Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Yeah, you'd figure I'd dig this one.

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Made in a week for something in the neighborhood of 70 grand. Yea and verily, it is a high example of 50s drive-in camp.

We open with a guy sitting at a desk doing a "newscast" for KRKR TV-- you know you're in good hands when a movie opens with someone talking at a desk, whether it be a fake newscaster or clap doctor or priest or Criswell. He talks about a "strange red fireball" seen in the sky. And where there are strange red fireballs, giant bald aliens cannot be far behind...

Cut to a honky tonk where couples are dancing to the jukebox and a guy is cuddling with a chick in spaghetti straps. Within about 60 seconds we find out she is not his wife, his wife drinks too much and has been "in the nuthouse" and girlfriend wants to help drive wife back into nuthouse or whack her, whatever because, as he says, wife is rich and "Community property only works for women, baby." Well, fuck you Mr. MRA. And fuck you too, Boo Boo Kitty.

 

Cut to next scene. A woman is driving a convertible through the desert, she stops and starts screaming. Then a giant hairy "hand" reaches down and menaces her, she gets out of the car, screams more, flees.

She runs back, informs the sheriff, who rounds up some deputies to go half-heartedly look in the desert for the giant hairy hand. "As long as she's paying most of the taxes around here, we play along with her." 

So, everyone knows and snickers about Honey--no, really, that's her name--except the woman whose husband and money she's using. As was once said in another film, "They're all gonna laugh at you!" And we know how that turned out...

"Go back to Tony's and that broad you were with."

"Now, you pulled a boner tonight and you know it... You're gonna flip your lid one too many times."

"You're gonna flirt with another woman one too many times." 

She calls him a gigolo and a parasite and, geez, if that's all he is, he ought to be a damn sight better looking.

A psychiatrist tells Harry The Ugly Gigolo that Rich Crazy Wife might be going nuts again because she swears she saw "a satellite" and a "thirty-foot giant." Rich Crazy Wife comes down in a crazy outfit (That probably cost a lot of money. I think it's from Etro.) On the TV, a newscaster is making snarky comments about Rich Crazy Wife being, well, a rich crazy wife. At her insistence, they all go out into the desert to look for it. The giant reappears and Ugly Gigolo runs away screaming, as Rich Crazy Wife is picked up and carried off screaming.

Sheriff and scientist go out into the desert to see if they can find proof that something is actually happening, because i guess the fact that Nancy--let's call Rich Crazy Wife by her name, however briefly--was found on an inaccessible roof and is now radioactive and glowing isn't proof enough that some shit has gone down. (But does it qualify as legitimate rape?) They find an alien spaceship full of peculiar objects. Well, actually it's more like a shack with some tinfoil and magnifying glasses in it, but anyway...

Meanwhile, back at the house, a pair of doctors talk about how Nancy was okay until she got married. Then, as one says, "When women reach a certain age, mother nature sometimes overworks their frustrations to the point of irrationalism." No, because the fact that she married a lying, cheating, whoring, money-sucking, trying-to-convince-you-you're-crazy husband had nothing to do with it. Jesus, people, even if you're not going to respect a woman, can't you at least respect a 50 Foot Woman?

Nancy keeps hollering for Ugly Gigolo, Ugly Gigolo refuses to leave the bar and Boo Boo Kitty. They keep shooting her up with massive downs to keep her quiet. "Tell the nurse: More morphine!" (Because, really, nothing soothes heartbreak like opiates. It's the one damn realistic thing in this flick.) But, eventually, chains can no longer bind her and, to quote Freddie Mercury, she's "got to break free."

"I know where my husband is! He's with that woman! I'll find him!"

Oh, yes, motherfuckers: It's ass-kicking time. And so the 50 Foot Woman sets off toward town and the sleazy motel/roadhouse to do some stomping and squashing.

Unspoiler alert: At no point does she go-go Godzilla on a freeway full of cars as depicted in the poster. She mostly just walks around the desert. Geez, it's not that hard to build a small city and lots of fun to stomp it...

"She'll tear up the whole town until she finds Harry!"

"Yeah, and then she'll tear up Harry!"

And what of it? Either way, Harry suffers the vengeance of the woman he has totally fucked over and attempted to murder; the only difference is whether a bunch of innocent people buy it first. This seems like a no-brainer to me but, of course, what do i know? Maybe the schmuck sheriff envies his PUA ass.

She hauls him away, as he implores her to put him down and "Kill Honey!" instead. Yeah, nice guy, willing to give up anyone to save his own worthless ass. Totally see why you're sacrificing the whole town for him. Did he fuck you too?

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is cheap and ridiculous, barely two steps above Ed Wood territory. But it has stuck around, getting remakes and revisions, as well as inspiring a fair amount of artwork and a surprising number of fashion photo shoots. It's a ridiculous movie, but it's short and has its own cheap-ass charm. Maybe it's something about all of those giant paper-mache hands...