CAPSULE: This is one of those films that has become a low-grade camp
classic. While it is not as incompetent as some of the films of
this period, the campy title certainly drew attention to the film
and the abysmal special effects which ironically have an attraction
all their own. If this film had a reasonable filmmaker behind it,
it would probably be nearly forgotten by now.

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN opens with reports of a strange flying
object seen several places over the globe. It comes to rest at the
edge of the California desert. Nancy Archer (played by Allison
Hayes) is driving through the desert and sees the object, looking
like a thirty-foot jawbreaker. As she stares at it, we see a huge
(and somewhat rubbery) hand reach down to her car. She returns to
the local town in hysterics. Her philandering husband Harry
(William Hudson) hears that she is in town in a hysterical state.
She claims that a thirty-foot giant was trying to get her diamond
necklace. It has the "world's most famous diamond," the 563-carat
Star of India. How she got the huge diamond is never explained.

The local police humor her since she is the wealthiest person in
the community, but no evidence is found. The film devolves quickly
into a fairly mundane melodrama of a no-good philandering husband
who cheats on his rich wife with the local good-time girl Honey
Parker (Yvette Vickers). Harry wants to have her institutionalized
as insane so that he can inherit her fifty million dollars. At
first Harry really believes Nancy is insane until he goes with her
into the desert and actually sees the alien "satellite." Harry
abandons her to the alien and drives to town, but later she is
found still alive, though comatose. Honey talks Harry into killing
his wife, but when he goes to do it he finds she has grown to fifty
feet in size as an effect of contact with the alien. The sheriff
and Nancy's butler find giant footprints and track them to the
spacecraft, which is full of steam. Inside it seems to have a
collection of diamonds in glass globes. The alien chases them out
of the spacecraft and destroys their car, then they look somewhat
bewildered by the experience. He returns to his craft and flies
off. Nancy returns to consciousness and goes to town to find
Harry. She tears apart the town, killing Honey and dragging away
Harry. As she walks close to a power pole with an electrical
transformer, the sheriff shoots it and it explodes killing Nancy.
As the sheriff points out, she finally has Harry to herself. The
script is by Mark Hanna who the previous year wrote The Amazing
Colossal Man and managed to outdo the lameness of that script
writing a sort of companion film. It even has a major actor in
common, William Hudson who played the scientist Dr. Linstrom in that
film.

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN was directed by Nathan Hertz, a
pseudonym for Nathan Juran who the previous year directed THE 7TH
VOYAGE OF SINBAD. He clearly did not want to use his full name,
and who can blame him. In spite of the bad material, Juran manages
to get at least acceptable performance from all concerned, with the
possible exception of the alien. If there is one place to look for
quality in ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, it is in the acting. In
the title role is Allison Hayes, who had made four fantasy film the
previous year, THE DISEMBODIED, THE UNDEAD, THE UNEARTHLY, and
ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU. This is the role for which she is best known,
though it probably was not much of a stretch for her. William
Hudson had made previously films like DESTINATION TOKYO, STRATEGIC
AIR COMMAND, MISTER ROBERTS, and MY MAN GODFREY.

The first bad visual in the film is a route sign looks like it came
from an art department, not a highway department. Things will get
much, much worse. The script calls the spherical object a
"satellite" again and again. Of course it is not a satellite, it
is more similar to the bubble that Glinda the Good Witch of the
North uses to zip around Oz. What little we see of the alien is on
a film stock that is either better lit than most of the other
footage or is on a different film stock since it looks like it is
bleached white. The alien we see is rather impoverished-looking--
simply a bald man in funny clothing. When Nancy grows to fifty
feet in her own bedroom, we see no signs that she is crowded by the
walls of her normal-sized bedroom. When we see the inside of the
space craft, it is decorated beaverboard and seems too small to
allow the alien to move around. When we see the alien he is
outside the ship and when you see him full size, he appears to be
translucent (except when you see just his hand). We get a better
look at his uniform and see it to be a strange jacket with a
picture of a bull on the back. Just why an alien would have a
picture of a bull on his jacket is not explained. Nancy's hand is
properly large but it looks like a large plush cushion. Showing
Nancy walking to town, they use the same bad image-mixing effects.
This is a great example of place where they only had to film her
from a low angle to create the effect they needed. Instead they
superimpose her image and get the same translucent effect that
destroys all the bad effects in the film. Nancy's attack on the
town is a classic of bad effects. The same translucent effect is
prominent. When Nancy picks up Harry, it clearly looks like just a silly-looking doll. But there was something that attracted
audiences and keeps attracting them to this film. Something about
the giant Nancy tearing the town apart and calling "Harry!" keeps
audiences coming back, but not for the most charitable of motives.

BEST TOUCH: Nathan Juran does a professional job, not common in
films of this quality. There is not one mis-delivered line in the
film.

WORST TOUCH: Ah, so much to choose from. Probably what bothered me
most is the translucent alien with the bull on his jacket. What
were they thinking of?

There is not much film here to warrant a second viewing here.
Certainly it seems an unworthy choice for HBO to remake as they did
in 1993. This film rates a low -2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

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Among the things Mark Leeper wrote:

ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN was directed by Nathan Hertz, a
pseudonym for Nathan Juran who the previous year directed THE 7TH
VOYAGE OF SINBAD.
If there is one place to look for
quality in ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN, it is in the acting. In
the title role is Allison Hayes, who had made four fantasy film the
previous year, THE DISEMBODIED, THE UNDEAD, THE UNEARTHLY, and
ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU. This is the role for which she is best known,
though it probably was not much of a stretch for her.

Playing the 50 foot woman not a stretch! Humor!

The script calls the spherical object a
"satellite" again and again. Of course it is not a satellite, it
is more similar to the bubble that Glinda the Good Witch of the
North uses to zip around Oz.

After the 1957 launch of Sputnik, many people who knew what they were talking about were quoted in the news talking about "satellites." Other people-- these people, saw the headlines and TV and thought they had a two dollar word for "spaceship." Roger
Corman famously produced "War of the Satellites" at a short schedule to be released in 1958 while the iron was hot.

There is not much film here to warrant a second viewing here.
Certainly it seems an unworthy choice for HBO to remake as they did
in 1993.

Haven't seen it, I think I remember some hint that it was about female empowerment. Seems to have had more effort put into it than the original -- even relative to their time periods, but they were still aiming at a lower target than remaking one of
the A pictures of the era.

--

-Jack

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