Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

This article is about the 1958 original of the film. For the remake, see Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993 film).

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
Original theatrical poster by Reynold Brown
Directed by	Nathan H. Juran
Produced by	Bernard Woolner
Written by	Mark Hanna
Starring	Allison Hayes William Hudson Yvette Vickers
Music by	Ronald Stein
Cinematography	Jacques R. Marquette
Editing by	Edward Mann
Distributed by	Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
Release date(s)	19 May 1958
Running time	65 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$88,000
Box office	$480,000 (USA}

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 from the protagonist to antagonist.

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.

Plot

A television announcer (Dale Tate) tells of people around the globe spotting a floating red ball. Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), a wealthy but highly troubled woman, is speeding along a desert road one night when a glowing ball settles on the highway in front of her and a giant alien reaches for her. She escapes and runs back to town, but nobody believes her story, owing in part to her history of drinking problems and mental instability. Her shifty husband, Harry (William Hudson), is more interested in his floozy, Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers), but he pretends to be the good husband in hopes that Nancy will 'snap' and return to the 'booby hatch'. Nancy convinces him to search the desert with her, looking for the "satellite". Eventually, they find it, and as the alien emerges Harry flees, leaving Nancy behind.

Nancy is later found on the roof of her pool house, but she is delirious and must be sedated by her doctor. Harry, impatient to obtain her fortune, attempts to give her a lethal injection of sedative, but when he goes up to her room, he finds that she has grown into a giant. Nancy's mysterious increase in size makes the sheriff and Nancy's butler wonder whether her story about a giant alien is true. While searching the desert, they find the alien's spherical ship and learn that it has been collecting diamonds, perhaps as fuel. The giant catches them exploring his ship and attacks them, wrecking their car.

Meanwhile, back in town, Nancy awakens and breaks free. Determined to find her wayward husband, she breaks through the roof of her house, and stomps off to town. While there, she takes the roof off the bar and a beam falls on Honey, killing her. Harry panics and begins shooting at Nancy, but she picks him up and walks away. Gunshots have no apparent effect on her, but at the end, she accidentally hits a power line transformer. It blows up near Nancy and kills her, with Harry lying crushed in her hand.

Cast

• Allison Hayes as Nancy Fowler Archer
• William Hudson as Harry Archer
• Yvette Vickers as Honey "Mira" Parker
• Roy Gordon as Dr. Isaac Cushing
• George Douglas as Sheriff Dubbitt
• Ken Terrell as Jess Stout
• Otto Waldis as Dr. Heinrich Von Loeb
• Eileen Stevens as Nurse
• Michael Ross as Tony the Bartender / Space Giant
• Frank Chase as Deputy Charlie

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.

In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Jim Wynorski was considering a remake of the 1958 movie, with Sybil Danning in the title role. Wynorski made it as far as a shooting a photo session with Danning dressed as the 50 foot woman but, again, the project never materialized, as Wynorksi opted to film the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth instead.

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.

On July 2012 Roger Corman's company New Horizon will release an EPIX original movie Attack of the 50 Ft. Cheerleader 3D. The movie will be a spoof/remake on both the original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Corman's Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold. The film stars Jena Sims who becomes 50 Feet tall and Olivia Alexander who becomes 75 Feet Tall. The film tells the story of a nerdy teenager, Cassie (Sims) who wants to become a beautiful cheerleader and takes a formula in which the side effects causes her to grow up to 50 Feet Tall. On Jena Sims's Twitter page the actress cited that it is "a classic Ugly Duckling tale gone wrong." Her rival Brittany (Alexander) becomes jealous, takes the formula also and grows to be 75 Feet tall. It is not until the end of the film that Cassie becomes 50 Feet tall but throughout the movie she does grow. Like Corman's 1995 film Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold a fight will ensue at the end of the film with Cassie being 50 feet tall and Brittany being 75 feet tall. Unlike Attack of the 50 Foot Woman where Nancy Archer picks up her cheating husband, Brittany will pick up Cassie's mom once she becomes 75 feet tall which will be the cause of the battle. The film also stars Sean Young, Ted Raimi, Treat Williams, John Landis (cameo) and Corman himself (cameo). It is directed by Kevin O'Neil which will be his directorial debut with an idea based by Corman.

