Adam Foidart This version of "Attack of the 50 foot Woman" isn't as much fun as the title may suggest. The main problem is that the film can't make up its mind on what it wants to be. Is it a spoof/homage to the cheesy 50's giant monster horror movies, or is a serious, but bizarre fantasy-drama about a woman who needs to break out of her shell? I know this sounds absolutely baffling, but the film actually kind of works as a quirky drama. We've got this woman who is suddenly 50 feet tall and has more than enough power to stand up to the men that would objectify and abuse her. Mixed in with that we have some standard giant monster stuff that feels really out of place, and this is coming from a big fan of Kaiju/giant monster movies. If the film had picked either direction and stuck with it, this could have been a very entertaining film but instead the audience is left disappointed. I found that technically the movie is pretty good, with some convincing special effects (well, for the most part; overall they are still convincing) and it features a good cast. How or when you're going to watch this, I really don't know because this is neither a "so bad it's good" cheesy horror flick you can laugh at and it isn't a clever twist on the films that inspired it either. I mistook this version for the original "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" when I bought the VHS tape. Sure it only cost me a buck but I was still disappointed. (On VHS, September 21, 2012)

Robert J. Maxwell If you're going to be a young woman who is made 50 feet tall in an isolated incident with a UFO in the desert, you might as well be Darryl Hannah. She's tall to begin with but she'd look fine at any altitude. She's enough to make any normal man want to climb up her calf and bite and squeeze her but that normal man shouldn't take the fantasy too far. She does have a good deal of heft, after all, and you wouldn't want her to roll over in the middle of the night.Enough of Darryl Hannah's lustrous blond beauty and incomparable figure. The movie -- yes, the movie. First of all, I have to mention J. B. S. Haldane's observation that Darryl Hannah might do fine at five or six feet but not at fifty. It isn't that she'd always have her head in the clouds despite her feet being on the ground. And let's not have any cracks about "How's the weather up there?" What do you think this is, a gag? Haldane calculated that a human being was "just the right size." Because if he were bigger he'd weigh too much and the bones of his legs wouldn't support that weight. He'd collapse because his legs would break off. He -- or she, in this instance -- would wind up like Ozymandias in Shelley's poem, which I'll take the liberty of quoting here.I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." --Okay, okay. That's off topic. Don't bother saying it. You don't need to draw ME a picture. But the movie doesn't forget where it's going. It follows its compass straight towards women's lib. Hannah, a weak-willed rich lady, is put upon and brow beaten by everyone she comes in contact with except her shrink, Frances Fisher. The men are especially brutal, even her Dad. Her philandering husband, one of the Baldwin brothers, is suitably slimy but nobody really turns in a good performance. Hannah herself seems languid to the point of sleepiness. I didn't make it to the end but I imagine she gets even with all those patriarchal pigs. The director, Christopher Guest, shoots it straight but must have known, in his heart of hearts, that it was to laugh at. I hope so, for his sake, because, if taken seriously, the movie has all the dash and relevance of a recipe for plain spaghetti sauce.

Red-Barracuda This is a remake of a film I have never seen so it's impossible to compare but I guess it was commissioned back in the early 90's because remakes of 50's sci-fi films were then in vogue. The idea I imagine was that those old movies could benefit from the new special effects technology of the time. It has to be said, however, that some of the special effects used in this version of Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman are not much better than those used in the original King Kong sixty years previously. Maybe it's because this is a made for TV production and the budget isn't too high. That's possible certainly but I'm still sure they could've done better. Special effects aside, they could definitely have written the movie better that's for sure. The central idea of a giant woman terrorizing a town is silly and trashy and that's fine, but the problem is that she doesn't get to properly attack anything really. The final showdown effectively amounts to a domestic situation between the 50 Ft. woman and her philandering husband. It's not really the best way to showcase the central character. A little bit more destruction would not have gone amiss. Admittedly the National Guard do show up and battle with the giantess at the end but it's extremely half-hearted at best.Another problem is the way that the supporting cast react to the fact that Daryl Hannah has suddenly grown to a gigantic size. No one really seems very surprised and they all basically carry on acting as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. A little shock and awe would not have done any harm. It might've helped us have a little empathy with some of the characters. As it was, it was difficult to care too much about anybody, seeing as everyone was so poorly written. Daryl Hannah isn't very good as the lead character but Cristi Conaway is actually not bad as the mistress; maybe she'd have been better in the title role.At the end of the day this is meant to be a cheesy film, so it has to be judged on its cheese value and it does provide some entertainment in a completely throwaway kind of way. It thankfully doesn't take itself at all seriously. At the end of the day the idea of a 50 Ft. woman going on the rampage can only be taken so far so I suppose it's not entirely surprising that this one isn't very good.

MARIO GAUCI A smartly feminist reading of the 1958 camp classic is the basis of this made-for-TV remake which needlessly opens up the proceedings by adding some 25 minutes of “character development” – which, basically, means new personalities who further traumatize or assist the distressed titular female. Daryl Hannah has trouble coping with the ugly duckling part of the story but grows nicely into her role once the gigantic transformation comes along and in which she is curiously but attractively decked out in cavewoman garb! Excepting the rather obnoxious Daniel Baldwin (as Hannah’s philandering husband), the rest of the cast is capable enough: Frances Fisher is Hannah’s helpful shrink, William Windom is her greedy tycoon father and, best of all, Cristi Conaway is Baldwin’s sexy mistress who practically changes to a more outrageous wig with every new scene she’s in; I knew nothing of her going in but, being sufficiently impressed I looked up her resume' on IMB and, what do you know, she was once married to an actor of presumably Maltese origins named Salvator Xuereb!! This is all well and good, perhaps, but I still wouldn’t say that this is an improvement on the unjustly maligned original; for one thing, there are no giant aliens to be seen here and, worse still, the goofy fat deputy is (predictably, under the circumstances) replaced by a squeaky, tomboyish girl. The sheriff and his deputy are here depicted as being avid drive-in cinema-goers and, at one point, Hannah rips off the roof of a cinema which is screening the 1958 original! The new coda is also quite amusing: having been received inside the spaceship which caused her enormous growth, Hannah is joined by two other gigantic beauties who, sure enough, look upon their tiny hubbies as they go confessing to their various infidelities in interstellar group therapy!