War of the Colossal Beast (

1958

)

Bert I. Gordon worked his ass off throughout 1957 and 1958, releasing three movies each year. Given the limited filming schedules, minuscule budgets, and short cool-down period between productions it's pretty damn impressive that almost all of these films are at least somewhat entertaining. Still, nobody can keep up that pace for long, and as today's film shows, Gordon's second movie in 1958, even Gordon was starting to wear a bit thin. Before the title card even shows up, it's pretty obvious that Gordon is running out of energy and ideas because The War of the Colossal Beast (Gordon continues his practice of adjusting his film titles to mimic successful contemporary movies, here borrowing from The War of the Satellites (1958) of all things) is a sequel to one of Gordon's best films: The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). As a rule of thumb, any sequel released within a year or two of the original is a shameless cash-grab, that was probably rushed out with little thought and less care, and The War of the Colossal Beast is no exception. It's not as big a step down in quality as say, the difference between The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Revenge of the Creature (1955), but boy is it ever close! The War of the Colossal Beast just isn't as fun or exciting as any of the director's other 1950s sci-fi movies. He was able to pull together for Attack of the Puppet People (1958), but it was obvious that he needed a vacation. Tellingly, after 1958, Gordon would go on a bit of a hiatus and not release another movie until 1960 (a short break for most filmmakers, a massive gap for Mr. B.I.G.).

For no readily apparent reason, our female lead has shifted from Glenn Manning's fiance Carol Forrest, to his hitherto unmentioned sister Joyce played by Sally Fraser. Switching the lead is an odd choice, as it's not like Cathy Downs, who played Carol in the original film, was prohibitively expensive. Nor was she retired from making B sci-fi movies as she appeared in Missile to the Moon (1958) later that year. Maybe Gordon was as impressed by Fraser's role in It Conquered the World (1956) as I was; maybe after making Earth vs. the Spider (1958) he found her pleasant to work with; maybe he just thought a younger actress would put more teenage male butts in theater seats. From a narrative perspective, its a miss-step because it tosses out all the audience's residual investment in the female lead. Joyce has to start from scratch to make us care about her and her plight, and the script isn't going to be doing her any favors. Joyce is convinced that Manning somehow survived his tumble from the Hoover Dam at the end of The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). It's a pretty justifiable opinion, given the fact that 60ft tall corpses don't just vanish without a trace, even in massive lakes you'd expect the occasional whale-sized rib to wash-up onshore. Following the river from the damn, it would seem likely that the giant, if he survived, was carried into Mexico. When strange reports start filtering in from south of the border, Joyce has all the motivation she needs to start her search.

The army is skeptical, in the usual bureaucratic way that tends to prevent organizations from hearing any news that it doesn't want to be true. Major Mark Baird basically tells Joyce that she's wasting her time before she flys out to Mexico. Oddly though, he's open to changing his mind, as soon as Joyce turns up an eyewitness Baird rushes out to join her accompanied by a medical specialist, named Dr. Carmichael. There are very few places on earth so desolate that a 60ft tall man can hide in them for very long, and so the trio turns up Glenn Manning in short order. He's changed since the climax of the first movie, having suffered a grievous injury that's left him minus one eye and with a disturbing amount of exposed skull. The new makeup makes Glenn Manning bear an uncanny resemblance to the titular monster from The Cyclops (1957), which is just more evidence in my mind that an overworked Mr. B.I.G. was beginning to run out of ideas.

Surprisingly, capturing the colossal man turns out to be a straight forward matter, and within minutes of screen time (perhaps a day or two of in-movie time) Manning is sedated, chained up, and flown back to America. Amusingly, the biggest problem for Major Baird has nothing to do with capturing the giant, but with finding a place to put him. Just about every city in the USA isn't particularly interested in housing a veritable kaiju, and they are prepared to throw all their political clout to keeping Glenn Manning as far away as possible. Moreover, the Eisenhower defense spending cuts have obviously gone into effect, because the army flat out refuses to build a facility to house Manning, even though last time that only entailed renting a circus tent. Baird winds up setting up shop in a disused aircraft hangar in the Los Angeles airport, which strikes me as an even more dangerous place to keep him than in the middle of a city. Indeed, I can think of few places likely to have a greater concentration of civilians and valuable infrastructure. Naturally, Manning breaks loose from his bonds in no time at all and proceeds to rampage across the airport before the troops can sedate him and chain him up once again.

Once Manning is re-secured, Dr. Carmichael starts to give him a mental evaluation that will determine whether his mind has been irreparably damaged or if he can somehow be returned to sanity. The results are all negative, and so the army decides that the only humane thing to do is to ship Manning off to his own personal Skull/Monster Island where he will be free to live in peace, unmolested by humanity and incapable of harming anyone. It's not a bad idea, and even Joyce who was desperate to restore her brother's mind and disappointed to learn that the man she knew is gone, has to reluctantly agree that it's the right call given the situation. Too bad that Manning screws it all up by breaking loose once again makes his way towards the Griffith Observatory.

Almost nothing happens in War of the Colossal Beast, and consequently, it feels unbearably long despite its short (less than 70 minutes) run-time. There just isn't much in the way of plot here, so once Manning is in captivity there is nothing for him, or any of the other characters to do. His brief escape in the middle of the film is so short that it seems all but pointless, and the amazing colossal man is mostly off-screen for his climactic rampage. The finale, shot in color, is suitably grand and tragic but it comes at the end of a 69-minute sleep aide, and can be hardly e said to redeem the preceding film. Nothing illustrates this dearth of ideas better than the fact that the movie feels the need to recycle ten to fifteen minutes of footage from the first movie in order to pad out its run-time. Unlike, say Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987), this does not go on so long that it becomes humorous that the filmmakers are trying to pass off a glorified clip-show as a new feature film. Instead, it just takes up enough time that it was downright annoying and had me reaching for the fast-forward button. Indeed, the difference in quality between the two films is especially damning here. When I'm sitting through a crappy movie the last thing I want is to be reminded of something a lot better than I could be watching instead.

The best part of The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) was Colonel Glenn Manning himself, a regular man trapped in an insane situation and gradually losing touch with what made him human in the first place. The War of the Colossal Beast cannot duplicate this aspect of the original because the first movie ended with Manning at the precipice of bestial savagery. When he set Carol down before the military firing squad opened upon him with bazookas, it expended the last glimmer of humanity he had left leaving only a monster for the sequel. This transformation is reflected both in Manning's physical appearance and his vocabulary. Gone are the elongated soliloquies about mortality and madness; they are replaced with grunts, roars, and animalistic moans (which grow ever more annoying as the movie progresses). This makes narrative sense, but the problem is we aren't given anything to replace the strong central figure of Glenn Manning and his plight, leaving a void at the center of the movie. For the entire run-time, Joyce and the other attempt to appeal to his nascent humanity, but without any luck (at least until the film's climax). Seeing them repeatedly try and fail to revive Glenn Manning, the human being, gets old fast. It would have been far better for Manning to regain a semblance of his humanity off-camera (not all of it perhaps but enough to speak at the same level as The Incredible Hulk), and merely be viewed as a monster by the general populace. This would give us a compelling lead, and a good central conflict. Alas, chalk this one up as a missed opportunity.