WAR OF THE COLASSAL BEAST

Sice I included a Japanese daikaiju (giant monster) movie from the 1950s it seams apropriate that I also put an American daikaiju movie as well. Having one with out the other would kinda tip the scales don't ya think?

And so the honor of representing America goes to War of the Colossal Beast, sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man. War tells the continuing saga of  Col. Glenn Manning who, durring test of a new plutonium bomb, was accendentaly exposed to the radiation. Besides being chared like a barbeque chicken and having his hair burnt off (one wonders why his whole body wasn't reduced to a crispy slap-o-meat but I digress, you have to do that alot with daikaiju movies) it also causes him to grow to 60 feet tall. The Colossal Man then went on a rambage in Las Vegas before being shot by a bazooka and falling from the top of a dam 700 feet into the Colorado river.

At that point this movie begins in Guavos Mexico where a boy named Mike is taken to a hospital in shock he was driving a truck full of gorcerys when he got stuck in the mud. Yet another bleech blond (they're seame to be hords of them in 50s monster movies, see also, The Day the World Ended) named Joyce Manning, Glenn's sister, thinks that her big borther (its a bad pun, I know) is responcible for it.

She manages to convice Maj. Mark Bard of the US army who promptly drives a truck full of bread laced with tranquilizers around the deasert. The Colossal man shows up, eats the sleepy time bread and passes out.

Once the giant is subdued he is transported to an airplane hanger in Los Angeles. He's straped down with chanes while scientists try and find a way to reduce his growth and return him to normal. Now, you and I both know that puting a giant anything (man, ape, and especialy lizard) in a city is just asking for troble. Sure enough Gleen   breaks out and goes on a rampage in LA. Sister Joyce tags along and trys desperatly to keep the army from just blasting her big brother and ending the whole thing right then and there

This movie surpised me. A good rule of thum when dealing with 50s monster movies is this: the stranger the title, the worse the movie. Godzilla is simply titled, its just the monster name. While Horror at Party Beach has a really wierd title and its put in an apearance on MST3K. With a name as strange as War of the Colossal Beast you would expect a stinker. Was I ever surpised when the movie turned out to be halfway decent.

I said "decent" mind you. Not "good". This movie could have been good. Oh, yes. It has so much potential. That potential is torpedoed by the fact that it has no good actors. Instead, like most American monster movies, it has underactors and overactors.

The overacting comes to us courtesy of Sall Fraser as Joyce. When she isn't standing around looking concerned she is talking in a really whiney, desperate voice. It gets old fast. Really fast. Faster then a Rodan on steroids.

The underacting is supplyed by the rest of the cast. But mostly by Roger Page as Maj. Bard. He isn't your typical, gun happy military man, if he was that might have added some depth to his character. Instead he just walks through his lines, his square jaw held high, his performance so wooden you could cut it up and it would heat your house for the winter.

But enought of that, on to the good stuff about this movie. That is the special effects and the Colossal Man/Beast himself. Played by Duncan Parkin he snarales his way through the movie, sounding kind of like a cross between Boris Karloff's Frankenstien and a chainsaw trying to cut through and oak tree (or Roger Page's performance). But, like the Frankenstien in Marry Shelley's novel, he has this tortored thing about him. He's not really evil, he's just insane. Radiation isn't good for the ol' brain pan you know?

As to the SPFX I find myself suprised. The effect that creates the illusion that the Colossal Man is  . . .well, Colossal, is acomplished through the use of some pretty cheesy blue screen shots when the CM is in the same shot as a human cast member. When no humans are standing with him the makers of this movie take a page from Toho's "How to Make a monster look big" book of SPFX and have Duncan Parkin staning next to miniature buildings. Some call this cheep, I say "Ya, that's why they used it."

Also good are the effects used on the Colossal man himself. In The Amazing Colossal Man Glenn was hit with a bazooka shell and fell off a dam, you can imagine how much damage that would do. In this movie the entire right side of his face is gone, replaceing it is an empty eye socket and part of his protruding cheek bone. This just proves that they're where some good makeup effects people working in the Hollywood of the 50s.

In the finall annalizis War of the Colossal Beast turns out to just what it is, a giant monster movie from the 1950s. Don't worry, its not bad, but it ain't no Godzilla.

RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

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