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Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a 1958 American science fiction feature film produced by Bernard Woolner for Allied Artists Pictures. It was directed by Nathan H. Juran (credited as Nathan Hertz) from a screenplay by Mark Hanna, and starred Allison Hayes, William Hudson and Yvette Vickers. The original music score was composed by Ronald Stein. The film was a take on other movies that had also featured size-changing humans, namely The Amazing Colossal Man and The Incredible Shrinking Man, but substituting a woman as the protagonist.
The story concerns the plight of Nancy Archer, a wealthy heiress whose close encounter with an enormous alien being causes her to grow into a giantess. She uses her new size and power to seek revenge against her philandering husband Harry and his mistress, Honey Parker.
A television announcer (Dale Tate) tells of people around the globe spotting a floating red ball. Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes)
is a wealthy but highly troubled woman. She has been speeding along the
desert roads at night, fleeing her problems. A glowing ball settles on
the highway in front of her. A giant reaches for her, but she runs back
to town. No one believes in her story because of her drinking problem
and having been institutionalized before. Her shifty husband (William Hudson) is more interested in his floozy (Yvette Vickers).
Nonetheless, he pretends to be the good husband in hopes that Nancy
will 'snap' and return to the 'booby hatch'. She convinces him to search
the desert with her, looking for the "satellite". Eventually, they find
it, and as the giant emerges Harry flees, leaving Nancy behind. Later,
Nancy is found on the roof of her pool house. She has been sedated by
her doctor. Harry thinks to give her a lethal injection of sedative, but
when he goes up to her room, he finds she has grown into a giant.
The sheriff and Nancy's butler find and explore the alien's spherical
ship. Seems the giant alien needs diamonds, perhaps fuel. The giant
alien interrupts, wrecking their car, so they walk back. Nancy awakens
and breaks free. Determined to find her wayward husband, she breaks
through the roof of her house, and stomps off to town. In town, she
takes the roof off the bar. A beam falls on the floozy, killing her.
Nancy picks up Harry and walks away, The sheriff shoots at her to no
apparent effect, but accidentally hits a power line transformer. The
transformer blows up near Nancy and kills her, with Harry lying crushed
in her hand.
[edit] Remakes and sequels
With its low budget — the film was made for around $88,000 — Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
made enough money to prompt discussion of a sequel. According to
producer Jacques Marquette, the sequel was to be produced at a higher
budget, and in color. A script was also written, though the project
never advanced beyond the discussion phase.[1]
In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Jim Wynorski was considering a remake of the 1958 movie, with Sybil Danning in the title role.[2] Wynorski made it as far as a shooting a photo session with Danning dressed as the 50 foot woman[3] but, again, the project never materialized, as Wynorksi opted to film the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth instead.[4]
The film was finally remade in a 1993 HBO movie, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. The film, directed by Christopher Guest with a script by Thirtysomething scribe Joseph Dougherty, starred Daryl Hannah in the title role.
In 1995, Fred Olen Ray produced a parody entitled Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold, starring J. J. North
and Tammy Parks. Beyond the basic premise, the plot had little in
common with the original movie, being concerned with the side-effects of
a beauty-enhancing formula on two ambitious female models. The movie
was deliberately farcical and made on an extremely low budget; the
illusion of size-difference was achieved using forced perspective, unlike the earlier movies which used composite imaging.
[edit] In popular culture
- This Clip taken from this movie of "The Alien" picking up 1 Brand of
Car (a Sedan) and throwing a totally different car (A "Woodie" Wagen)
into a ditch, from "The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" was used to end the
Original Opening Sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's "Chiller
Theatre" back in the 1960s
- Clips from the movie are spoofed in the music video for Neil Finn's 1998 single "She Will Have Her Way".
- Clips from the movie theme and related merchandise and scenario were
used in the video clip for the song "Call Me" from the 80s pop music
group Go West.
- Various animated television series have referenced the film, usually
in episodes which involve a female character becoming giant-sized. For
example, the Challenge of the Superfriends from 1978 features the
origins of superhero Apache Chief and super-villainess Giganta.[5]
- Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" book Moving Pictures climaxes with a giant, 50 foot woman carrying a screaming ape up a tall tower. This is also an inversion of the ending of King Kong, with flying wizards on broomsticks taking the place of the aeroplanes.
