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| Attack of the 50 Foot Woman | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster byReynold Brown | |
| Directed by | Nathan Hertz |
| Written by | Mark Hanna |
| Produced by | Bernard Woolner Jacques Marquette (ex. prod.) |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Jacques R. Marquette |
| Edited by | Edward Mann |
| Music by | Ronald Stein |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Allied Artists Pictures Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 66 minutes (theatrical) 75 minutes (TV print)[2] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $65,000[3]–$89,000[4] |
| Box office | $480,000(USA)[5] |
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a 1958independently made[6] Americanscience fictionhorror film directed byNathan H. Juran (credited as Nathan Hertz) and starringAllison Hayes,William Hudson andYvette Vickers. It was produced byBernard Woolner. The screenplay was written byMark Hanna, and the original music score was composed byRonald Stein. The film was distributed in the United States on May 18, 1958 byAllied Artists as adouble feature withWar of the Satellites.[7]
The edited Allied Artists television version runs 75 minutes instead of 66, adding a long printed crawl at the beginning and end, repeated sequences, and hold-frames designed to optically lengthen the film's running time.[8]
The film's storyline concerns the plight of a wealthy heiress whose close encounter with an enormousalien in his round spacecraft causes her to grow into agiantess, complicating her marriage which is already troubled by a philandering husband.[9]
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a variation on other 1950s science fiction films that featured size-changing humans:The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), its sequelWar of the Colossal Beast (1958), andThe Incredible Shrinking Man (1957); in this case, a woman is the protagonist.[10] The film's popularity andcult status[11] has spawned numerous parodies and homages in popular media.[12]
A television announcer reports sightings of a red fireball around the world. Meanwhile, Nancy Archer, a wealthy but highly troubled woman with a history of emotional instability and immoderate drinking, is driving on a road that night in an American desert. A glowing sphere settles on the deserted highway in front of her, causing her to veer off the road. When she gets out to investigate the object, a huge creature exits and reaches for her.
Nancy escapes and runs back to town, but nobody believes her story due to her known drinking problem and a recent stay in a mental institution. Her philandering husband, Harry Archer, is more interested in his latest girlfriend, townfloozy Honey Parker. He pretends to be the good husband in the hope that Nancy will "snap" and return to the "booby hatch", leaving him in control of her US$50 million estate (equivalent to $540 million in 2024).
Nancy bargains with Harry, asking him to search the desert with her for the "flying satellite", agreeing to a voluntary return to the sanatorium if they find nothing. As night falls, they find the spacecraft and the alien creature emerges, revealed as an enormous male human. Harry fires his pistol at the giant, but the gunfire has no effect. Harry flees, leaving Nancy behind.
Nancy is later discovered on the roof of her pool house in a delirious state and must be sedated by her family physician, Dr. Cushing. The doctor comments on scratches he finds on her neck, and theorizes that she was exposed to radiation. Egged on by his mistress Honey, Harry plans to inject Nancy with a lethal dose of her sedative, but when he sneaks up to her room, he discovers that she has grown to giant size. In a scene paralleling Nancy's first alien encounter, only an enormous hand is seen as Harry reacts in horror.
Cushing and Dr. Von Loeb, a specialist brought in by Cushing, are at a loss on how to treat their giant patient, who appears to be 50 feet (15 m) in height. They keep her in amorphine-induced coma and restrain her with chains while waiting for the authorities to arrive. The sheriff and Jess, Nancy's faithful butler, track enormous footprints leading away from the estate to the alien sphere. Inside the sphere, they find Nancy's diamond necklace (containing the largest diamond in the world) and other large diamonds, each in a clear orb. They speculate that the jewels are being used as a power source for the alien ship. The huge human reappears, and the sheriff and Jess flee.
Meanwhile, Nancy awakens and breaks free of her restraints. She tears off her mansion's roof and, clothed in abikini-like arrangement of bed linens, heads to town to avenge herself on her unfaithful husband. Ripping the roof off the local bar, she spots Honey and drops a ceiling beam on her rival, killing her. Harry panics, grabs Deputy Charlie's pistol, and begins shooting, but she picks up Harry and walks away. The gunshots have no apparent effect on her. The sheriff fires a shotgun at her, which causes a nearby power line transformer to blow up, killing her. The doctors find Harry lying dead in her hand.
Onreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 14 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10.[13]
Retrospective reviews and scholarship confirm the status ofcult classic of the film.[14][15]
With its low budget of around $88,000,Attack of the 50 Foot Woman made enough money to prompt discussion of a sequel. According to executive producer and cinematographer Jacques Marquette, the sequel was to be produced at a higher budget and in color. A script was written, but the project never advanced beyond the discussion phase.[16]
In early 1979,Dimension Pictures announced that producer Steve Krantz was developing a 5-million-dollar remake with directorPaul Morrissey.[17] It never came to fruition.
In the mid-1980s, filmmakerJim Wynorski considered doing a remake withSybil Danning in the title role.[18] Wynorski made it as far as shooting a photo session with Danning dressed as the 50-foot woman.[19] The project never materialized because Wynorski opted instead to filmNot of This Earth (1988), a remake ofRoger Corman's1957 film of the same name.[20]
The film was remade in 1993 byHBO under the same title,Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman. It was directed byChristopher Guest, with a script byThirtysomething writerJoseph Dougherty.Daryl Hannah produced the film and starred in the title role.
In 1995,Fred Olen Ray produced a parody entitledAttack of the 60 Foot Centerfold, starringJ.J. North and Tammy Parks. Beyond the basic premise, the plot has little in common with the original film, being concerned with the side effects of a beauty-enhancing formula on two ambitious female models. The film was farcical and made on an extremely low budget. The illusion of size difference was achieved usingforced perspective with a limited amount ofcomposite imaging.
The 1999 music video for "Miserable" byLit was inspired in part by "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman". In the video,Pamela Anderson plays agiantess who is listening to the band serenade her while they climb all over herbikini-clad body. The video ends with the giant woman chasing down the male band members and gleefully eating them alive as they beg her for mercy.
The animated filmMonsters vs. Aliens (2009) also features a giant woman ("Ginormica"). She is specifically identified as being exactly 49' 11", in a subtly humorous attempt to avoid copyright infringement.
In late 2011,Roger Corman produced a3D film titledAttack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader, released on August 25, 2012. It was written by Mike MacLean (who also wroteSharktopus for Corman) and was directed by Kevin O'Neill. The film starsJena Sims (a former Miss Georgia Teen USA) in the title role as Cassie Stratford and Olivia Alexander, who co-plays Sims's rival, Brittany Andrews.
In 2019,Lana Del Rey released a music video for "Doin' Time", her version ofSublime's cover of "Summertime". In the video, Lana plays the dual role of agiant in a movie and the girl watching it at a drive-in. The girl in the audience discovers her boyfriend cheating on her in a car with another girl. Giant Lana ends up coming out of the screen and attacking the car in which the cheaters are in, while people run in panic. Both Lana characters smile at each other knowingly and the giant walks back into the screen while the one in the audience runs away with the crowd.[citation needed]
In early February 2024,Variety reported thatTim Burton andGone Girl writerGillian Flynn were developing a remake ofAttack of the 50 Foot Woman forWarner Bros.[21]
In 2025,Beyoncé parodied the movie as an interlude during theCowboy Carter Tour, called "Attack of the 400 Foot Cowboy", where she traverses different cities, including Washington D.C., New York City, and Las Vegas, where she interacts with a number of landmarks such as lighting a cigarette using the Statue of Liberty, and picking up the Allegiant Stadium, respectively.[22]
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was released June 26, 2007 byWarner Bros. Home Video on region 1 DVD. It was also available in the Warner Bros. three-disc DVD box setCult Camp Classics - Vol. 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers, which also includes other two cult classic sci-fi thrillers fromAllied Artists Pictures, such asThe Giant Behemoth (1959) andQueen of Outer Space (1958). An audio commentary track with co-star Yvette Vickers and Tom Weaver is also included. Although the DVDs are now officially out-of-print, on September 20, 2011, Warner Bros. added the film to its order-on-demandWarner ArchiveDVD-R collection; the content is the same as on the previous DVD releases. A Blu-ray was released in December 2022 by Warner Archive Collection.
