Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

What happens when a wealthy woman meets a giant opaque alien and his satellite in the desert. Why she ends up becoming a 50 foot woman bent on fixing her marriage with her adulterous husband! Great 50's hokum here! Lovely Allison Hayes plays a woman who has recently been checked out of a sanitorium and has major drinking/marriage problems. Her husband Harry is the scum of the earth as he flirts(and beyond) with beautiful Honey(Vickers). Both of them want Allison's money, all 50 million of it. The story is pretty ambiguous, and we really never do know just who or what that alien was all about. The best part is seeing just how low and sleazy Harry is, so we can wait to see him get his. The acting is pretty good, nothing great. The direction by Nathan Juran is adequate(nothing like what you would see in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad!). The special effects are fairly standard as we really never see Allison Hayes as a fully-materialized giant. She always seems to be a bit transparent for some reason except when we see her giant hand. Hayes looks great as a giant though in her skimpy shorts and bikini top, giving at least two great reasons to see the film...or is that three? Great 50's sci-fi fun!

"Haaaarrrryyy!"

The amplified, dispassionate female voice could have been Leona Helmseley in heat but, no, it belongs to Allison Hayes as Nancy Archer, the 50-Foot Woman of the title. In the most infamous role of her film career, Allison's performance literally rips off the roof. In fact, make that a couple of roofs.

Jaw-droppingly tacky, "Aot50FW" is the tale of Nancy, a neurotic, boozy heiress and her loveless Lothario husband, Harry (William Hudson, who also co-starred opposite The Amazing Colossal Man). Nancy has a close encounter of the third kind, in the desert, with a bald giant from outer space who wears a mini-skirt and gladiator sandals, and who has a thing for Nancy's jewelry. What he does to her once he's carried her off is probably best left a mystery, but soon Nancy starts to grow.

Treading into the center of town on tranquilizers, tightly wrapped in nothing but the bed sheets, the buxom giantess heads toward the low-rent saloon where Harry is having a few laughs with a floozy named Honey (Yvette Vickers). The confrontation turns ugly.

The Poverty Row f/x make the alien giant and Nancy appear to be transparent due to incompetently transposed images. You'll understand why director Nathan Juran changed his name to Nathan Hertz on the credits. Juran was no stranger to directing giant creatures, human and non, having also directed "The Deadly Mantis," "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad," "Jack, the Giant Killer" plus several episodes of TV's "World of Giants" and "Land of the Giants."

A lot of laughs for all the wrong reasons.

This film has to be one of my all time favorite bad movies. I used to watch it often as kid on New York City's WPIX Channel 11's Chiller Theater. The special effects(ha!) are dreadful, the dialog laughable, the acting non-existent, but I still loved it! Sultry knockout Allison Hayes wasn't a terrific actress, but she sure looked good! As a kid I remember thinking that her husband HARRY! was a big dope. Why would he want that pinch-faced blonde, when he had gorgeous, sexy and stacked Nancy to come home to every night? What a moron. Finally available on DVD after many years (Warner Bros. has distributed it but I was hoping for a better restoration--oh well)....it's still a pleasure to watch.

It's certainly not the special effects that made "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" a monster hit in 1958, as they are numerous and sadly lacking, with one giant hand barely able to maneuver, and both giants (male and female) appearing deliberately transparent as they wander off to conduct their minor mischief. Top billed for the only time in her all too brief heyday is Allison Hayes, as sultry a dish as Hollywood ever found, already with quite a proven track record behind her - "The Undead," "Zombies of Mora Tau," "The Disembodied," and "The Unearthly," "The Hypnotic Eye and "The Crawling Hand" still to come. Not to be outdone in scintillation is future Playboy Playmate (July 1959, one of the few over age 30) Yvette Vickers, her next appearance in "Attack of the Giant Leeches" cementing her reputation as a one year wonder. So sad that both came to a bad end, Allison from botched medication that claimed her life at 46, while the corpse of 81 year old Yvette had been decomposing for a year before being discovered by a neighbor. Allison gets to play the title role, neurotic wife Nancy Archer whose drinking is well known all over town, while her philandering husband, nicknamed 'Handsome Harry' (William Hudson), holds up at the local bar and grill with impossibly sexy Honey Parker (Vickers). On a night when she has remained notably sober Nancy encounters a spaceship in the desert (everyone calls it a satellite), its lone occupant a bald giant with a need for diamonds to pilot his craft, and the famous Star of India beckoning around Nancy's soft neck. She manages to run back to town but finds no one to believe her, not the sheriff (George Douglas, Melvyn's younger brother) or even Harry, who sees this as a golden opportunity to put her back in the sanitarium from which she was recently released. A second attack by the giant has the no longer disbelieving hubby leaving his wife behind to an uncertain fate while he tries to make a run for it with Honey, before the comic deputy (Frank Chase) decides to ignore the usual bribe and take the pair to the sheriff's office for questioning. Lo and behold, Nancy turns up unharmed on her own bath house roof, though the scratches on her neck indicate that the alien was none too gentle in removing her necklace. Allison is sadly off screen for a half hour before the final reel rampage, all too mild as a handful of townspeople have little trouble avoiding her while she seeks vengeance on Harry and Honey. This was the one major role for little known William Hudson, whose twin brother John enjoyed his own starring vehicle that same year in "The Screaming Skull," also as a scheming husband. No doubt a large number of teenage boys received quite an education on its double bill with Roger Corman's "War of the Satellites," getting two satellites and three gorgeous ladies for one ticket (Susan Cabot's leading man was Dick Miller!). Even Bert I. Gordon provided better effects in "The Cyclops," "The Amazing Colossal Man," and the soon to be released "War of the Colossal Beast," but with its suggestive poster one of the best remembered from the 50s this meager ATTACK had nowhere to go but up (later featured as a drive in feature in Curtis Harrington's 1977 "Ruby").

Surprisingly this late 50's Sci-Fi feature isn't all that bad. Decent acting and filming make it one of those Black and White science fiction numbers that's entertaining and fun to watch. The last line in this motion picture is an underrated classic among closing lines. Superior to the 90 something remake.