- In a Dexter's Laboratory short episode called "The Big Sister", Dee Dee eats a experimental cookie made by Dexter and grows extremly (like 50 foot to more).
- The iconic Movie Poster has previously been parodied with a similar poster entitled Attack of the 50 ft Christ.
- The Movie was also homaged in Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #13, a story entitled Attack of the Fity-Foot Girl!, spotlighting Avengers member Giant-Girl. the cover of this issue was also based upon the Movie's Poster.
- In the anime series Lucky Star, Hiyori has a delusion resembling the poster for the film, with her classmate Yutaka as the giant woman.
- A commercial was made that played on MTV2 which was a Buddy Lee advertisement that had a 90 ft. Women walking in the city.
- On the UK TV show Coupling, the character Jeff Murdock has the movie poster on the wall of his apartment.
- One episode of Mo Willems´ Sheep in the Big City features a spoof called "Attack of the 50 Foot Creature", referring to a monster made of 50 human feet.
- Preschool Tea Party Massacre, a Cyber-Grind band has the Attack of the 50 Foot Women as their album cover for the album Return to the Bone Concubine.
- Psychobilly band Horrorpops' album "Kiss Kiss Kill Kill" features
the 50 Foot Woman in the album artwork with Patricia Day as the woman
- An episode of the 1998 Warner Bros. cartoon Toonsylvania called "Attack of the 50-Footed Woman" was about a woman who, through nuclear mutation, grows 50 feet tall, and also grows 50 legs.
- In an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy entitled "May I Have this Ed?", Ed makes casual conversation with a mock-up woman by talking about a B movie entitled Attack of the 50 Foot TV Tray.
- In the Treehouse of Horror XVII segment "I Married the Blob" episode of The Simpsons, while Homer attack the city as a giant blob a "50 foot Lenny" also attacks, though he states that everyone is paying attention to Homer.
- An episode of Phineas and Ferb
called "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister" has Candace using her brothers'
potion to grow a few inches. However, she gets more than what she
bargained for.
- An episode of Mon Colle Knights (dubbed Attack of the 50 Foot Lovestar) has Lovestar growing huge after drinking some enchanted water at a farming village.
- Reese Witherspoon's character Susan Murphy (aka Ginormica) in Monsters vs. Aliens was inspired by this film. Ginormica was, originally, exactly 50 feet.
- WWE Diva Trish Stratus Posed for a Poster Similar to the Original Movie Poster
- La Cucharacha parodied it with a poster called "Attack of the 50 Ft. Latina"
- In the 1988 cult classic film Saturday the 14th Strikes Back,
the oldest sister Linda Baxter, played by Julianne McNamara, becomes a
50 foot women and is stuck inside her house. We only see her hand (which
she closes on her father who is trying to come into her room to see her
and she closes it in his face from embarrassment), her eye which is
looking outside a window and a on looking neighbor sees it, and we hear
her voice. There is no explanation on how she became big but she turns
back to normal size at the end of the film.
- In the series Off Centre, the two main characters own a poster of the 1958 movie.
- An episode of iCarly titled "iBeat The Heat," which originally aired June 26, 2010, references Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in its final scene, in which a very tall female fan of iCarly treads upon and destroys Carly's school diorama of an American Utopia.
- The movie Planet 51 makes a brief reference to this.
[edit] Availability
The original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was released on DVD by Warner Bros. on June 26, 2007. It includes an audio commentary with co-star Yvette Vickers and interviewer Tom Weaver.
[edit] References
- ^ Bill Warren, Keep Watching The Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the 1950s, Vol. 2, 1958-1962 (New York: McFarland & Co, 1986), 16.
- ^ See Femme Fatales 1:2.
- ^ One image appears as the cover of Femme Fatales 1:2.
- ^ Femme Fatales, 1:2.
- ^ Challenge of the Superfriends, History of Doom, Part 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atf-IdmoI04, position 6:58
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