Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)

Posted By: brian@brianschell.com September 21, 2022

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

There’s not enough actual attack of the 50 foot woman. It’s kind of long and drawn out. The science is bad and without much explanation. The special effects are sporadic in quality. All in all, it’s pretty mediocre.

Synopsis

We hear on the news that there’s a strange fireball that came out of the sky. The fireballs have been seen in various places around the world. They predict the stranger from space will be over California at any time.

The floating ball parks in the middle of the country road, making Nancy stall her car. She screams repeatedly as a giant hand reaches down for her.

Meanwhile, Nancy’s husband Harry is making out with Honey, his girl on the side. He only stuck with Nancy because he couldn’t get alimony. Honey suggests that Harry would get everything if Nancy died. Nancy has been admitted to the mental hospital a few times. The two talk about hatching a plan. She doesn’t drink anymore, but all she needs “is a little help,” says Honey.

Nancy runs to the sheriff, still screaming. She insists that she’s not drunk, but they don’t believe her crazy story since she’s hysterical. Harry gives the deputy cash to go away and pretend they couldn’t find him. The sheriff and the deputy do find Nancy’s car on the road, but the giant ball is gone. “As long as she’s paying most of the taxes around here, we’re playing along with her,” grumbles the sheriff. They don’t find anything, but she thinks it was after her giant diamond necklace.

Nancy goes back to her huge estate where Harry tells Jess the butler to scram. They fight about Honey; she knows, and he denies it. She calls him a miserable parasite, only after her money. She tells him that she saw a satellite in the middle of the highway and then a giant came out looking for her diamond. Amazingly, he doesn’t believe her either. Harry puts her to bed and pockets her diamond; the most famous diamond in the world, the Star of India. Back at the bar, Honey tells Harry that she’s tired of waiting.

In the morning, Harry calls Dr. Cushing, who says that Nancy is suffering from nervous exhaustion. Nancy has calmed down, liquored up, and knows what Harry is up to. Jess the butler looks on very judgmentally. Nancy hears her story told on the TV, and they make her sound crazy. She’s possibly hallucinating the broadcast. She wants to go out to the desert and find that thing that she saw.

Nancy and Harry drive all over the desert looking for a giant and his ball. They don’t find anything, which proves she’s only fit for the asylum. Then, on the way home, they both see it. She runs up to the thing and beats on the side. The giant, bald alien inside grabs Nancy.

Harry freaks out and drives away, leaving her there. Harry goes home, packs up his stuff, and is attacked by the butler. The two men fight, and Jess calls the sheriff. Harry goes to pick up Honey and leave town. Later, they find Nancy on the roof of her pool house.

The sheriff, Dr. Cushing, and Jess the butler talk about Nancy’s condition, and they think Harry assaulted her. Nancy has also been contaminated with radiation somehow. Honey thinks Harry should tamper with Nancy’s medication and give her an overdose– if he has the nerve. He goes home, and we see that he does have the nerve. But when he sneaks into Nancy’s room, he sees that she’s grown huge.

The next morning, meat hooks and chains arrive along with an elephant syringe. They bring in Dr. Heinrich, an expert. He wants to do surgery to figure out what is wrong.

The sheriff finds a giant footprint outside the house. The sheriff starts to think that maybe Nancy isn’t a lunatic. The sheriff and Jess the butler decide to follow the footprints back to their source. They soon find the big spherical alien ship. They find a door and go inside. They find Nancy’s diamond, along with a bunch of others. Perhaps they are used as a power source. Then they find the owner of the spaceship and high-tail it out of there. The giant destroys their car and then leaves.

Nancy wakes up, and she’s not only huge, but she’s also chained to the walls. She breaks out of the house and goes on a rampage. She starts playing with the electrical lines outside Tony’s bar, which is where Harry and Honey are hanging out. She attacks Tony’s bar and scares everyone inside. Nancy drops stuff on top of Honey until Honey is killed. She reaches inside and pulls out Harry. The sheriff shoots Nancy a few times, but it doesn’t slow her down. He shoots the big transformer on the power pole, and that knocks her down and kills her. Harry’s dead too.

Commentary

How did all of Nancy fit inside that bedroom with a hand that big? There’s literally zero science of any kind here, so it all just sorta happens. The special effects are awfully cheap, with both Nancy and the giant alien often being translucent, and many of the interactions are just with a giant hand prop.

The acting here is pretty melodramatic and overwrought in most scenes. It’s only an hour and seven minutes, but it really feels slow and stretched out in some places. There’s just not enough of the 50 foot woman and too much soap opera nonsense.

It’s really not very good at all.