ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

____________________ I love this poster!

An army officer attempts to reach the wreckage of a plane which crashes in the test area of a plutonium bomb, but he's badly burned when he's caught in the blast.



The burns heal overnight, but he starts to grow . . . and groooow . . . and GROOOOOOW. At first the plot is a variation of "The Incredible Shrinking Man", focusing on the enlarged man's lost normality (and marital love life). But as soon as he reaches true monster height, producer-director Bert I. Gordon turns the giant loose on Las Vegas to wreak havoc on the casinos.



Gordon released a sequel the following year, "War of the Colossal Beast". Special effects, acting, and photography are substandard for both films, but "The Amazing Colossal Man" and its sequel are still kid-pleasing monster hits

The last scene in the movie is in color. Doesn't really add much to the drama, however.

Trivia note for math and science buffs: a human being who is four times normal size would be sixty-four times as heavy, because he's also four times as wide and four times as deep — 4 X 4 X 4 — which means he would be too heavy to move.

So much for menacing giants.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm not a big fan of this movie, and I'm certainly not a big fan of MST3K (well, maybe sometimes . . . ), but I have to admit they had a good time with this one. And since I couldn't find the trailer or the movie to post here, I thought you folks might enjoy this.

Have fun.
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MST3K S03E09 - The Amazing Colossal Man (1957


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Hey, I found the trailer after all.
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__________ The Amazing Colossal Man - trailer


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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______________ Classic Monster Movie Trailers


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Here is this pretty famous 'giant monster' picture from the fifties, unusual in that rather than the expected giant animal, such as insects or even apes, it's a human male.

This was director Gordon's cash-in on The Incredible Shrinking Man of earlier in the year. As Bill Warren mentions in "Keep Watching the Skies", this may very well be Gordon's best — that's not saying all that much, but hey, every filmmaker has to have his own best movie, eh?



This one moves along pretty well and is usually interesting. The title character starts out as Colonel Manning, an overly heroic soldier who gets caught in the blast of a new Plutonium bomb. This burns off most of his skin.

You'd think that would be the worst of it, but God or cosmic forces tend to play games with certain unlucky people in such films (when it involves new atomic weaponry, especially).

Manning grows back the skin overnight and then starts to . . . well, you know. The tragedy here, imposed on the audience without much subtlety, is that Manning was a good man, even heroic; yet, this is his reward.

His fiance doesn't have a good time of it either. He quickly develops a dark sense of humor and further problems — this film just piles 'em on this poor guy.




This lacks those moments of transcendence and poetic introspection in the superior Shrinking Man film, but Gordon gives it a good try, and the FX are much better than the awful Attack of the 50-foot Woman a couple of years later, even if there is a slight see-through quality to the giant man in some scenes.

One thing I've noticed in watching a film like this is that Gordon obviously is just copying elements & dialog of previous films — stuff he'd seen I suppose, a year earlier. The scenes come across as very clunky and unintentionally humorous, as if the actors are just aping older scenes, in older movies. Which they are, I think.

BoG's Score: 4.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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A fine review by Bogmeister . . . as usual.

I was surprised that Bog didn't mention the ridiculous giant hypodermic needle. Obviously it was something that had to be custom made for the unusual task of injecting the giant man . . . but why did they put those giant "finger rings" on it?

How the hell could anybody use those things?


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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One other thing I thought of is the striking similarity between the 'origin' of the Colossal Man and that of the Hulk in the Marvel Comics.

When Stan Lee or someone else writes about the origins of the grey-then-green monster hero of the comic books, the influences cited are usually Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and/or the Frankenstein story.

However, when I saw Colonel Manning running towards the bomb at that test site in The Amazing Colossal Man, I was reminded of the very similar scene of Bruce Banner running towards the Gamma bomb in the first issue of the Incredible Hulk; that issue was published in 1962, 5 years after this film.

Coincidence? :

In the comic book, Banner eventually (not immediately) transforms into a hulking giant, with lowered intelligence & a nastier disposition. In the updated TV series and later movies, the origin for the Hulk was changed somewhat, but the original is very similar to the Colossal Man's.

In the Hulk film of 2003, the Hulk at some points grew to a size of about 20 feet tall, making him even more similar to the Colossal Man.



