Review of War of the Colossal Beast (1958)

On Saturday evening, my Bonnie Bride and I sat down to watch War of the Colossal Beast (1958), the film Svengoolie was featuring this week. Granted, we have seen it before, and my Bonnie Bride was more interested in catching Sven’s goofy interludes and mail bag, so we did make an evening of it, and I decided to write about it.

Title from the film - IMDB

War of the Colossal Beast is a sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man (), and features a flashback dream sequence to the earlier film, giving some background for those of us who have never seen the original film (guilty!). The film itself is a mix of decent story telling, good acting, and rather average, uninspiring special effects, making this film, overall, an okay movie to watch once, or a second time if you have nothing better to do. Or, when a fun horror movie host is showing it with lots of fun interludes.

The story opens with a young man, a teenager, really, driving a truck as if being pursued by an unknown entity, and the driver has some look of terror on his face. It’s a good hook to get the film going, and gives a sense of peril. As the story progresses, we learn that the unseen pursuer is the Colossal Man, looking for some chow. Eventually he is captured, and transported back to the States in an attempt to see if he can be cured and his sanity restored. As expected, things don’t go well for the soldiers in charge, the doctors trying to help, or for the Colossal Man himself.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but overall, I did find the story to be fairly good, and well presented. Granted, the believability factor is near zero, but then it is a B-picture scinece fiction film from the ‘50s, and an American International Picures film, which excelled at these types of low budget films. One thing that they did do in the film I am going to spill the beans on is that although the film was shot in Black and White, the last shot of the film was made in color, making the conclusion of the story a bit more interesting when combined with the special effects used in the film.

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Sally fraser (center left) and Rico Alaniz (far right) - IMDB

For the acting, got to give kudos to the leading lady, Sally Fraser, who plays Joyce Manning, the sister of the Colossal Man, Glenn Manning (this time, played by Dean Parkin). I thought she did a marvelous job playing her role, showing concern for her lost brother who had previously been presumed dead at the end of the original film. Another very good performance was turned in by Rico Alaniz as Sgt. Luis Murillo, a police officer in a small, rural town located in Mexico. Alaniz had the role of a small town cop nailed as he dealt with an upset American whose truck went missing, and helping find, and capture Glenn during the first half of the film. My opinion, but Alaniz and Fraser were the top performers in the film.

Dean Parkin under the make-up - IMDB

The Colossal Man had some pretty heavy facial make-up to hide the fact that Dean Parkin is not the same actor who played the role in the original film, and made necessary due to the use of the footage from The Amazing Colossal Man during the dream sequence. The production team did come up with a plausible reason for the facial injuries that also played well with explaining how Manning survived the end of the first film. (Thanks goes to Svengoolie for pointing this out.)

Watching this film on Svengoolie also makes for an interesting evening as his interludes include interesting notes about the movie being shown, a funny song about the film performed with his main sidekick, Doug (usually on keyboard), and occasionally with Doug’s daughter on Saxophone (as is the case with War of the Colossal Beast). Add in a bit of comedy routine and a clip from various events (Horror Film Conventions), and you get a good combination for an evening of entertainment. Even when the jokes are, shall we say, not great.

Although War of the Colossal Beast is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, we’ll probably watch it again the next time Sven runs it on his show.

That’s about it for this time around. Thanks for stopping by.

Posted using CineTV