Customer Reviews
The "Citizen Kane" Of 1950's B-Movies!!! 
2008-01-03
The original 1958 version of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is one of the best and most memorable B-movies to date. The late Allison Hayes and Yvette Vickers(Miss July 1959 for Playboy) stars in the tale of a jilted divorced woman(Hayes) who grew to 50 feet after an encounter with space aliens and gets revenge on her ex-husband and the mistress(Vickers)who made her life miserable. The audio commentaries by Vickers and film historian Tom Weaver were a treat. This film is, in my opinion, much better than the horrible 1993 remake starring Darryl Hannah.
Attack of the 50 foot Woman 2007-12-22
A classic SciFi, a bit biased since I grew up with this, clean, imaginative, special effects still in infancy, but still excellent.
You pulled a boner tonight, and you know it - Harry Archer 2007-12-13
This movie has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I didn't know so many other people liked it too. This film was first released for home audiences on high quality VHS, then Laser Disc,then low quality VHS but has been off the market for years replaced by an lackluster remake starring lackluster Darryl Hannah. While this film was unavailable on DVD, the price on the secondary market soared... Now, it's finally on DVD and you MUST have this version, even if you own one of the others because there is a commentary by Yvette Vickers! Honey Parker herself! You won't see Yvette, but she sounds great and her comments and memories are interesting and informative. POOR NANCY ARCHER! (Allison Hayes). She has everything. She's a voluptuous Jane Russell type beauty with 50 Million bucks in 1958 dollars, the fabulous Star of India diamond which looks as though it was plucked from the nearest chandelier, a 1958 Imperial Crown convertible, an alchohol problem, a history of institutionalization, and a philandering husband named Harry (William Hudson) who looks like a poor woman's William Holden. To make matters worse, Harry's been carrying on with a sexy, mercenary little tramp named Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). Think Dorothy Malone in "Written on the Wind". One night, driving home through the California desert from the local gin mill, Nancy almost collides with a Satellite! (Actually, it's a weather balloon). A semi-transparent (poor back projection) giant in a Robin Hood getup from Western Costume emerges and reaches for Nancy's diamond. She runs back to town screaming! Of course, nobody believes her. Harry and Honey decide to take advantage of the situation by trying to get Nancy committed to an asylum again. Meanwhile, back at Nancy's desert Mansion with manicured, rolling lawns where she and Harry apparently live in the foyer with the services of only one servant, an elderly butler named Jess who looks like an undertaker, Nancy decides to prove her sanity by going to look for the satellite and the giant armed with a .38, her thirty-eights, Harry and her Imperial. They find the giant, but this time he reaches out and grabs Nancy, carrying her off. Harry panics and tries to leave town but is stopped by the local sheriff. The sheriff finds Nancy on top of the pool house. There are strange purple bruises around her throat and she is unconscious. The spaceman was after her diamond. It seems that his ship is powered by precious stones. Meanwhile, when a nurse checks in on Nancy, the nurse finds that Nancy, contaminated, has grown into a giant, represented by a large hand that looks like papier-mache spread over a form made of chicken wire, complete with enormous painted fingernails. The doctors want to operate (On what?). Harry and Honey decide to lie low. Honey says:"Just let her blow up like a balloon." Nancy "comes to". She arises, tearing the roof off her house. She heads for town dressed in a skirt torn from a bedsheet that looks like something Tina Turner used to wear in the 70's and a top with support wires in it. Well, what could she do? She couldn't be nude! This was 1958!. "HARRY,HARRY,WHERE'S MY HUSBAND! HE'S WITH THAT OTHER WOMAN" she screams. The Deputy says: "First she'll tear up the town, then she'll tear up Harry". He's right. She does and she does. A rag doll in a suit stands in for Harry. (The Ken doll hadn't been invented yet). Nancy grabs a power line and she and Harry are electrocuted. A Doctor pronounces: "She finally got Harry, all to herself". This short recap doesn't begin to capture the melodramatic energy that Hayes, Vickers and Hudson put into these performances. There's a great score by Ronald Stein. Yes, you'll laugh. Yes, the film sags when the principals are not on screen, but you won't turn it off and you won't look away. Believe it or not, the title of this review is an actual line of dialogue from this movie. I can't believe that the writers of this script didn't get the implications of this statement, even back in 1958. I saw this and loved it when I was a 14 year old kid. It only gets better with time. THIS is a true Cult Camp Classic. Maybe the best ever. Fire up the DVD player and grab some popcorn!
