Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman (1958)

I've reviewed a lot of movies in my time here, some of them good, most of them bad. And for every movie (save one or two) I've tried giving them the benefit of the doubt; I did my best to remember what good those involved had done, if the cinematography was good or even if a passing scene caught my fancy.

No one wants to waste their time with a worthless movie. That is, one in which even the passing scenes hold no interest. These kind of movies wear on you and no one will then want to waste any of their too-valuable time even giving it a second glance. The directors know it, the producers know it, the writers know it, even some of the actors know it. Believe me, I know what it's like being in that kind of situation....

There's a thing that happens sometimes with these kinds of movies, though: there are some who watch your celluloid product and see something more than what was created. In that instance, your work achieves a level of competence not even the producer anticipated. It becomes something... different, like when Dorothy and company each saw their own version of The Wizard in that old book from long ago.

What I'm getting at is - what I see isn't necessarily what you may see. hence the art of movie reviewing, so as to relate what one viewer views in a film as opposed to what another might.

Understand?

A lot of producers in the 1950s were hoping Joe Moviegoer would understand. This was a decade in which many science fiction-based films were released with the hopes that the viewer would see something more than what was there. Of course, this was also an excuse for the writers to go whole hog, as it were, and make stories that were... different. And we're talking some classic titles, like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and the grand-daddy of them all, Forbidden Planet (1956). These are award winners, people, and they made good coin, too.

Something else about 1950s sci-fi is the prevalence of the Atomic Age. The bomb had been dropped, we've had reports on what fallout does to a body, experiments had been conducted and - in spite of that - we got movies where people and/or animals got really big or really small. It's part and parcel with science fiction movies: if there aren't any aliens involved, then there's gonna be a size change.

So it came to be we got Earth Vs The Spider (1958), The Black Scorpion (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), The Giant Gila Monster (1959), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), War of the Colossal Beast (1958), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Giant Claw (1957)...

And just so we would get some equal opportunity for the ladies we also got Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the film that proved once and for all that a woman's place is smashing up her tiny balsa wood model home.

Here comes the incredible shrinking plot: Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) is a wealthy alcoholic dame who is having trouble with her equally alcoholic, verbally and physically abusive cheating husband Harry (William Hudson) who is all but flaunting his affair with local hotsy-totsy party girl Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). Nancy's troubles increase when she comes across an alien in the back deserts of California. Soon after, Nancy grows to a height of...what was that again, oh yeah - 50 feet!...as a result of radiation exposure from contact with the alien, she is finally in a position to gain revenge on anyone she doesn't like and to get back her wayward hubby and give him a big hug with her nuclear arms.

See how director Nathan Juran and writer Mark Hanna manage to slide in a little of that good old fashioned subversive male superiority into a flick where the lead character is, ostensibly, female? Sure, pre-Amazonian Nancy is a hard-drinking, outspoken advocate for the land and country of Shrewsylvania. But she's also a clingy, needy, desparately man-wanting femmy-femme who simply cannot live without her unfaithful jerk hubby Harry. After all, she's a woman - he's a man...

...and I can't think of a better arrangement (wiggles Groucho eyebrows).

So the bulk of the movie, after Nancy's been outer-space-radiated to the 50 foot mark, is just her stomping all about the desert town (surprising how quiet she is doing all her smashing and crashing in spite of her size - must be that feminine daintiness), tearing down every flimsy model in sight in her search for Harry. Of course, she's not entirely quiet (like our beloved ape from 1976's A*P*E) - no, she bellows out Harry's name every so often, making sure everyone in a nine-county radius knows she's looking for him.

In spite of the fact that this movie's name is, again, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, females are pretty much taken for granted here as throw-away characters. Either as shrews, hotsy-totsy party girls or screaming background characters . and the fact that the two main females in this case are a shrew (later to be a 50 foot shrew) and a hotsy-totsy party girl, that doesn't leave a whole lotta choices, does it?

I'll grant you that lead Allison Hayes had a good career in Hollywood. Of course, most of her output was in the Fifties and films like Francis Joins the WACS, Gunslinger, The Undead, Zombies of Mora Tau, The Unearthly, The Hypnotic Eye and Hong Kong Confidential. And she certainly seems earnest enough - in a wide-eyed alcoholic way - as a woman who just wants to be loved by her abusive, alcoholic hubby. And as the hotsy-totsy, Yvette Vickers had an even more enviable career in films, looking at such impressive titles of hers as Reform School Girl, Short Cut to Hell (directed by no less a man than James Cagney, excuse me!), Attack of the Giant Leeches and the Paul Newman jewel Hud. So, was this a springboard for bigger and better things? Maybe, but don't let it get around.

I think producer Bernard Woolner knew what side his bread was buttered on when it was decided to let most of the scenes here play as comedy. The bespectacled Deputy Charlie (Frank Chase) has some funny lines and has a penchant for drawing guns on gigantic rubber jazz hands or commenting on the situation with sage lines such as "Wowie!" or "I can't shoot a woman"... the soap opera-ish dialogue between Nancy and Harry which verges on hysterics that'd make the gang on "General Hospital" blush... not to mention the fact that every man here regards women - 50 feet or no - as if they are indeed otherworldly and therefore worthy of either scorn or male domination, all give the impression that maybe not everyone is entirely serious about their pro-feminist piece, here.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is not the socially relevant work Them! was or the psychological powerhouse of The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it serves an altogether different purpose. The sight of a towering giantess clutching a Ken doll or being superimposed as a pale back projection against any given outdoor situation so as to suggest a gargantuan menace will give any well-schooled and seasoned veteran of b-movies the giggles - or at least the smiles.

This is our heritage we're talking about. While Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is not a prestige picture in any sense, it is something that makes us realize why we watch films like this. and it sure isn't for the social relevance.

This is a product of a bygone era, one where people smoked freely, drank like fish, listened to that rock-and-roll junk, talked like Mickey Spillane was just around the corner and special effects were a quaint notion rather than a sci-fi movie necessity.

Surely effects weren't a consideration when you had half-dressed women crushing tiny model houses in the offing. On that description alone your audience is built-in waiting in their seats for the film to start. And it's a given that they are not going to be looking for deep Freudian subtext in their story. If you promise 50 foot women and say that they are indeed going to attack something, if you don't follow through then it's no one else's fault if your core audience walks away disappointed. At least THIS film delivers on its title.

I'm sure Attack of the 50 Foot Woman made a profit. Something so outlandish and so cheap has to make a profit on audacity alone.

And if there's one thing this movie is big on - besides big women - is audacity.