ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN: Blu-ray (Allied Artists, 1958) Warner Archive

Okay, I will just step out onto a ledge here and state that I have never understood the ‘charm’ of director, Nathan Hertz’s Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958), a woefully pedestrian lover’s ‘triangle’ tricked out in sci-fi trappings by having its protagonist, Allison Hayes’ towering, if titular twit, Nancy Fowler Archer, go on a ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’ rampage after her man, Harry (William Hudson) goes astray. Made in basically a week, and, on budget so miniscule (depending on the source consulted, between $65,000 and $85,000) even ‘shoestring’ seems to inflate its stature, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman falls right in line with that brief, if wildly popular strain of king-sized radioactive bugs, and, ironically, her antithesis - The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) – tales of science run afoul in man’s limited interpretation of the planet and its outer reaches. Hertz (whose real name was Nathan H. Juran) and his co-conspirator/producer, Bernard Woolner, gets some milage out of Mark Hanna’s silly screenplay with an enviable assist from Ronald Stein’s underscore (much too good for this movie).

Even Allied Artists, the unofficial dumping ground for all things whacky and wonderous at this time, had so little assurance that the movie would do well, it made it a ‘double feature’ with War of the Satellites (don’t ask).  At barely 75-minutes (actually 66, minus the extended titles, duplicated at the beginning and the end, and several inserted ‘hold-frames’, optically zoomed to lengthen its runtime), Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is meant as something of a cautionary tale for all potential philanderers toying with their woman’s affections. But its rudimentary, ‘Hey, fellas. Don’t piss off the old lady or she’ll grow up to eat you alive’ scenario gets bogged down. Besides, what does Nancy Fowler Archer have to squawk about besides her hubby’s nocturnal interests in Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers)? She’s rich, spoiled and satisfied in just about every other regard. That she grows to inflatable Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon size after her brief ‘encounter’ with a flying saucer is…well, regrettable. Because Nan’ doesn’t really know how to hold her own as a giantess.

Having virtually condemned the artistic merits of this pic, I must sincerely draw breath to also suggest there is something weirdly watchable about this crassly commercial unraveling into very bad taste. Plot wise: our story kicks into high gear after rich gal, Nan plotting to pitch her cheating guy to the curb. Alas, fate will not leave well enough alone. The alien (Michael Ross) who contacts her is mesmerized by Nan’s Star of India diamond necklace. After this ‘encounter’ our heroine makes the fatal error of telling her man what has happened, and this gives Harry the idea for a truly unscrupulous plan, along with his mistress, Honey. Why not have Nancy declared insane to gain control over her millions? Determined to prove her story, Nan’ retreats to the desert but is wounded by the alien, who confiscates her necklace. Found in an utter state of delirium on the roof of her pool house, Nan is attended to by the family’s physician, Dr. Cushing (Roy Gordon), who sedates her, but suggests she is suffering from radiation poisoning. Ah, yes. Radiation. The go-to culprit for all 50’s sci-fi. Believing he can dispense with his wife by injecting her with a lethal dose of the sedative, Harry discovers Nan’ has morphed to epic proportions. Now, she can pursue her reign of terror, getting even with not only Harry and Honey, but also, all those naysayers who thought her a total loon for making such wild claims about alien life. Cushing and Dr. Von Loeb (Otto Waldis), a specialist, keep Nan in a morphine-induced coma while Sherriff Dubbitt (George Douglas) and the family’s faithful man servant, Jess (Ken Terrell), make haste to the desert. There, they discover the alien craft and the diamond necklace, inexplicably being used as its power source. Meanwhile, Nan breaks free of her handlers, sheathing herself in bed linens and embarking upon a rampage to avenge herself. Finding Honey in a bar, Nan tears into the establishment and crushes her rival to death with a heavy ceiling beam. Dubbitt arrives, firing gunshots that bounce off Nan like rubber pellets. But when Dubbitt fires his gun at a nearby powerline transformer, he manages to electrocute Nan who tumbles to her death. Shortly thereafter, Harry’s squashed remains are pried lose from the giantess’s clutched hand.

You know…it’s hard to believe Nathan Hertz won an Oscar for Best Art Direction on 2oth Century-Fox’s How Green Was My Valley (1941). The artistic discrepancies between that effort and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman are seismic. It’s like comparing golden delicious apples to pink-eyed bunnies with worms, and pretty silly to boot. Hanna’s formulaic lover’s triangle gets its’ boost from some truly shoddy special effects, bad miniatures and Allison Hayes’ ridiculously over-the-top hamming for the cameras which, in all its towering glory, lasts barely 10-mins. When a picture is this bad, it is bound to inspire remakes and sequels. As early as one year after the theatrical release of Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, producer, Woolner was aiming low again to accomplish just that, with a bigger budget and Technicolor. Mercifully, it never happened. And neither did a $5 million dollar reboot, ambitiously pitched in 1979. In the mid-80’s, filmmaker, Jim Wynorski thought he had the golden ticket to dreck with ex-porn star, Sybil Danning as his muse. Again, nothing came of it. But in 1993, HBO and director, Christopher Guest conspired to will a needless remake starring Darryl Hannah. Two years later, Fred Olen Ray produced his own grotesque parody, Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold, almost as absurd and as cheaply made as the original. This was followed by Roger Corman 3D fiasco, Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012). Enough said.

Attack of the 50-Foot Woman arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive. Why it should take precedence over the studio’s back catalog of superior offerings, still MIA in hi-def, is a mystery. What is genuine here is the quality of this 1080p transfer. Like everything WAC touches, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman looks sublime in hi-def with exceptional tonality throughout its grayscale, excellent black levels and a light smattering of film grain indigenous to its source. The DTS 2.0 mono mix is uniformly excellent, giving its all to Ronald Stein’s score. WAC has included the original audio commentary by historian, Tom Weaver and co-star, Yvette Vickers. This was recorded for the DVD release some years ago. We also get a badly worn theatrical trailer. Bottom line: Attack of the 50-Foot Woman is a movie with a following that belies my better judgement. It’s a thoughtless, ‘out there’ disposable nothing – 66 minutes of my life that I can never get back, and not particularly worth your time or effort either. WAC’s commitment to film preservation is top notch as always. I just wish they would find more worthy contenders on which to lavish their time and energies. Not recommended for content. Recommended for presentation to those who continue to worship at the altar of gawd awful mediocrity.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

0

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

1