Close Encounters of a Ludicrous Kind 
2007-11-10
Few films--even good ones!--have as strong a following as the delirously tacky 1958 ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN. Badly produced, directed, and written, it nonetheless possesses a weird charm that cult-movie-fans find nigh irresistable.
The story is deliciously absurd. Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes) is a rich and nagging wife fresh out of the looney bin--driven there by her taste for the bottle and her obnoxious husband Harry (William Hudson), who is having a sleazy affair with sleazy girlfriend Honey (Yvette Vickers.) One night Nancy, who is thoroughly fed up with the whole situation, goes on a wild drive through the countryside... in spite of the fact that a strange "satellite" is known to be in the area. Alas for Nancy: she has a close encounter of the truly ludicrous kind and becomes a giantess as a result, stomping through the town in a bra and half-slip made of bedsheets in search of her wayward husband.
Both Allison Hayes and Yvette Vickers were attractive, competent players who had the misfortune of being stuck in ultra-B-movies for the duration of their careers; both they and William Hudson play with a fair amount of conviction. But overall, ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN is one great big whoopie cushion with a silly story, ridiculous script, and atrocious special effects--and the supporting cast runs from vague to horrendous. And yet... as is sometimes the effect of a truly bad film... the whole thing is a lot of fun.
You won't find anything to shout about in terms of the DVD itself. There are no bonus features, and the film quality is mediocre to reasonable. (It is worth pointing out that it was probably nothing to write home about even in 1958.) All the same, you can't call yourself a true fan of 1950s B movies unless you have this one on your shelf! Recommended to fans of the genre.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
God, I Eat This Stuff Up! 2007-10-31
I first saw "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" as an 8 year old kid at the Del City
theater, in Del City, Oklahoma, in 1958. It scared the hell out of me! Today,
I'm a 57 year old man who still loves this movie. This is cheesy, 50's sci-fi
at its finest! The paper mache hand, the semi-transparent 50 foot woman,
the ridiculous spacecraft (called a satellite in the movie), the horrible acting,
the corn-ball script, all come together to make this a movie "that is so bad
it's good." Now that's a term that's thrown around a lot these days, but it
applies to no other 50's sci-fi movie like it does this one, with the exception
of maybe "Plan 9 From Outer Space." The transfer to DVD is excellent,
considering the age and quality of the original film. There's an excellent
commentary by movie historian, Tom Weaver and Yvette Vickers (who plays
Honey Parker in the film), that comes with the DVD, but other than that there
are very few extras. This cult classic is a must-have for any 50's sci-fi movie
collector. Folks, it doesn't get any better than this. Highly recommended!
Attack of The Fifty Foot Woman/memories 2008-06-13
This is a great DVD. The print of the movie is bright and clear. The commentary of Yvette (Honey) Vickers is charming, informative and funny. I have loved this movie since I was a child. I am a big 50s car freak and I loved the Imperial, Plymouth Plaza patrol car and the 1958 Plymouth wagon that turns into a 1949 Chevy when it is dropped. I also learned how to jitterbug from this movie, the couple dancing behind Harry and Honey at the bar. Great memories.
