Back on Blu in a new collection: Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, THEM, and World Without End
Lately Warner Archive has been collecting may of its Blu-ray catalogue releases into 4-film and 6-film collections, grouped by actors and themes. Some of these have centered on themes like Hitchcock favorites and Film Noir classics while others focus on actors like Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Errol Flynn, Greta Garbo, and Clark Gable.
Just released this month is one of the most tantalizing so far. The 50s Sci-Fi Collection rounds up four classics: two of them are prestigious special effects-driven creature extravaganzas, and two are campier b-movies. All of them remain highly influential.
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958)
A camp classic that’s arguably as known for its famously sexy poster as much as the movie itself, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman is by no means a great movie, but certainly a fun one.
The tale centers on the Archers, a wealthy socialite couple whose relationship has been strained by husband Harry (William Hudson) and his ceaseless philandering and gaslighting. Indeed, Harry openly carries on outside relationships, publicly smooching and carrying on with with his mistress (Yvette Vickers) at a local smalltown bar.
His behavior has caused no end of stress and heartache to wife Nancy (Allison Hayes), who both loves and resents her husband – so much, in fact, that she’s previously suffered a nervous breakdown and seems on the verge of another.
It’s this scenario in which a shocked Nancy encounters a massive UFO in the desert, and its giant occupant. Her frenzied claims are dismissed by everyone, including her husband – that is, until she turns into a giant herself.
The film has poor special effects, including goofy looking giant hand props, and semi-transparent exposures which make the giant-size characters look more like ghosts (they aren’t, it’s just really poor compositing). But I like the film’s feminist streak and its empathy for a female character who is mistreated by her husband, and the vengeance that ensues.
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
Arguably the best and most well-known film in the set, Beast is a synthesis of science fiction’s two great Rays: Ray Bradbury, who wrote the original story, and Ray Harryhausen, the legendary stop-motion animator who devised the film’s impressive effects work.
The story concerns a giant fictional dinosaur, the rhedosaurus, which is accidentally unfrozen from its ageless slumber by nuclear testing, and unleashed on the modern world. Although the awakened creature is observed by a physicist named Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid), the scientist’s claims are ignored and attributed to hysteria.
Nesbitt finds sympathetic ears in a father-daughter paleontologist team (Cecil Kellaway and Paula Raymond), convincing them of his sincerity. And as additional reports of unexplained phenomena start to pop up along the coast, it becomes clear that the creature not only exists, but is headed to make landfall at New York City, leading to a celebrated final act in which the monster terrorizes the city.
The film notably preceded Godzilla, giving rise to the modern giant monster/kaiju subgenre (which had previously been pioneered by King Kong). Keep your eyes peeled for the great Lee Van Cleef is a small but pivotal supporting role.
Them! (1954)
Another highly regarded regarded giant monster movie, Them! has historically been paired on DVD alongside The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms in multipack editions.
It’s a natural pairing, as the two films occupy much the same plot: as with Beast, the creepy-crawly Them! opens with grisly mysteries and the threat of atomic-age creatures, but the details are disputed and kept under wraps until a team of experts – once again a wizened older scientist and his beautiful daughter – are able to confirm the discovery: in this case, a colony of giant carnivorous ants.
The big difference with Them! is implied right there in the title: it’s the plurality which defines the threat. Not one giant monster, but many. The big threat isn’t so much the nest that’s been discovered, but the possibility of their reproducing and spreading across the world. Possessing far superior strength, hive mentality, and colonial intelligence, the ants are poised to take over as the earth’s dominant species – and the top of the food chain.
If that setup sounds familiar, it definitely is: the film notably sets up a construct which is closely echoed in the Aliens series. The hive-based alien xenomorphs, sometimes even called “bugs”, possess all the same traits as the ants in Them!: the “perfect organism”, stronger and more adaptive than humans. Both species are even characterized by the acid in their bodies. The films’ parallels are most evident in the eerie scenes in this the human characters delve into the bombed-out nest, to discover a trove of eggs that must be destroyed.
The rural threat becomes urban when the last of the creatures retreat to the LA River and its connected labyrinth of sewers and tunnels, an environment which recalls their own nests.
World Without End (1956)
Easily the silliest film and most colorful in the lot but not without its charms, World Without End (1956) has an aesthetic that will appeal to fans of the classic Star Trek series.
A team of astronauts encounter an anomaly which sends them hurtling through a journey across space and time (an early example of time dilation in fiction), to an unknown but familiar world populated by two peoples: above ground, violent and disfigured mutants resembling deformed cave-men, and below ground, a more advanced race that values community and pacifism. The astronauts are initially welcomed into the subterranean community, but their presence starts to create unease.
This setup is a slight spin on the Morlocks and Eloi of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, generally taking the same concept of the divergent branches of humanity, flipping them, and putting them into a different time travel story. Oddly enough, just four years later Rod Taylor, who plays one of the astronauts in this film, would soon go on to star in the 1960 version of The Time Machine.
Unable to return home, the astronauts try to make the best of their new environs, but their more rugged attitudes and capacity for violence – including their preference for carrying firearms – sow distress and distrust with their new friends.
It makes for a fun adventure that’s both derivative and original – besides regurgitating a thinly veiled version of The Time Machine, viewers will also notice close parallels to Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes which followed roughly a decade later, published in 1963 and adapted into a movie in 1968.
The Package:
Warner Archive’s 50s Sci-Fi Collection officially released on September 2. The four Blu-rays, which are have all been previously released individually, come packaged in a 4-disc Elite blue case, with cover art incorporating all 4 original poster designs.
Special Features and Extras: Attack of the 50-Foot Woman
- Commentary – Conversational discussion by actress Yvette Vickers and historian Tom Weaver
- Theatrical Trailer (1:53)
Special Features and Extras: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
- The Rhedosaurus and the Rollercoaster – The Making of “Beast” (6:12)
Ray Harryhausen describes the origin of the film, its low budget, and his animation process (including the method of sandwiching the creature between foreground and background elements for dimensionality). - An Unfathomable Friendship (16:51) -Rays Harryhausen and Bradbury look back on their great friendship and professional career together, sharing tons of amusing stories.
- Armatures (0:59)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:34)
Special Features and Extras: Them!
- Selected Outtakes (3:06)
- Theatrical Trailer (2:34)
Special Features and Extras: World Without End
- None
A/V Out
Get it at Amazon: Warner Archive 50s Sci-Fi 4-Film Collection on Blu-ray
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