shaped spaceship planted in the middle of the road, and a giant humanoid alien reaches for her. She tells this to the police but nobody believes her, thinking she’s just stressed, drunk or straight up relapsing into insanity, and Harry agrees to try and search the desert for proof of the alien story, with her willing to be put back into the sanitarium if wrong.
But turns out she was right, and exposure to the giant alien also makes her sick, go in a coma, and then grow herself into giant size, and the usual sheriff will also have to realize she was actually telling the truth all along….
While Nancy does grow to giant size and destroys some stuff, finally taking revenge for good on the cheating parasite that is Harry (and his equally monstrous floozy), she does so in the final 10 minutes, and she actually doesn’t even do a rampage, just destroys a couple of roofs, it does actually tackle feminist themes for real, which was far from common back in the ’50s, and often played as a backhanded dig, to be generous.
Yes, while it is a “variation” on The Amazing Colossal Man that also has the giant die by electrocution, the acting is better than usual for these, and the main drama is actually good enough to be engaging despite the many shortcoming and mind gimnastics required to not question why the alien ship/sphere is small enough in one scene for the humans to enter it, but also being able to house a giant alien man in it, somewhere.
One that might or might not react to gunshots or weapons, depending on the scenes, not helped by the awful transparency effects that makes the alien and giant Nancy seem like they’re actually meant to be ghosts or ethereal energy beings in the script, instead of looking like that because the special effects are so fuckin cheap that somehow they – almost – make Bert I. Gordon feels kinda professional in comparison. Almost.
To say nothing like somehow the comatose body that due to radiation has grown to giant size can fit into the house without her legs and arms bursting out à-la Alice In Wonderland.
Unlike most of B. I. G works, Attack of The 50 Foot Woman is actually constantly entertaining, the script is more of a romantic drama that is able to stand on its own, takes itself serious but also incorporate sci-fi elements so we can deliver the promised giant woman displayed on the poster (which is classic 50s false adverting of sorts, since she never does what the poster shows in the actual film), alongside with some comedy relief via the klutzy vice-sheriff, though this isn’t quite the treasure trove of accidental hilarity due to being “so bad its funny”, even though there are some campy performances, some corny one liners and the effects are fuckin cheap ass shit even for the era (like the giant papermaciè prop hands entering from doors), and some over the top stuff like even the tv news guy bullying Nancy for her “alien encounter testimony” on national broadcast.
While we also never proper get why the aliens landed here, what actually was their plan (of if ever existed one to begin with and they just randomly crashlanded Roadside Picnic style), it doesn’t matter because the main crux is definitelly the drama born of Harry and his floozy, Honey (yes, her actual name), and how they are chomping at the bit to find any way to get her out of the picture, and they don’t just talk about it, at one point the husband almost manages to kill her via morphine overdose, only for her gigantism to kick in just before.
While i wouldn’t say it’s a good film, it’s campy appeal is undeniable, and while the effects are laughably bad, the plot itself is better written than usual, absurd yes, but director Nathan Juran (The Deadly Mantis, The Brain From Planet Arous, Jack The Giant Killer) manages to do a decent job and get some mileage out of it. And overall it’s a different enough variation on the “giant sized radioactive monster man” trend of the era, tackling some feminist themes (months later would see the release of I Married A Monster From Outer Space , and it deserves its place in b-movie history as a cultural icon.
Even discarding the “nudity” which nowadays doesn’t even register as such (but at the time was indeed titillating enough for audiences), one can see why despite the poverty of the effects, it was remembered and parodied countless times, and of course remade, in 1993 by director Christopher Guest and later by Jym Wynorski as the pornish Attack Of The 60 Foot Centerfold(then loosely remade in 2012 as Attack Of The 50 Foot Cheerleader), and in 2024 Tim Burton said he’d be interested in doing a remake too.
There was a sequel planned, since the first one was so cheap and did well in terms of profit, with this follow up having a much higher budget and maybe even be in colour, but aside from the script being written, nothing came out of it.
Even so, the movie was remembered so much vividly than i think most people indirectly know about the “giant woman clichè” via the Dreamworks’ animated homage to 50s b-movies, Monster Vs Aliens, which could be indeed a prime subject for next year’s line up….
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