Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

***Attack of the 50 Foot Woman*** is a 1958 American black-and-white science fiction film directed by Nathan H. Juran and starring Allison Hayes, William Hudson and Yvette Vickers. It was produced by Bernard Woolner. The screenplay was written by Mark Hanna, and the original music score was composed by Ronald Stein. The film was distributed in the United States by Allied Artists as a double feature with War of the Satellites.

*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 sequel *War of the Colossal Beast* (1958), and *The Incredible Shrinking Man* (1957). In this case, a woman is substituted for a man as the film's protagonist.

The film has several references to the 1954 film *Gojira* directed by Ishirō Honda including the attack on the power lines scene and scene when the 50 Foot Woman attacks a building.

## Plot

Allison Hayes stars as Nancy Archer, whose husband Harry (William Hudson) wants the US $50 million she recently inherited from her father so he can abandon her and live it up with his young mistress Honey Parker (Yvette Vickers). After catching Harry flirting with Honey during a Friday night dance at a local bar, Nancy encounters a spaceship carrying an extraterrestrial thirty feet tall who, we later learn, needs diamonds to power his "satellite," as the craft is called throughout the movie. (The film was produced about two months after the launch of Sputnik, and was co-featured with the Roger Corman film *War of the Satellites*.) Nancy wears one of the largest "rocks" of all, the priceless Star of India diamond. The local sheriff initially scoffs at Nancy's tale, but humors her because the taxes she pays afford him and his deputy a comfortable salary. Harry sees what he regards as his wife's relapse into alcoholism as an opportunity to have Nancy committed to an asylum. The next afternoon, having summoned a psychiatrist to examine his wife, Harry agrees to drive Nancy, now seductively dressed in tight-fitting toreador pants, through the desert in search of the alien.

At sunset they find his satellite. Nancy pounds on the hull of the ship and, finally vindicated, shouts, "It's real! I'm *not* crazy!" thus rousing the interplanetary traveler inside. Finding the creature impervious to bullets, Harry flees, leaving Nancy at the giant's mercy. The alien intends his victim no personal harm; he only wants the Star of India. However, in seizing the diamond he scratches her throat causing Nancy to faint. He then takes the unconscious woman back to her home and leaves her on the roof of the poolhouse. Later, her doctor explains that she has apparently been exposed to some kind of radiation.

Egged on by Honey, Harry schemes to give Nancy a lethal dose of a "serum" with which she's being treated. Approaching her in the dark with Nancy's private nurse surreptitiously following him, he discovers that Nancy has grown to an enormous size. Nancy's doctors want to operate to stop her growth, but they need Harry's permission to begin the procedure. Imagining his wife to be incapacitated, he leaves home and spends the evening drowning his sorrows in a bar with Honey while awaiting Nancy's demise. Doctors manage to sedate and restrain her massive form as the sheriff and the Archers' butler follow the giant's footprints and discover his satellite. When they attempt to reclaim the stolen diamond, they are chased away and their car demolished before the spacecraft takes off. By nightfall Nancy is too large to restrain. Wrapping sheets around her body, she escapes by tearing the roof off her own mansion. "I know where my husband is!" she exclaims, heading toward town. "He's with that woman! I'll find him." Cornering the cheating lovers, she rips the roof off the bar in which they're hiding and hurls a beam onto Honey, killing her. She then picks up Harry and carries him away like a rag doll (which is the prop that was actually used in this scene). The sheriff fires a riot gun at an electrical transformer just as Nancy passes it. This electrocutes her as well as her husband, whom she only wanted to herself, thus ending the movie.

## Cast

* Allison Hayes as Nancy Fowler Archer
* William Hudson as Harry Archer
* Yvette Vickers as Honey 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
* Frank Chase as Deputy Charlie
* Michael Ross as Tony the Bartender/the Alien Giant

## Production

According to star Yvette Vickers, the Fowler Mansion in the film was a pre-World War One estate located in the Hollywood Hills that had been used in other films; it was also rented out for parties .

The film's original working title was *The Astounding Giant Woman*.

Director Nathan Juran was unhappy with the final film and changed his on-screen credit to "Nathan Hertz".

## Remakes and Sequels

With its low budget -- the movie 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 Wynorksi 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.

## References

This is a list of references for **Attack of the 50 Foot Woman**. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

1. ↑ Swires, Steve (May 1989). "Nathan Juran: The Fantasy Voyages of Jerry the Giant Killer - Part Two". Starlog. No. 142. p. 56.
2. ↑ Smith, Richard Harland. "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)". TCMDb. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2013-07-23.
3. ↑ *Keep Watching The Skies*
4. ↑ See *Femme Fatales* 1:2.
5. ↑ One image appears as the cover of '"Femme Fatales *1:2.*
6. ↑ '"Femme Fatales, *1:2.*

## Gallery

Main article: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman/Gallery

**Japanese**
**Invisible Man Appears* (1949) · *The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly* · *The Invisible Avenger* (1954) · *Invisible Man: Rape!* · Oh! Invisible Man · *Oh! Invisible Man – Invisible Girl Appears!?* · *Invisible Demon* · *The Invisible Swordsman* ·*
**Other**
*Invisible Avenger* · *Invisible Invader* · *Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare* · *Yokai Monsters: Along With Ghosts* · *Kujira Gami* · *Memoirs of an Invisible Man* · *The Invisible Man* (1984) · *The Invisible Man* (1977) · *Dr. Jekyll Meets the Invisible Man* (1977) · *The Human Vapor* · *The Secret of the Telegian* · *The H-Man* · *The Fly* (1958) · *The Invisible Woman* (1969) · *The Amazing Transparent Man* · *Fear the Invisible Man* · *The Invisible Witness* · *The Invisible Man* (2016) · *The Invisible Maniac* · *The Invisible Man* (2017) · *The Invisible Man* (2018) · *Invisible Man* (2018) · *Mad Monster Party* (1967) · *Strangler of the Swamp* · *The Invisible Man Attacks* · *The Incredible Shrinking Man* · *The Astral Factor* · ***Attack of the 50 Foot Woman***