The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Lt. Col. Glenn Manning is inadvertently exposed to a plutonium bomb blast and although he sustains burns over 90% of his body, he survives. Then he begins to grow, but as he grows he starts losing his mind. By the time he stops he is 50 ft tall, insane and is on the rampage.
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What critics compared The Amazing Colossal Man to
What excited me in the mid-sixties, in such movies as “The Amazing Colossal Man” (which is still pretty amazing) and “Earth vs. the Spider,” was the stuff of ordinary life—a man, a bug, a hotel room, a rock song—transformed into something uncanny, monstrous, and dangerously extraordinary.
This complete reduction of an initially sympathetic and intelligent character into a snarling, feral “beast” demonstrates the mercenary surrender of the returning produce-writer-director Bert I. Gordon toward sacrificing his initially sympathetic character into a useful substitute for the already used giant soldier ant or octopus (it probably didn’t help employing screenwriter George Worthing Yates who enjoyed a career surge in writing the same damn giant monster movie over and over again, including contributing to the referenced “Them!” and “It Came From Beneath the Sea”, as well as “The Amazing Colossal Man” itself) whose only method of communication is a truly unnerving, gargling roar (kudos to the sound effects technician who braved the proximity of what sounds like Elizabeth Taylor swallowing an all-you-can-eat fried chicken buffet for that invaluable bit of aural bestiality), removing the possibility of the film emerging as anything but a giant-monster-on-the-loose programmer (the sev…