HARRY! HARRY! 2008-05-24
This is one of my favourite sci-fi films of all time. Allison Hayes was a beauty in the 50's-60's on the big screen and TV as well. Too bad she died penniless and quite ill in a nursing home in the 80's. This film is so poorly made and cheap that you get to feel sorry for the producers -- it wasn't released, it ESCAPED! The special effects are hokey -- you can see through the monster and the 50ft woman, plaster of paris created Nancy Archer's enormous hands, and the UFO was a balloon on strings. How did a 50ft alien fit through that standard sized 7ft door? Anyway, this is a cult classic, great to watch to see the styles and the cars of the late 50's, (remember those huge tailfins?) and to see how black and white was the main medium for films like this. It also is one of the numerous films to exploit the UFO sighting phenomena that prevailed at that time. The DVD is fantastically brilliant and digitally remastered for clarity and has an enhanced soundtrack. It features a commentary by none other than Yvette Vickers who played the "other woman" in the film. She stated they filmed this in 8 days on a very limited budget and never dreamed of the success it has amassed as a cult classic. The best scene is when Nancy Archer, aka the 50ft woman, is tearing up the town yelling HARRY! HARRY! who happens to be her husband. Once he is found, she picks him up and squeezes him like a bug to death as she gets tangled in high voltage wires and plummets them both to death. THE END! I have this on VHS as well, but the DVD is enhanced and has a better picture quality. This is a must for any collector of 1950's sci-fi. It ranks up there with "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space."
Pathetic Camp 
2008-05-22
I remember loving this film as an 8 year old kid. I should have left my fading memory of this film in childhood. But No-o-o-o!!!, I had to buy it on DVD. I fully expected to laugh at the campiness of this cult classic, but instead I cringed at every moment. How bad can it get? Pretty darn bad, I'm afraid. The "special effects" were far worse than I ever remember them being. For starters, the alien man was nothing more than a super-imposed glowing figure in which the scenery from behind him bleeds through, the same holds true for Nancy when she becomes the 50 foot woman. Before that, the appearance of her paper mache & rubbery hand is so awful, and it's mere size makes you wonder how the rest of her body can still fit in her bedroom..LOL!!! When she grabs her cheating husband Harry from the nightclub he looks like a Raggety Ann doll. Need I say more? Only for true die hard "bad cinema" fans. Glad it wasn't an expensive buy. I'm still shaking my head....
it could have been better 
2008-04-24
There was one good scene at the very end where she was ripping up the town. Other than that it was terribbly boring and sleezy. I thought this was a great idea. Could the woman come out victorious for once without the male domineering?
Attack of the 50 ft. wife 
2008-04-18
This is about a woman who is at the end of her rope with her philandering husband. It's driving her to drink and she starts to see things...such as a very large translucent sphere plopped down in the middle of the dark lonely country road she is driving along. Imagine her terror when a giant emerges from the unidentifiable plopped-down-in-the-middle-of-the-road object and proceeds to reach out with his big hairy ugly rubber paw to try and snatch the priceless jewel hanging from Mrs. Archer's neck! But wait...is she dreaming this all up or was that REALLY some kind of creepy gigantic space individual out there!? Will ANY of the townspeople or the police or the good doctor or her good for nothing scheming lout of a husband believe her? Of course not.
All of this plays out for a good hour before we get to see what the exposure to the UFO's ugly giant has had on Mrs. Archer, which is, to cause her to grow to gigantic proportions herself. During the final 10 minutes of the movie we get to see the actual 'Attack of the 50 foot Mrs. Archer' as she slowly stalks across the countryside, sort of in a trance-like state, searching high and low(mostly low)for her snake of a husband. This was the best part of the movie as we see the giant scorned wife trudging across the land(sort of like the artwork for the cover but not really. she never really straddles some busy highway reaching down to grab some unfortunate automobile). The vintage 50's special FX make the 50 ft. wife look eerily almost see-through but the chillingest aspect is her unemotional walk and the passive look on her face. her bare shards of white cloth fashioned to her out-sized body. It's interesting looking at the extremely low budget FX used at this time-the audience back then didn't question for a minute the ludicrousness of the special effects and in fact were quivering in their seats watching a ridiculously fake rubbery hand feebly trying to scoop up a citizen or when the overgrown Mrs. Archer clutches what is clearly a mannequin in a suit
(representing the lowly Mr. Archer.)
The dvd includes a feature-length commentary with co-star Yvette Vickers which is extremely informative
