Watched: 06/28/2024
Format: Amazon
Viewing: Second
Director: Nathan Juran
If ever there were a movie ripe for a modern re-telling, it's Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958).
The movie is likely now most famous from the title and poster art, with only a small percentage of people who've seen it or remember the actual film. And the poster is killer, to be honest. And in the best, shlocky 1950's sci-fi way, far surpasses anything on the screen.
What's funny about this incredibly cheap (I read the budget was $88,000) film is that it's so different from the atomic scare movies of the era with giant ants, giant lizards, colossal men, etc... The story plays on a completely different flavor of fear.
The film follows Harry Archer, a cad who is two-timing his wife, Nancy (Allison Hayes*). Nancy has some emotional issues and problems with the bottle, but those seem to have started once Harry showed up and started catting around almost immediately. On a night where Nancy has stumbled across Harry publicly fondling his latest squeeze, Honey (Yvette Vickers), she drives off in a huff, only to run into a UFO and the giant contained therein, who reaches for Nancy's gigantic diamond necklace, fumbling the attempt.
Nancy returns to the bar to get help, but everyone thinks she's just wacky, drunk, crazy Nancy. Sober and not-crazy, a gaslit Nancy heads out with Harry, with whom she's fighting, to find the spaceship - and succeeds. The giant grabs her and Harry runs away like the shitheel he is.
Soon, Nancy is found - but grows to enormous size, and attacks the bar.
I think this movie now reads as feminist, and I have zero idea if that was intended in 1958, or if it was a hastily jotted off script that got to some really strong points by accident along the way as the writer sought to give Nancy a reason to rampage. It seems most likely that someone was just making a sexy sci-fi movie on the cheap (Nancy as a giant is wearing an improvised two-piece made of bed-sheets and has perfect hair and make-up). But given the facts of the movie - you never know what someone's intentions were, especially when it feels like it successfully made a point about infidelity and emotional abuse of your significant other.
It's not just Harry who won't take Nancy seriously. We basically get the "well, she's a woman, and she's going through a change, and you know how that makes them women loco" stuff that now adays is a punchline, and it is breathtaking. Aside from Jess, the butler, everyone in this remote town has written her off, while not caring that Harry is carrying on publicly. If she weren't rich, it's hard to imagine what would have become of her. And, of course, the few other women in the movie fill their roles in a patriarchal world - sexpot, nurse, strict matron. We only really get the sexpot's opinion, and you wish there would be more there (instead we spend time with Deputy Dummy, who the director clearly thought was comedy gold. Spoiler: he is not.).
By the time Nancy is 50 feet tall - thanks to some mysterious space radiation (and depending on the shot - these FX are not great), you are firmly on her side if she wants to stomp everyone into paste.
Yes, the FX are horrible and the optical FX mean you can see through our giants. Yes, you'll want far more kaiju Nancy than you get. And a giant, fake hand that looks like it was made by a high school art class for a parade float is not ideal. But it's also a tight 70 minutes of movie, and you can get how this oddball film has managed to survive for a few generations.
In 1993, Daryl Hannah re-made the film as actor and producer with Christopher Guest directing (I've not seen it).
But I'd like to see what this concept looks like written and directed by an all-female crew. We're about as far now from the 1993 movie as they were from the 1958 movie. Oddly, the last thing I read on the topic of a remake was that Gillian Flynn and Tim Burton (sigh) were teaming up for a remake. I don't care if he produces, but there's plenty of directors out there who could work wonders with this who are going to have more to say.
*we'll editorialize and say "you fool, Harry"
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