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 1980s popular music group Go West.
• The film has been referenced in an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, where a toy ball grows to enormous heights due to overfeeding.
• Various animated television series have referenced the film, usually in episodes which involve a female character becoming giant-sized. For example, Challenge of the Superfriends from 1978 features the origins of superhero Apache Chief and supervillainess Giganta.
• 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 to an enormous height.
• The iconic movie poster has previously been parodied with a similar poster entitled Attack of the 50 ft Christ.
• The film 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. woman walking in the city.
• On the British television series Coupling, the character Jeff Murdock has the movie poster on the wall of his apartment.
• One episode of Mo Willems's 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 attacks the city as a giant blob a "50 foot Lenny" also attacks, though he states that everyone is paying attention to Homer.
• The book Bart Simpson's Guide to Life includes a section called "The Wonderful World of Monsters" and includes the 50 foot woman in the same position as she appears on the movie poster.
• 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.
• In the 2009 film Monsters vs. Aliens, Reese Witherspoon's character Susan Murphy (aka Ginormica) was inspired by this film. Ginormica was, originally, exactly 50 feet.
• Former 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 2009 film Planet 51 makes a brief reference to this.
• An episode of Totally Spies! titled "Attack of the 50 Foot Mandy" features Mandy as a giant. The episode also features a scene that closely resembles the movie poster from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
• The cover of a 2010 Mother Jones issue parodies the movie by depicting Sarah Palin as the titular character.
• The cover of French book "Les Cahiers du Jeu vidéo 4" (2011) about girls and video games depicts Princess Peach (from Super Mario games) as the 50 ft. woman.
• An episode of the 1980s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series titled "Attack of the 50 Foot Irma" features the Turtles' friend Irma as a giant.
• An episode of DuckTales titled "Attack of the 50 Foot Webby" features Webby Vanderquack as a giant.
• An episode of Archie's Weird Mysteries titled "Attack of the 50 Foot Veronica" features Veronica Lodge as a giant.
• The album The Completion Backward Principle by The Tubes has a song called "Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman".
• The album You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into by Does It Offend You, Yeah? has a song called "Attack of the 60 Foot Lesbian Octopus".
• The song "City Life" from Tonio K.'s 1987 release Notes From the Lost Civilization references "The leftover hippies/The 50 foot woman".
• In 2012 Glee co-star Dianna Argon modeled for Elle magazine (along with her other female Glee co-stars) which they portrayed female characters from different horror movies. Dianna Argon posed as Nancy Archer the 50 Foot Woman.

Availability

The original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was released on DvD by Warner Bros. on June 26, 2007. It was available either sold separately or sold in a 3 disc box set (also released by Warner Bros) titled Cult Camp Classics 1: Sci-Fi Thrillers which also includes the films Giant Behemoth and Queen of Outer Space. The DvD includes an audio commentary with co-star Yvette Vickers and interviewer Tom Weaver. The title is also available in instant streaming format from Netflix The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman DvD is officially out of print (along with the box set it came in) and on September 20th 2011 Warner Bros added it to it's Warner Archive collection in which you can only purchase it through their store (it is not available to outside retailers). In the Warner Archives edition the commentary by Yvette Vickers and Tom Weaver is missing and only the film's trailer is on the disc. You can also download the film through their website to watch instantly. As of now Warner Bros. as yet to announce a Blu-ray release .

External links

• Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) at the Internet Movie Database
• Attack of the 50 Foot Woman at the TCM Movie Database
• Attack of the 50 Foot Woman at AllRovi
• Trailer of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]