Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

Film: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

Stars: Allison Hayes, William Hudson, Yvette Vickers, Roy Gordon

Director: Nathan Hertz

Oscar History: Never nominated

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

Horror films of the 1950's had a different task than the previous decades.  At the time, as the Cold War was waging across the planet, we encountered a number of different political motifs that would become staples in films of the era.  Allusions to both nuclear war & the Red Scare were everywhere.  3-D entertainment & drive-in movies were the rage, which meant that we saw more films trying to utilize these technologies to greater effect (reaching out into the audience).  And it wasn't just enough to make a horror film-you had to find a way to connect to the daily lives of the audience.  This is all to say that a movie like Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, which comes armed with a title that I couldn't turn down with this month's theme, plays differently in 1958 than it might have in 1944.

(Spoilers Ahead) As a UFO is spotted over the California countryside, we are given a depiction of a marriage completely on the rocks.  Nancy Archer (Hayes), who is a troubled woman with a large fortune, sees the UFO but no one believes that she saw it, blaming it on her drinking.  She tries to convince her cheating husband Harry (Hudson), who is gaslighting his wife in hopes of being able to get her committed so he can marry his girlfriend Honey (Vickers), and he goes along with her to the desert on the condition that she will give him control of her $50 million fortune if they find nothing.  When they are there, they see the satellite, but they capture Nancy...who then shows up in a later scene on the roof of her house, in a daze.  After a while, the doctors notice that Nancy is gaining in size, rapidly growing taller & larger.  They sedate & confine her, but she breaks free, and goes after her husband Harry, wanting revenge for his adultery.  The film ends with both Nancy & Harry dead, no ultimate explanation of what comes next with the aliens.

The movie itself is short, barely over an hour, but much of that run time we don't get a lot of time with the titular monster.  Nancy spends the first half of the picture mentally unhinged, a wealthy woman who is clearly unhappy in her marriage and whose husband is a louse.  Likely due to budgetary restraints, we don't get a lot of time exploring Nancy's reign-of-terror in the city itself, and we never get the grand scene on the poster where Nancy is standing (potentially without underwear on) in a miniskirt & bra, her vagina hovering over a freeway (my friend Cody floated that this idea may well have been some studio executive's sexual fantasy come to life...after watching the movie, I'm convinced he's right).

As a result, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a bit of a letdown, and you understand why there wasn't a sequel (though there were a number of "suddenly they're big" sorts of horror movies in the late 1950's, a side effect of the Cold War & fears of nuclear attack showing itself at the movies).  The characters are unlikable, they also don't behave like real figures, and there are enough holes in the plot that the fifty-foot woman could walk through them without ducking (like, what happened to the aliens?!?).  All-in-all, a letdown that never lives up to its potential delights.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death