Some more bits of trivia: going by memory, in the film, the Colossal Man is stated to be growing at a rate of 8 feet per day. So, he would reach his final height of about 50+ feet in about a week.

When we first see him at a giant size, he is said to be 18 feet tall. When he wanders around Las Vegas towards the end, some state he is closer to 60 feet tall. This does seem accurate — most of the FX hold true to this estimate (unlike Attack of the 50-foot Woman, where her size does not seem consistent scene-to-scene).

There was a film which preceded these by a bit and one I forgot about: The Cyclops (1957) — the giant in that one resembles The Colossal Beast, who appeared in the sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man. Small wonder, since The Cyclops was also produced & directed by Bert I Gordon!

Gordon was really consumed by the thought of giants, apparently. That giant, the Cyclops, is said to have been 25 feet tall, a relative shorty.


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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Bogmeister shared the love that many of us here at All Sci-Fi have for pondering the connection between two separate sci-fi stories, looking for interesting similarities.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

[Bud Brewster]

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For those folks like me that Eadie challenged to understand her reference — its the Combined Miniature Defense Force . . . from Fantastic Voyage.

Damn, this girl is good!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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~ A Question for the Members: Knowing how the military wants to "weaponize" any new discovery, would it be possible to safely control the growth of a human being using what happened to Colonel Manning in this movie?

~ My Theory: By doing this they could create giant "super soldiers" in various sizes to be used in combat missions that required a specific size!

In other words, 10-foot soldiers to kick ass in hand-to-hand combat, 20-foot soldiers for ground-based invasions, and 40-foot soldiers equipped with body armor and heavy weaponry, which turn these giants into human tanks!

Imagine the FX in a movie with these kinds of GI's!

(Come on, guys! Surely it's not too much to expect a few clever replies to a great concept like this!)
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Maurice]

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm not overly knowledgeable about this, but since we have all the facts about the results of simply enlarging a human being, we need to ponder some ways we can compensate for all that weight and mass.

After all, the same principles apply to scaled-up machines!

To pick a simple example, if we scaled up a Lionel model train, we'd get a machine which — if we didn't make significant adjustments for all the added weight and mass — could never move an inch!





And yet . . . they move quite well!





But how?

Well, apparently we scaled up all the elements in the toy version to compensate for the challenges which the large-size version presented!

The materials had to be stronger, the power of the engine had to be greater, etc. etc. etc.

We know that an enlarged human being can't simply be made of "tougher flesh and bone" and "stronger muscles".

Right?

Well . . . maybe he can! But not the same way we do it with machines

Maybe an enlarged human would have to exist in a different dimensional plane — one in which his relative size appeared larger, but the laws of physics are different for him!

I'm just throwing out sci-fi techno babble, folks . . . but perhaps keener mines than my own will find inspiration from the way I've been "thinking outside the box"!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

A "scaled up" human...or any animal for that matter could only function if his size was increased but his MASS remained the same. How could this be done?

Two possible ways.

One would be if there was a way to shield the organism from the Higgs field (The Higgs field...which permeates the Universe...is what reacts with the Higgs boson to create mass in the first place) Photons, for example, are particle/waves that do not contain Higgs bosons, therefore light (photons) are massless.

Two, if the atoms of the object were separated with more "space" or distance, the size could increase without gaining mass.

The only problem may be breathing could be very difficult. It's doubtful the organism could get enough oxygen into it's lungs to exist. Dinosaurs existed when the oxygen content of the atmosphere was considerably higher allowing them to attain their greater size and bulk.
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Krel]

About Gord's theory, if he had the same mass as roughly a fit 6 foot man, then he would be in trouble. At his size and mass a strong wind or storm would knock him over, as his size would act like a sail. The big danger he would pose to regular size people would him smothering you, as he could completely cover you with his hand. He wouldn't be much of a danger to building or structures as he wouoldn't have the mass to damage them.

He would actually be in more danger, as with normal mass, he could more easily be injured. Motor vehicles could possibly injure him, or knock him over. At his height, but normal mass, a fall could possibly cause serious injury, or even DEATH!

There's a story for you: A giant man running from civilization because of the dangers it poses to him.

David.

[Bud Brewster]