Search - Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman on DVD

I am Woman, watch me grow

Michael M. Wilk | Howard Beach, NY | 11/02/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I was a little boy living in the Woodside Housing Projects in the early 1960s, a status symbol amongst the kids was how many times one had seen "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" on TV. It seemed like it was on TV every week, on the Zacherley-hosted "Chiller Theater". Clips from it were even featured on the opening intro of "Chiller Theater", along with clips from "Plan 9 From Outer Space", "The Ape Man", "Killers From Space", "The Cyclops", and "Frankenstein's Daughter". Kids were easy to please back then.
This soon-to-be 45 year old kid STILL loves this film. "Attack" is essentially a trashy soap opera, featuring a philandering husband, an alcoholic heiress, a sexy "other woman", and, to top it off, a 30 foot giant who, in the words of artist Frank Dietz, looks like a gigantic Fred Mertz in a Roman costume!
Alcoholic heiress Nancy Archer (played by the voluptuous Allison Hayes, who died WAY too young), sees a flying saucer, which looks like the bubble Glinda travels in in "The Wizard of Oz". The 30 foot Fred Mertz lookalike emerges from the craft, and covets Nancy's fabulous diamond, "The Star of India". He wants it to power his spacecraft, or maybe for his own personal jewelry collection. Of course, everyone thinks that Nancy is just seeing pink elephants, including her two-timing, fortune-hunting husband Harry. Harry and his sexy girlfriend Honey Parker, (played by red-headed vixen Yvette Vickers) want Nancy committed, so they can get their greedy, sweaty little hands on her millions. What they don't bargain for is that Nancy has become contaminated by radiation from her encounter with Fred Mertz. Nancy then grows to a statuesque 50 feet, her hair turns honey blonde in the process, and she goes on a rampage, determined to wreak her vengeance on the slimy Harry and the sluttish Honey. The image of Ms. Hayes, in her matching bedsheet bra and half-slip, is an unforgettable icon. The film is a little slow going, and the "Attack" doesn't come til the last 10 minutes of the film, but it is fascinately, entertainingly awful to watch. The women's clothes look like they came straight out of a 1958 Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue, the dialogue is atrocious, and the special effects are cheesy-you can see through the Fred Mertz giant and the titular character (yes, it's a pun). The film also has that crazy 1950s iconography. The "desert community" home of the Archers (I like to think that they didn't live far from Las Vegas), the big cars with tailfins, and, of course, the sexy "broads". One can imagine what Russ Meyer would have done with this film! My favorite line occurs in the film after Nancy's first encounter with the jewelry-snatching giant, and Nancy says to Harry, "I think he was after my diamond!" I may also add, on a personal note, that two of my dearest friends, a married couple, are named Nancy and Harry. We all get a big laugh out of it! One final anecdote: I'm pretty sure Federico Fellini saw this film and was impressed. The hilarious Italian comedy "Boccaccio 70", comprises of 3 stories directed by different directors. The Fellini-directed story, "The Seduction of Dr. Antonio", deals with a straightlaced, uptight moralist and his encounter with a 50-foot tall Anita Ekberg. WOW!"

GIVE IT A BREAK

Avalon Don | Huntington Beach, California United States | 04/02/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The majority of the reviewers bash this one. My only complaint is I wish the producer and director would of had more vision to have the 50 ft. woman actually tear up a city and a walk over a highway like the cover of the video. She also could have been the giant about 30 minutes longer than in the film. These are 1950's special effects and the obvious poor acting is the make out scenes with her cheating husband (William Hudson) and girlfriend (Yvette Peters) in the dance club. Allison Hayes is brilliant as the 50 ft. woman. This could have been equal to "King Kong" and "Godzilla", but it's still an all-time classic."

Hey, it might be bad but a giant Allison Hayes ain't boring

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 02/09/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Attack of the 50 Foot Woman," the 1958 cult classic, is everything that the 1957 science fiction film "The Incredible Shrinking Man" is not. It is about a woman instead of a man, growing bigger instead of shrinking, vengeance instead of philosophy, and bad instead of good. However, I come down on the side of those that think this film is gloriously bad and therefore an enjoyable camp romp. Heiress Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) is driving around in the California desert on Route 66 when a satellite crashes to earth and she has an encounter with a giant. Nancy heads back to town and tells everyone what happened, but the police just think she has been off on one of her drinking binges again (Nancy has been institutionalized in the past, you see). As for her husband, Harry (William Hudson), he is too busy paying attention to that cheap tramp Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). Only now Harry sees his big chance to have Nancy declared mentally incompetent so he can get her $50 million inheritance and that big diamond she wears on the cheap chain around her neck. Fortunately, Nancy is again abducted by the giant alien and when she comes back to town she is 50-feet tall and ready to go on the attack with Harry her prime target. The sequence as Nancy slowly but surely trashes the town as she tracks down Harry redeems the rest of the film, even if the same shot shows up repeatedly (albeit sometimes backwards). The sight of Allison Hayes in her cloth bikini is as memorable an image as you will find in science fiction films from the Fifties, right up there with Gort's appearance in "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Up to that point the film belongs to Yvette Vickers, who attains a level of performance as a bad girl usually reserved for your more traditional exploitation films from this period. "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" can be read as a proto-feminist film, with Nancy's crashing through the roof of her house being viewed as a metaphor for breaking the boundaries of repression which limited the growth of women in the real world. But where is the fun in that? Harry done Nancy wrong and fate has given Nancy the opportunity to engage in payback. This movie was made in 1993 with Darryl Hannah and while the special effects were vastly improved, the net gain was just not as enjoyable as the original romp in the desert, which remains a touchstone for fans of bad science fiction films."

Fun cinema stuff

Algernon Wentworth | Derby, CT. United States | 07/01/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This movie was great fun, terrific acting, amusingly poor special effects but a camp 1950s scary movie classic that would definitely would be worth the purchase if it had been restored and presented in widescreen. I've seen this film many times but now I'd like to see the complete film."